Chapter 14

The trip from Catton to Clawton had been nearly 300km in the past, over some very rough terrain.

A small convoy often took seven to eight days to traverse it if the weather was kind to them and the road was in repair. The fact the convoy had already covered 70km on the first day thanks to Trae’s new road had the merchants hoping this trip would only take about a week.

Trae knew that several sections they had coming up could cause delays but he was hoping that having six of them with magical items they could mitigate most of the problems. He also knew that sometimes the delays were caused by the tardiness of the travellers and he knew the two carriages were a problem.

He had been surprised when Tristan informed him that their carriage had travelled the road previously. That fact it had taken them nine days due to both a broken wheel and a broken axle didn’t surprise him. When he inspected the carriage at their first break, he dropped a repair spell on it and embedded a crystal in its frame.

He did the same for the Field’s carriage and then decided what the heck, and he wondered around each wagon in turn. Some of the merchants who didn’t know him well looked at him suspiciously but Mark made a comment that Trae always liked to check that the wagons were travelling well.

They kept the break short and got moving again. This time Paul took over the wagon and Kat and Trae rode ahead. They knew that they had just about reached the end of their good road. However, they were surprised that they had to range a further 10km before finding the new end in a short deep valley that often took a lot of hard work to get the wagons across.

“What’s with this road, Trae? How come we keep finding more of it fixed than we thought we had done?” Kat asked him.

“I think it’s the spells and the crystals. The crystals seem to empower the spell, and since most of the road is well travelled, the spells do the rest. I’ve noticed it has stopped when it hits a section that requires more than the original spells were designed to do,” he answered.

“This valley normally takes three to four hours to cross and works the poor lankys hard getting them up and down it. What do you think of a land bridge? The creek does flood quite often and it’s not a good place to get stuck,” Trae suggested.

“I don’t see why not. The local wildlife might appreciate it as well,” answered Kat.

So she and Trae built a land bridge similar to the one they had built over the big river. This section was wider, so they also added some support columns either side of the river. Kat chuckled, “That little effort will cut a few hours off. Where do you think we will camp tonight?”

“Hum, good point. Normally we camp just over this ridge but I think I know where we can safely get to now. How about we blink instead?” he replied.

Kat agreed and they got off the lankys and let them have a leisurely forage. Trae retrieved a bag of crystals from his saddlebag and handed it to Kat so she could draw more energy from them. He had added several extra bags to his fanny pack and decided he must make her one too.

They blinked ahead. Trae pointed out the next obstacle. Near this river was a low section of land and just across from it was a steep climb that passed between two high escarpments.

“That’s the pass into the bowl of Mount Ear. The Waters must have had some fun getting their carriage down this side of it. With a little manipulation of the natural flow of the land, I think we can drop the grade of the climb and make it into three easier to navigate sections.”

Trae passed his ideas onto Kat and she suggested that it might be easier to do this from the top of the pass, Trae agreed. They planted some crystals and then they blinked to a new location. They had a lot of fun smoothing out the road. They even added a modest rest area in one of the larger gaps, and underneath one of the cliffs that would protect the travellers from bad weather.

The bowl was a good 12km across and they had to skirt the huge lake. They decided to drop crystals at strategic locations and pave small sections of road to see what would happen. They would do the passage on the other side the following day. From there it would be an easier trip down and only seventy odd kilometres to go.

Happy with their work they blinked back to the lankys and rode back to meet up with the party.

They were surprised that the convoy had stopped and Paul wasn’t with their wagon.

Kitty and Sampson were not happy having been left in the cage. They left them to go back and find out what the problem was. Trae was furious when he found out they had been sitting there waiting for Philippa and Deirdre to come back. Apparently, Philippa had needed a potty break.

In the meantime, the rest of the convoy had caught up with the front and they were starting to wonder what the hold-up was. Trae was mostly displeased that the guard hadn’t gone with them. Tristin hadn’t been with the coach when his wife had it stopped.

“Kat, get this lot moving. I’ll keep Moe and go and find them,” Trae informed the group and got them mounted back up and moving.

Paul appeared out of the trees, “Trae, I can’t find the stupid women but I did find cuttail prints. If they got frightened, they could have gone anywhere.” Paul was frustrated that he didn’t have Trae’s tracking abilities.

“Paul you and Tom stay with the wagons and scout down either side. I’ll get Mark and David to do the same, and get Tristin to stay with the wagons,” Trae instructed him. He didn’t need a city man going off half-cocked because his wife was missing. Paul sent a mind message to Tom and Trae reinforced it. By the time most of the waggons had gone past, Tom had joined the front of the convoy.

Trae met with Mark and David and told them what Paul had found. They wanted to help but he told them to stay with the wagons. “Trae those women weren’t dressed to ride,” David added.

Trae scowled, “Their arses will be too sore to ride once I find them. They will be coming back on their bellies.” David and Mark chuckled and went to do as Trae asked.

The forest here wasn’t very thick with undergrowth and Trae had little trouble finding where the women went into it. He had no idea why they had gone in so deep to do their business until he found where they had stopped behind a huge tree.

He could see where they had dug a small hole. This was evident by the small trowel still being beside it. He could see that at least one of them had peed but something had interrupted them. He followed the deeper imprints of their silly shoes.

He then ran into a problem. For some reason, they had split up at one of the trees, and he only saw the one distinct set of prints, leading away from it. He looked carefully at the ground and then looked up. “I do like your pretty panties, Philippa. Do you mind telling me why you are up in a tree?”

She shook her head and clung tighter to the tree. Her skirt was hitched up around her waist and she sat on a limb barely 3m from the ground. He was just about to tell her that a full-grown cuttail could jump high enough to pull her down from that height when he heard an ear piercing scream off to his left.

“Don’t climb down,” he told Philippa and stalked off in the direction of the scream after telling Moe and Grace to stay. The second scream told him he was close and he paused to ready an arrow in his bow. Slowly, he crept up to the large bush in front of him and moved around it.

The large female was shaking her paw trying to free the material that had gotten hooked on her claws. Her distraction had let Deirdre scurry a little higher. However, Deirdre hadn’t picked a very good tree. This one had a multitude of air plants growing on it and the nearest limb was more than 4m from the ground.

Her attempt to use the plants as places for her feet hadn’t been very successful. He could see where one must have let go under her foot. She had been lucky that it had also hit the cuttail. She was still barely 2m from the ground, and the cuttail was ready to leap and drag her down.

Trae whistled and the cuttail turned to look at him. It was a mistake on her part. The arrow through her eye was a testament to her mistake. She dropped like a stone just as Deirdre fell and landed on her collapsing body.

Deirdre screamed as she fell. She grunted loudly as she hit the cuttail and rolled off her in a tangle of shredded dress and flailing limbs. She lay in an ignoble heap and was just as still as the dead cuttail. Trae stood still for a few moments and listened.

A cuttail of the size he had just shot and in the condition that she was in, suggested she didn’t hunt alone. He quietly moved over to Deirdre and checked for a pulse. She was alive and he suspected that either she had knocked her head in the fall, or she had simply passed out. Her breathing was fine.

He glanced around and listened carefully. Cuttails were stealthy hunters. He heard a soft wicker from Grace and even a stamp of her foot. He smiled and readied another arrow. He heard Moe move in a more agitated way. She was more likely to bolt than Grace.

The faint breeze was coming from their direction, so he knew it wasn’t this cuttail they were reacting to. Taking a chance the other animal was trying to circle around them to be upwind, he angled off to his left and approached the tree where he had left the lanky’s and Philippa.

He was rewarded for his efforts. The male was crouching and moving slowly to shorten the distance between himself and his prey. The fact they hadn’t fled yet, gave the animal hope that he would get lucky. Trae moved slightly to get a better angle for his shot. He was shocked that he had ended up so close to the cuttail.

Something he did alerted the male and he turned his head to stare at Trae. Trae let the arrow fly just as the male snarled and leapt in his direction. The second arrow also found its mark but not before the animal crashed to the ground almost at his feet. Trae had to take a couple of deep breaths to calm his racing heart.

That little encounter had been bloody close.

Trae still felt that he wasn’t safe.

His medallion was warning him that this little war wasn’t over yet. Trae nocked another arrow and slowly turned. He listened intently and moved so that the tree he was near was to his back. He wasn’t certain which way to go. He wasn’t close to either woman and that bothered him.

He glanced around and edged around the tree to get back to Philippa. He looked across the new area that he could now see and nearly froze when he realised the third cuttail had circled in the other direction. She was intent on Moe and upwind of the lankys.

Moe and Grace had, however, moved more to the left around the tree and away from it when they had heard the male snarl. Now the female didn’t have a clear run at them. She had to move again or attack and hope that she was fast enough. Trae and the cuttail both started at the sudden crashing noise and expletive.

‘Skat,’ Trae thought. Silly bloody Philippa must have seen him firing at the male and now she was trying to get out of the tree. She had kicked one of the air-breathing plants down when she tried to put weight on it.

Trae readied his bow as the cuttail moved to check out the woman in the tree. ‘Damn I can’t get a clear shot,’ he thought. He then had a radical idea. He blinked. Within the time it took to draw a breath, he had appeared at his destination, released his first arrow at the surprised beast and was nocking his second. He released it as well but wasn’t sure that it was actually needed.

He took in several deep breaths to counter the adrenaline and now felt that the danger was gone. He looked up at Philippa. She’d had the presence of mind to stop moving when she had heard his bowstring twang. She looked down at the man who had not been standing where he was when she had last glanced down.

“Get me out of this tree,” she snarled at him.

“You got up there, get yourself down,” Trae replied far more steadily than he felt. He turned and walked over to the female and slit her throat. He went back to the male and did his as well so they could bleed out. He then went to the lankys and reassured them.

Ignoring the foul words floating down from the tree, he took Moe’s reins and he walked her away to where he had left Deirdre. Deirdre was sitting up when he approached. She had scampered backwards away from the dead cuttail but she hadn’t moved far.

“Are you hurt?” Trae asked her as he approached. She jumped at his voice and stared at him with fear. Trae suspected she was still in shock and moved towards her slowly. He knelt down beside her and her eyes finally focused on his. “Are you hurt?” he asked her again more softly.

Deirdre blinked several times at him and seemed to collect herself. “No, I don’t think so. Oh my, is that how big Sampson will grow?” she asked looking at the big cat in fear and fascination.

“No, he will get much bigger. Kitty will easily obtain this size and since she is well fed she too could grow larger,” he told her as he gently helped her to her feet.

“Doesn’t that frighten you?” she asked him as she held his arm and tried to get her shaking legs to obey her.

“No, they will never deliberately hunt people. They will, however, protect those of us they consider their family. Here, let me help you up onto Moe,” he finished. He grabbed her around the waist and she found she needed to lift her knee higher to get it over the saddle.

“Hold on to the saddle, we have to go get Philippa out of the tree,” he informed her, as he started walking Moe back the way he had come.