Page 92 of Seducing the Sorcerer
But they only went like a shooting star for about five minutes. Squab began to veer left. Fenn shortened his right rein, gave it a bit of leg. But a moment later Squab was doing it again. And again. And again.
It simply did not want to go north-west.
He let it have its head. It swung round, almost to the opposite direction. South-west. Back towards Paravenna. Fenn thought he could guess why.
“He ain’t there, mate,” he told it.
He made it circle, forced it north-west again. It shook its head and whinnied, loud and mournful in the morning air. “Like a horse what’s lost a friend” indeed.
Then it tried to jib left again.
“Ach, you blame thing! Get on.”
It was almost as if Squab didn’t want to go the way Aramella had told him. It was almost as if it knew something they didn’t.
But what if he gave the horse its head and found himself, in a couple of hours, back in Morgrim’s stables, with the master of the tower still missing and Aramella asking how Fenn had fared. Fenn imagined himself saying, “the horse didn’t want to go north, so I let it come back here. Thought I could trust it.”
Out of the question.
But if they carried on like this, they’d be too late anyway. Because maybe, just maybe, Fenn could tackle one soldier and a sixteen-year-old boy on a boat in the open sea, even if they were trying to kill him. But if they got Morgrim to a city, well, then he was really fucked. Because a flying horse is no use if a man is locked in a dungeon. And there’d be more soldiers, with more guns. There’d be Lutian sorcerers, likely with an army of river hexes.
Fenn’s shoulders were tense, his hands getting harder and harder as his anger and desperation mounted. The horse was jibbing in the air like a cork in a millrace. This was no way to be getting on. Squab was a horse, but not an ordinary one. At some point, Fenn had to trust the magic.
It was so difficult he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. Then he let the reins slip through his fingers.
Squab spun in the air and hurtled south-west, faster than a velocipede, faster than the fastest carriage with the most expensive crystal. Fenn bent low, keeping himself perfectly balanced, trying to hamper its movement as little as possible.
Eventually, they passed over the coast and shot straight out to sea. Fenn’s heart leapt, though he could see no boat. Because at least the horse hadn’t just been trying to get back to its stable. It hadn’t assumed Morgrim was in the tower. It knew something he didn’t. He patted its neck.
“That’s my clever horse. You find him. Find him quick.”
Squab began to gain height. Fenn leaned forwards, shifting his weight to help it climb. The sea grew featureless beneath them, the great ocean swells nothing but wrinkles in a piece of blue cloth. Then they were coming down again, Fenn’s ears popping and cracking, and the sea was no longer empty but sprinkled with small islands. Squab descended almost to sea level, scudding up to an island of rock and seagrass and scrub. They skimmed across it, so low Fenn could have reached down and picked a handful of wind-bitten leaves.
They landed neatly in a clearing surrounded by tough, wind-knotted pines, myrtles and thornbushes. The horse shook itself and Fenn dismounted and automatically ran up the stirrups. Squab moved off, wending its way through the trees more like a snake than a horse. Fenn followed, as silent as he knew how, at one point pausing to double the reins over Squab’s head so it couldn’t get tangled. The sun beat down. The sea breeze didn’t penetrate the thicket. It was stuffy and impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction. He was sweating, his heart pounding.
Squab stopped. Fenn crept forwards and lay at its feet. They’d reached the north side of the island. Before him was a short drop, the water shadowed by a small natural harbour with trees growing low across its mouth. But the harbour floor looked strange. There were white lines under the water that surely weren’t natural. Fenn peered closer and suddenly saw that a small boat lay submerged under a few feet of clear water. The hull might be grey and the white trim fair glowed through the water. He could see no crystal and there was a dark blocky mass at the stern. Could be a rusty housing. This was it.
Had they holed their boat trying to get ashore? Fenn itched to rush down, but the boat was only a few yards from dry land so surely all on board could have floundered to shore. They were likely on the island.
Someone could be watching him now.
He drew back into the thicket as fast as he dared. What if the boat had been scuppered deliberately to hide it? That meant they were waiting for another bigger boat to pick them up. But why come here? Why not go to Hardara? Well, maybe because that was the obvious thing to do. Aramella had sent most of her boats north. She’d sent a few to search the western isles, but they’d never search them all, nor find one boat hidden beneath the sea.
Fenn forced himself to lie still. To watch. To listen.
Eventually he heard voices.
They were barely audible over the waves and the wind soughing in the pines but they were coming from a low headland on the other side of the harbour. It’d have a fine view north. So, perhaps Fenn’s theory about them waiting for a bigger boat was correct. Why hadn’t it come? Had something gone wrong? Had Aramella’s ships detained it? Or had it always been the kidnapper’s plan: to hide here on land while everyone looked for a small boat?
Anyway, they were there and he was almost certain they’d not have seen him. Squab had brought him from the south. So even if they were scanning the skies for a flying horse, they were looking in the wrong direction. But he ought to take action quick. In case a boat came with reinforcements.
Fenn sat up and took out one of Aramella’s pistols. It was about seven inches long, a good weight in the hand. The metal had a brownish tinge that somehow made it feel more lethal than the blue-grey hunting pieces he remembered from the estate.
The headland was only twenty yards away across the harbour. He could launch himself across it on Squab. But what if they saw him coming? The moment he lost the advantage of surprise, he was fucked. Because whoever was over there was certainly a better shot.
All right. He’d walk there, under cover, approach from behind. He’d shoot that soldier. Then he’d rush out, shooting anyone who wasn’t Morgrim. Mustn’t think of Jasper. Mustn’t think of anything like that now. But his heart was hammering, his stomach twisting and roiling as if he’d swallowed a live eel. His hands were shaking.
He couldn’t kill anyone.
