The Knave of Souls - Fantasy - Sequel to The Jack of Souls

Chapter 34

"End this, please end this," was all it could croak,

So end it he did, with a merciful stroke,

Sad for the thing that once was a man

And bound to avenge it with Belle in his hand.

—Verse from the ballad "Sir Willard & the Halls of Sir Bannus"

.

.

YOAB MAZE

It soon became clear why Mudruffle named that part of the valley the Yoab Maze. Though the highway was generally wider and deeper and more clearly established by generations of yoab, all around it they now found a network of junctions and off-shoots that were sometimes hard to distinguish from the highway itself. Even with Mudruffle's map and help, they had to backtrack several times when they discovered the run they thought was the highway ended abruptly or curved south.

"It's like the maze in Sir Willard and the Labyrinth," Harric whispered to Spook. The moon cat looked up from inside his basket with sleepy green eyes. "Only instead of Blood Trophies we have land whales."

Once in the maze, they saw that the forest around them had been checkered with feeding sites for as far as they could see—fields of raw earth plowed up here and there between the ancient trees.

"These sites are fresh," Willard said, as they paused on a rise that gave them a view of several newly plowed plots. "The yoab are definitely back from the hills. With luck, we won't meet one old enough to have nesting swallows on its back, so we can pass through without trouble. But this means the horses will be nervous as we pass through, and it means we must travel in strict silence today, to minimize contact." His eyes flicked to Mudruffle, and a shadow of a frown passed behind his eyes.

As if anticipating this, Mudruffle held a rag to his little slot of a mouth. "Since my vocal apparatus is too simplistic for a whisper, I will endeavor to remain silent." His voice came through the rag as a muffled murmur. "However, in the event of an emergency, I will muffle my voice like this," he removed the rag and displayed it in case anyone had missed it

Harric gave him a thumb-up sign, and the golem folded the rag neatly in his basket.

Willard rode ahead on scouting forays and returned with reports that he'd been able to scare several younger yoab away from the highway. Another time he spotted one asleep in the midst of one of these newly plowed fields beside the highway, and doubled back to ensure the group's silence as they passed. What they passed looked exactly like a ferny hillock, with the difference that unlike a hillock it snored like a giant's bellows, so loud that Harric doubted even Mudruffle could match its volume.

It was during one of Willard's absences that Harric noticed bright red blood on the highway. Blood had filled one of Molly's hoof prints. All around the bloody hoof print it looked like Molly had been running in tight circles. Then her prints tore off up the road, and the blood followed in her wake, splashing the earth beside huge clawed prints. A yoab's prints. It looked like a yoab—and an injured yoab, too—had chased Molly and Willard up the run.

Unless the red blood was Willard's. Harric chewed his upper lip. No. The knight's cheeks were blue, which meant the blood in his veins must be blue.

Harric followed the blood trail a quarter mile up the highway, and watched as it slowly dwindled until it terminated in the carcass of a yoab no bigger than a carriage.

The horses refused to approach with riders, so they dismounted and led them past on foot. As Harric led Snapper and Idgit past the carcass, Kogan led Geraldine past and pointed to a wound behind the yoab's foreleg. "Lance," Kogan whispered. "And this much blood was a heart wound." The priest shook his head in admiration and gave the stinking flesh a rub. "It ran a mile with its heart split. Noble beast."