The man’s eyes moved and he stared at Jimmy’s face, but it was a moment before they seemed to actually see him. ‘There’s a wicked feeling about this place,’ he said.
Jimmy looked around: there was a copse of trees to the right, fields to the left and up ahead, a slight rise in the land with a jut of rock around which the road wound and which now hid their quarry. A peasant was working in the field, taking something out of a sack and throwing it on the lumpy ploughed land. He shook his head. ‘Seems ordinary enough to me.’
Coe looked at him sideways, still clutching whatever it was he wore beneath his shirt. Then he shrugged. ‘Perhaps I’m mistaken. Just a feeling after all.’ He gave his head a hard shake and blinked his eyes. ‘Was there something you wanted?’
All right, Jimmy thought. He’d had ‘feelings’ of his own a time or two. Time to get careful. Maybe my bump of trouble doesn’t work outside the city, and Jarvis Coe’s does. ‘I saw two men riding up ahead,’ he said aloud.
‘Then let’s try to catch up to them.’ Coe trotted ahead. When Jimmy caught up to him the older man looked over at him. ‘Do you have a weapon besides the sword?’ he asked.
‘My knife,’ Jimmy said, his voice implying a shrug he couldn’t manage at a trot.
‘Lag behind me as I catch them up. I’ll tell them I need directions to Land’s End. When they tell me it’s behind us I’ll berate you for getting the innkeeper’s directions wrong.’
Jimmy grimaced and Coe said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s a little hard to miss Land’s End from the road if you think about it.’
Coe tried not to laugh. ‘I was never very good at subterfuge on my feet. What do you suggest?’
‘Just ask if they mind if we travel along, in case of highwaymen. That should distract them, even if they say “no”.’
‘Very well. We ride up together. I’ll hale them and start talking while you look for the boy, if you can get close enough, grab him and run. I’ll take care of the rest. Understood?’
‘Yes,’ the young Mocker said. It seemed a reasonable enough plan. ‘If it’s them they must have been dragging their heels for us to catch up to them when they left so long before us.’
Coe didn’t answer, but then he didn’t need to: Jimmy was self-evidently correct. When they made the turn around the low hill they found the two men, their horses at a standstill, apparently having an argument. The smaller man had a bulky sack tied onto his horse behind the saddle, but there was no sign of a child. The two men looked back at them and their horses began to prance nervously.
‘Excuse me, sirs,’ Jarvis called out. ‘Could you spare a moment, please?’
The two men looked at one another and shortened their reins; then, before Jimmy could catch up to Coe, they set heels hard to their horses’ sides and took off down the road as though pursued by demons.
‘Well that certainly looks guilty,’ Jimmy muttered.
Coe didn’t hear him; he’d whipped his horse after the two men as soon as they’d started off. It was a chase they had no hope of winning, for their horses were hardly as fresh as the kidnappers’. They’d been riding steady, while the two men had apparently dawdled along with many a rest, for Jarvis and Jimmy to have overtaken them so soon.
Still, we have to try, and we might get lucky.
Jimmy clapped his heels into the horse’s sides. It took off after the other man’s mount: horses were obviously gang-minded, Jimmy decided. He could feel the power of the gait, the thunder of hooves and the rushing speed, faster than anything he’d experienced before—and the hammering of the saddle against his abused hams. Jimmy flapped his elbows like a chicken, but he had almost supernatural balance, and managed to get into the rhythm of the horse’s gait without difficulty. He had the odd notion that he had no idea what to do if the horse decided to stop suddenly; Jarvis hadn’t mentioned how to ride at a gallop and he genuinely had no idea of what to do to slow the animal. The saddle was slamming him hard in the arse and his teeth were rattling. He put his heels down, as Coe had reminded him several times during the day, and stood up in the stirrups. Suddenly, his teeth stopped rattling and his head stopped bouncing enough to have a clear view ahead. Ah ha! he said silently, that’s how you do it! He let his knees flex and his legs and hips rolled with the horse’s gait, while his upper body remained relatively level with the road.