The Forestwalker

by Sarah Wheeler

Table of Contents

Chapter 15

The next morning, well before dawn, Gareth, Kastor, and Shanna got up, ate breakfast, said their goodbyes to the Maplerunners, then slipped unnoticed out of the village and headed west. They had spent several days packing and gathering supplies for their trip, so everyone knew they were planning on leaving, which was why they chose the early departure time, despite the inconvenience it caused the Maplerunners. The last thing they wanted was to make a scene. Saying goodbye was hard enough as it was. They all did their best to be stoic about it, except for Shanna and Missus Maplerunner, both of whom wept openly, but Gareth had to fight back the lump in his throat that swelled when Tara gave him a brief hug and another kiss on the cheek, though the glare she gave her brother when he snickered at her expression of affection for Gareth almost made Gareth break up laughing. It wasn't much easier to say goodbye to Gavin and their mother, though. Missus Maplerunner had been so kind to all three of her visitors, never once treating Kastor or Shanna like outsiders and being a mother to all of them – something they had all been sorely missing – and Gavin and Gareth had become good friends despite their rocky beginnings. Gareth was sad to leave all of them, but it only increased his resolve to find some way to come back here some day.

Once they were out of the village and heading into the forest, though, the depressing cloud their farewells had left hanging over them lifted, and Kastor and Shanna spent a laughter-filled hour showing Gareth everything they had learned from Gavin and Tara, especially their new climbing skills. Gareth was understandably impressed; within a few weeks, they had completely lost all their inhibitions about living in and traveling through the trees and were almost as good at climbing and walking on the branches as any forest-dweller. They had learned their lessons well, and it relaxed Gareth considerably to recognize that they were now fully capable of taking care of themselves out here in the forest if anything were to happen to him. Not that he expected anything to happen to him now; for the first time since they had begun this journey, he was confident that they were traveling in complete safety. He laughed along with them and raced them through the trees without a care in the world for several hours, showing them that he had recovered completely and was as skilled as they were at traveling through the forest, before they finally decided that they'd had their fun and should save their strength. They slowed to a reasonable walking pace and began to study and admire the trees they were traveling through, talking companionably about what they could expect from this leg of their journey as they walked. Gareth was completely at home here in the forest, so he was only keeping a cursory eye out for the few troublesome creatures that populated the canopy – such as the spider monkeys that he had dealt with as a child – but after another hour or so, he noticed something that gave him pause.

“Don't look too alarmed,” he whispered to Kastor as he moved up to walk next to him, “but I think we're being followed.”

It was a credit to everything Kastor had been through in the last few months that his only expression of surprise or concern was a slight widening of his eyes. “What do you think it is?” he asked, barely moving his lips.

“Dunno. I'm sure it's nothing dangerous, though. Let's stop for lunch, and I'll investigate if it's still following us after we move out again.”

But they didn't have to wait that long. They had barely sat down and pulled out sandwiches and fruit for lunch when Gavin and Tara dropped out of the tree right into their midst. “Hey, guys, what's up?” Gavin said with a grin by way of greeting.

“What are you two doing here?” Gareth asked, catching Kastor before he could fall out of the tree in surprise.

“We decided to come with you,” Tara said as she sat down and pulled Shanna, who had run to her and grabbed her in a hug and seemed disinclined to let her go, into her lap. “Mum wasn't too happy about it, but we convinced her in the end that it was our best chance of finding Da and Jessie. Aunt Lizzie will be staying with her so she won't be alone, but we figured this would be our only opportunity to make it out of the forest without getting captured ourselves.”

“Not to mention, we want to spread word of our plans for a border patrol to other villages, and you're the best excuse we've had all year for traveling this far from home,” Gavin said as he helped himself to a sandwich.

“But... we weren't planning on going to any other villages,” Gareth said nervously. “We don't want to waste any more time.” As overjoyed as he was to see his new friends again, he didn't want them disrupting his plans for getting his young master and mistress home, or risking putting him in contact with any forest-dwellers who might know or recognize him... like his parents.

Tara, fortunately, seemed to read his mind and was quick to reassure him. “Oh, you don't have to worry about that. Gavin and I will take turns heading into the villages when we get near them, talking to the people there, then catching up to you. No one but us will ever know you three are out here, I promise. And I also promise that we won't slow you down. One of us will always be able to move faster than the three of you.”

“Alright,” Gareth said as he finished his lunch. “It will be nice to have the company.” And it was. Gavin and Tara knew a lot more about the forest than Gareth did, he reluctantly conceded, and they made each day's traveling a lot easier. Gareth found it a little frustrating to be pushed out of his role as leader, but it was a bit of a relief to realize that the Maplerunners' presence meant Kastor continued to treat him like an equal and didn't force him back into his role as a slave the way Gareth had expected him to, and any inconvenience was worth it simply for the chance to see Tara again. He hadn't exaggerated when he'd told her that saying goodbye to her would be one of the hardest things he'd ever done; it had been. A part of him really hadn't expected to see her again, and now that she was back he found himself wanting to spend as much time with her as possible, Gavin's snickers, Shanna's giggles, and Kastor's odd looks be damned.

He was so desperate to spend time with her that he really didn't want her to leave to go to the nearby villages, but it turned out that letting Gavin go was not the best idea either, because he came back from the first village he visited with a friend.

“Hey guys, this is Devon Lightsong,” Gavin said, introducing the older boy he had brought with him. “His little sister got taken by slavers a year and a half ago, along with her best friend. He wants to come with us and help us convince others to help. Is that alright?”

For some reason, Gareth instinctively felt that this was a very bad idea. Unfortunately, he had no good reason to refuse Gavin's request except a weak, “We're in a bit of a hurry, Gavin, remember?”

“Oh, don't worry about it, Gareth,” Gavin brushed him off in his usual unconcerned tone of voice. “I told Devon about your situation and he's promised not to slow us up. He's here to help me and Tara, after all, not you. He'll hardly be here most of the time anyway.”

It seemed reasonable enough, despite Gareth's gnawing uncertainty, so he had no choice but to agree. It was true that Devon could fend for himself, he didn't slow them down, and he spent a lot of time traveling to and from villages so he didn't even get to know his traveling companions very well. He wasn't a burden – he could barely be considered a part of their group – but Gareth still didn't like him. Devon was sullen and secretive; he didn't warm to anyone, not even Shanna; and when he wasn't off on trips to nearby villages he would disappear for long, unexplained periods of time. But the thing that really made Gareth uneasy, the thing he had felt from the first moment he'd met Devon but wasn't able to put a finger on until later, was the way that Devon looked at him.

Devon's eyes held neither pity nor curiosity for Gareth's situation, which was odd in its uniqueness among all the people Gareth had meant since entering the forest and disturbing in the fact that he was not the least bit sympathetic towards someone who was, in effect, in the exact same position that his little sister was in right now. In fact, his expression whenever he looked at Gareth was... coldly calculating for some reason, and Gareth could feel the older boy's eyes boring into the back of his head whenever he found himself walking in front of Devon, though every time he looked around he always found Devon talking to Gavin or studying the trees around him or doing anything and everything but looking at Gareth. All together, these feelings unnerved Gareth whenever Devon was around, but no one else seemed to notice, and he was quite friendly to Tara and Gavin, both of whom seemed to trust him completely, so Gareth convinced himself that he was simply taking Devon's odd manner too seriously. It didn't help him relax around the older boy, though.

As a result, Gareth was glad that Devon wasn't around much, and that he had Tara's company to distract him. Unfortunately, Devon wasn't always gone, and Tara wasn't always around, and one day, about two weeks into their travels together, Devon came back from one of his mysterious disappearances in a very bad mood while Tara was away visiting the nearest village. Tara wasn't just good for Gareth's sanity, she was good for everyone's. Her friendly personality and tendency to chatter constantly kept everyone's spirits up, and everyone noticed when she wasn't there. A dark cloud hung over the little group as they plodded along through the trees, and no one seemed to know what to do to pass the time.

After a few hours, Devon started needling Kastor about being a foreigner, and Gavin refused to call him on it. Gareth tried, but Devon just ignored him, and though Kastor did his best to ignore what Devon was saying to him, Gareth could tell from the bright red color of his ears and the stiffness of his spine that his young master was just barely containing his anger. Gareth had not seen him this angry in a long time, and for the first time in weeks Gareth was actually afraid that Kastor would take that anger out on him. When they stopped for the night and Kastor asked to speak to him alone, Gareth almost refused... but he still remembered his duty.

Kastor was furious, but he controlled himself, reminding Gareth once again exactly how much his young master had changed. “Do we have to stay with these jerks?” he asked once they were out of earshot of the others. “We don't need them. You can get us the rest of the way just fine; we have plenty of food and water, we know how to survive out here, and this forest is safer than anywhere else we've been. I'm sick of all this abuse. Let's ditch these guys and get home on our own.”

“I know Devon's been giving you a hard time, sir, and I've been doing my best to get him to stop, but we promised Tara and Gavin that they could come west with us. The only way we'll get out of the forest safely is in numbers.”

“You mean you promised,” Kastor said accusingly, “and I seem to recall that you weren't very happy about Devon joining us either. He treats you worst of all; I don't know why you put up with it. If he wasn't here, I would never ask you to ditch the others, but... there's something about that guy that I don't like, above and beyond the way he treats you. I really don't like the way he looks at you. It's like he's planning something.”

“So it's not just me?” Gareth asked, instantly relieved. “I thought I was just being paranoid. That's why I put up with it, sir; I was sure it was all in my head. But I don't just want to leave without telling Tara, sir. She should be back tomorrow night; can't we wait until then to go our separate ways?”

“Why wait?” Kastor asked.

“Well...” Gareth felt his face turning red. “I... I don't trust Gavin to tell her the truth about why we left,” he said quickly.

“You mean you like her and you want to say goodbye in person, don't you?” Kastor said with a knowing grin.

“And what if I do?” Gareth said defensively. “Chances are good that I'll never see her again once we finally go our separate ways. I owe it to her to say goodbye in person, at least.” His face was on fire again and he couldn't look at Kastor.

But his embarrassment shut Kastor up completely, and he looked a little ashamed of himself. “Sorry, Gareth. We'll stay until she returns. But once she does, we are striking out on our own. I'm not going to change my mind about this, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And we're making our own camp tonight, away from them. It's the only way I'll last another day around Devon.”

“Yes, sir,” Gareth agreed. “Take Shanna and find a good spot. I'll go explain things to Gavin, then I'll join you.”

As expected, Gavin wasn't at all happy with Gareth and Kastor's decision. He argued that they had promised to stay together, that they were outsiders who wouldn't make it without help, that it was Kastor, not Devon, who was being a jerk, and he finally stormed off saying that Gareth would change his mind once Tara was back. “Let's see what your 'promises' mean when you have to say goodbye to her forever!” he shouted over his shoulder as he stormed off.

All this tension left both Gareth and Kastor in very bad moods, and Kastor decided to ease his own frustrations by sitting back and ordering Gareth around, which only served to put Gareth in an even worse mood. By the time they all settled down to sleep that night, with Shanna curled up comfortably on the branch between them, silence and resentment hung around all three of them like a dark cloud, and the thought of having to say goodbye to Tara again tomorrow depressed Gareth so much that he had a hard time getting to sleep.

A few hours later, just after he had finally managed to fall soundly asleep, a hand on his shoulder shook Gareth awake. “Wha? Who's there?” he asked blearily.

It was Devon. “Your friend's gone,” he whispered urgently as Gareth sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I don't know why, but I know you and he were arguing earlier this evening, so I thought you might want to come with me to get him back.”

Hearing this woke Gareth up completely. He glanced around and saw that Kastor's blankets were empty. He was on his feet in a second. This was all his fault. He had argued with his master, had defied his wishes, and in doing so had driven Kastor away. “I can't leave Shanna,” he said, even as he was reaching for his jacket.

“I'll swing back and alert Gavin. He'll look after her until we get back.” Devon pointed west into the forest. “He went that way. I'll catch up with you in a minute.”

Without a second thought, Gareth turned and ran off through the trees in the direction Devon had indicated. Kastor was steady on his feet in the trees during the day, but at night, in the dark, when he was angry... If he hurt himself or, heaven forbid, fell out of the trees...

Devon caught up with him a few minutes later. “I think he went this way,” he said as he took point. “I saw something moving south as I was cutting across to catch up with you. If we hurry, we'll catch him before he gets too far.”

“Thanks for telling me, Devon, and for helping me find him,” Gareth said, stifling a yawn as he squinted into the darkness.

“No problem,” Devon said, sounding almost friendly for the first time. “I feel partly responsible. I'm sorry for giving him a hard time; it's been a rough couple of weeks for me. Gavin told me you guys were arguing because of me. We've all been on edge lately, you know how it is. When we catch up to him, I'll apologize and hopefully we can sort all of this out without splitting up.”

“Thanks, Devon,” Gareth said. Maybe he had underestimated Devon. When it really mattered, Devon could be helpful and understanding. If all this could be resolved without them having to go their separate ways, he was going to have to reevaluate his opinion of the older boy. Maybe Devon just didn't know how to talk to or act around strangers. Gareth would have to work harder at getting to know him. Maybe he could break the ice by finding out about Devon's sister; he was already going to be looking for two slaves in the hope of returning them to their home in the forest, how hard could it be to find two more?

They headed south, then west, then south again for almost an hour, but Kastor was always just ahead of them. He was remarkably persistent and unusually capable at navigating through the forest in the dark, Gareth pondered, though he supposed it was possible that Kastor was just lost. He wanted to call out to his young master, but Devon thought that would be a bad idea. “You don't want to risk startling him. In the dark, he could really hurt himself if an unexpected noise distracted him and caused him to lose his balance or his footing. But he's slowing down. We should catch up to him soon.”

That had been ten minutes or more ago, and Gareth was beginning to get tired of this chase. Just as he was about to ask Devon again if Kastor was close enough to call to, Devon came to an abrupt halt and held up a warning hand. “Hold up. I think he's gone to ground.”

“What? Why would he do that?” Gareth craned his neck and glanced around at the forest in front of Devon, but he couldn't see any sign of movement. Kastor had leaned his lessons a little too well, it seemed.

“He might have finally realized he was being followed,” Devon said softly, “or he decided it was to dangerous to continue traveling up here and decided to hide out somewhere we wouldn't think to look until morning. I'm not going to try and understand his reasoning, but he's at least given us a chance to catch up to him now. You should go down first and try to find him and talk to him. If he sees me, he'll probably try to run off again, but I'll be in earshot if you need me.”

“Alright,” Gareth said. “Where did he go down?” Devon pointed to a tree a short distance away, then stepped behind Gareth and disappeared into the darkness. Gareth headed cautiously to the other tree, keeping his eyes peeled for signs of movement from the forest below, and climbed slowly down it to the forest floor five hundred feet below. The darkness was even more impenetrable on the ground. Gareth stepped cautiously, straining his eyes, but he couldn't see a thing. “Master Kastor? Where are you?” he called out, unconcerned about startling Kastor now. “It's Gareth. Please, can't we talk about this?”

He walked blindly through the undergrowth, repeating those sentences every few minutes, but there was no answering call, or any indication that another living soul had even heard him. Finally, Gareth stopped moving and calling out. Kastor obviously didn't want to be found, so he was going to have to stop expecting Kastor to just pop out of the bushes and start thinking like a hunter. He stood motionless in the middle of a clearing, closed his eyes – they were useless right now anyway, - and began to search with his ears instead, listening for the telltale sounds of someone moving through the underbrush. He stood there motionless for almost five minutes before he finally heard a distinctive rustling in the bushes behind him and spun around. “Kastor?”

*Thunk*

Something hit Gareth in the back of the neck, pricking him like a needle. He reached up one hand to find out what had stung him, but his arm refused to move. Before he had a chance to be surprised by this, though, his knees buckled and he fell to the ground, all his strength leaving him. He tried to turn over as he heard footsteps coming towards him, but the paralysis was spreading through his body. He couldn't even call out to Devon to get help. As he lay there, face-down in the dirt, he began to panic. He couldn't even breath; dirt was beginning to fill his nose and mouth. Just as his fear reached fever-pitch, a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders and turned him over. He gasped for breath as the dirt was wiped off his face, and looked up to see Devon. Relief flooded him... for about two seconds.

Because Devon was standing over him with a disgusted look on his face, and he was holding the shackle chains from Gareth's pack in his hands. “God, you're gullible, kid,” he said as he knelt on Gareth's chest to lock the chains to the shackles on his wrists and ankles and the collar around his neck. “I'd say you don't deserve this, but you're already a slave, and a pretty brainwashed one at that if you don't even have the guts to run away after being given a million chances, so it's not like you're losing much.”

He had been drugged; he struggled against the paralysis with every fiber of his being, trying to move or speak, but nothing responded to his desire to fight back no matter how hard he tried. Finally, he stopped trying and simply looked up at the young man he had almost been stupid enough to call 'friend,' his eyes asking the question he couldn't voice.

“Why?” Devon said as he looked at Gareth. “I've got no choice, kid. They've got my sister. Do you have any idea how lucky I was to even find her, after all this time? But she's not as lucky as you; she can't escape and come home to her family. I have to buy her freedom, and since you don't seem to give a damn about yours... It's just business, kid, that's all.”

Just then, three men appeared out of the forest and surrounded them. Three nomad slavers. Had they really traveled that far south? Why had Kastor been traveling south? Suddenly, a horrible thought struck Gareth. Was Kastor even out here? Had he ever been?

“Der's jes' one,” one of the slavers growled. “Where de otha two ya promise us?”

“I'll bring them to the next meeting point in two days,” Devon said as he stood up to face the speaker. “I couldn't get all three at once. Now, where's my sister?”

“Not til we get wot ya promise. De two girls fer de two southers an' der slave. Dis one is de mos' worthless of de tree. Ya get ya sister when we get all tree ya promise.” As he said this, the other two slavers were wrapping Gareth in a heavy net, but Gareth ignored them as he continued to glare daggers up at the young man he had been stupid enough to trust. “Where da key to da chains?”

“With his master,” Devon said weakly. “I didn't realize until we were already out here. You'll get it in two days when I bring the others.” He wouldn't look at Gareth now and his confidence was obviously waning as he realized exactly what he had just done. “I'd better get back before they miss me,” he said uncomfortably. “Two days. Don't forget our bargain.” Then, he was up the nearest tree and gone.

Rage such as he had never felt before burned inside Gareth as Devon disappeared back into the forest canopy. He tried with all his might to struggle or call out, but whatever Devon had hit him with still had him completely paralyzed. He was completely helpless as one of the slavers hoisted the net he was wrapped in over his shoulder and followed his companions south through the forest. It took them only ten minutes to reach the border, but they didn't stop there. The entire group continued south into the grassland for at least an hour before finally stopping to make camp. Gareth was still completely paralyzed, so they simply staked his net down before rolling blankets out on the ground for themselves and going to sleep. Gareth was too furious to want to sleep, and he was determined to wait out the paralysis and find some way to escape before the slavers woke up in the morning, but, despite the paralysis, his body was exhausted from running through the forest and from fighting against the effect of the drug, and he found himself losing consciousness in spite of himself.

When Gareth opened his eyes with the sun the next morning, he found that he could move again and that he had been released from the net, but someone had forced a dirty rag into his mouth and tied it there with a leather thong. Gareth sat up slowly and reached up to remove the gag, but was stopped when a switch came down and struck him across his left arm. It stung even through two layers of cloth, and he looked up to find that the chain leash attached to his collar was in the hand of one of the slavers.

“On ya feet, slave,” the man growled, brandishing the switch in his other hand. As Gareth looked up at him, all the rage he had felt at what had happened to him the night before came back in force. He glared up at the man in silent defiance, not caring what the man was going to do to him for his insubordination. “Get up!” the man shouted as he slapped Gareth hard across the face. Gareth continued to glare at the man, looking directly into his eyes, and deliberately shook his head. The man hit him on the side of the head with his closed fist so hard that he saw stars, and before he could recover the slaver grabbed him by his collar and pulled him to his feet. Gareth struggled for breath as the collar choked him; once he was on his feet, he doubled over, fighting for breath through the gag in his mouth, and received five blows with the switch across his shoulders. “Ya don' listen, ya don' obey, ya get hurt,” the man beating him said as he forced Gareth to stand upright and slapped him across the face again. “Ya slave, do as ya tol'.”

Breathless, dazed, and in pain, Gareth nodded, deciding to do as he was told... for now. As he looked at his feet and waited for orders, he realized he would have to be smart about trying to escape. It wasn't going to be easy, and he didn't have a lot of time – two days, if what he remembered from Devon's conversation with the slavers was accurate – but he couldn't afford to be reckless. If he didn't find a way to return to the forest within two days and warn the others of Devon's plans, Kastor and Shanna would be handed over to slavers... again. He couldn't let that happen. These slavers obviously weren't working alone, either. They didn't have Devon's sister, so someone else nearby must, and the only thing that could possibly be nearby out here in this wasteland was a slave caravan.

A few minutes later, Gareth found himself stumbling after the slavers as they headed south across the grassland. He had gotten used to walking without a hobble on his ankles and was having trouble readjusting, but the slavers barely seemed to notice his difficulty. They marched along at a brisk pace on legs that were longer than Gareth's, talking and laughing together in their own language while Gareth struggled to keep up with them. He had to concentrate hard on not falling, but he still wracked his brain for a plan as he walked. It wouldn't be enough just to escape; he had to get Devon's sister and her friend away from whoever was holding them as slaves too. Devon wasn't going to give up on getting his sister back just because Gareth returned and confronted him about what he had tried to do, and no matter how much Gareth hated Devon at the moment, he wasn't about to leave Devon's sister as a slave if he could do anything to help her.

But wasn't his first duty to escape and stop anything from happening to his young master and mistress? He couldn't risk anything happening them just to have the chance to rescue some girl he'd never met. He should be trying to escape as soon as possible; he couldn't afford to get any further away from the forest than he already was. Devon had been planning this for a long time; it explained his frequent absences, his aloof behavior, the way he had always studied Gareth, and his antagonizing of Kastor that had forced the discord that had made it easy for Gareth to believe that Kastor had run off in the middle of the night. Gareth felt like even more of an idiot now for trusting the older boy, for trusting a stranger instead of his master, for ever believing that Kastor would leave him and Shanna behind over such a trivial argument. Unfortunately, his legitimate disappearance would now give Devon the perfect reason to lead Kastor and Shanna right into the slavers' hands. But what would Devon do if his plans were foiled? Would he try to turn someone else over to the slavers? But the closest targets besides Kastor and Shanna were... Gareth stopped dead in his tracks and was pulled to his knees by the leash around his neck as his captors kept walking. He struggled to his feet, but it was too late. Two of the men threw him back to the ground and held him down while the third whaled on him with the switch. Gareth took himself away from the pain easily; his mind was preoccupied by the thought that had caused him to be punished.

Because the two closest targets for Devon's plan after Kastor and Shanna were Gavin and Tara. And if Gareth was able to get away but didn't bring Devon's sister and her friend back with him, what was to stop Devon from contacting the slavers again and doing anything he could to complete his transaction? And this was all his fault for being stupid and gullible enough to believe someone while in a half-asleep stupor that he would have never listened to had he been fully conscious. Now he had no choice except to let the slavers take him wherever they were going, find a way to escape from there with Devon's sister and her friend, and stop Devon from turning Kastor and Shanna over to the slavers. He had two days to keep his little mistake from breaking all the promises he had made to his friends and ruining all his hopes for the future completely.

And Gareth was forced to admit that the first step towards finding a way out of this mess was to convince the slavers to let their guard down, and that started with him acting like the broken, docile slave that he had once been. When his captors stopped again several hours later for a short rest and a meal and removed his gag to give him a drink of water, he showed them proper deference and was able to convince them that he would behave himself. They left him ungagged after that and slowed their walking speed so that he could keep up, but they hit him with their switches every once in a while to get him to walk faster or if they caught him looking anywhere except at his feet or sometimes just to remind him of his place. Though most of the blows caught him across the back and arms and were blunted by the thick fabric of his jacket, several caught him across the legs, slicing open his pants and leaving long, red welts, and one badly-timed strike caught him across one side of his face, leaving a bloody gash across his right cheek.

Though Gareth stayed stoically mute throughout the whole ordeal, he was in a great deal of pain as well as weak and dizzy from hunger and exhaustion by the time they reached the slave caravan late in the afternoon. All three of his captors went over to a tall bronze-skinned man who was overseeing the setup of the slavers' camp, and it was a relief to Gareth to be allowed to sink to his knees upon being presented to this man, who was obviously the leader of the caravan and was, surprisingly, an Esharan.

“Put him on one of the wagons until we can remove those chains,” the leader told his three subordinates after looking Gareth over with the eye of a practiced merchant. Gareth squirmed inside as the man's eyes swept over him, but he didn't let his discomfort at being treated like a piece of property show. “He looks like he'll fetch a good price in Pan'sho'Ke, if he's as well-trained as you were told he was. And you say three others will walk into our hands in two days' time?”

“Yessa,” one of Gareth's captors said. “Two southers an a savage dat tinks he given dem ta us fer his sissa!” They all laughed at this, and Gareth's heart sank. He couldn't bring himself to be surprised by the slavers' planned treachery; it simply strengthened his resolve to escape from here as soon as possible. But if they were planning to take Devon captive, did these nomads even have his sister? No, Devon had said he had found her. He never would have risked what he had without proof that she was really here. As Gareth was dragged to his feet and led away to the wagons, he tried to surreptitiously scan the huddled groups of slaves sitting or standing around the large camp. He thought he saw a young, dark-haired girl in one of the slave lines a short distance away, but he didn't get a chance to confirm it before he was picked up and thrown unceremoniously into the back of the nearest wagon.

Gareth kept his eyes on the floor of the wagon bed as he sat and was further restrained by his captors. They did not seem to think that the shackles he was wearing were security enough against attempted escape. They tied his wrists and ankles tightly together with leather thongs, then tied a long piece of rope to the ring in the front of his collar next to the chain and pulled it out of his line of sight, presumably to be tied to the rope or collar around the neck of the captive seated just behind him. Gareth had glimpsed three or four blurry figures already in this wagon before he was lifted into it, but he didn't dare turn around or show any interest in them while the slavers were around. One of his three captors checked his bonds once they were done securing them, then held up a canteen and allowed Gareth another brief, refreshing drink of water before turning and heading back to the slavers' camp. Gareth watched them with a sinking feeling in his stomach as they loaded up on supplies and headed immediately out into the grassland back towards the forest. They were going to have a good head start on him; the earliest he would be able to get away from here would be in the middle of the night.

There was no time to waste. Keeping one eye on the slavers who patrolled around the seven wagons and fourteen lines of shackled slaves spread out across the plain in front of him, Gareth searched desperately for any captive even remotely resembling a young female forest-dweller. He realized very quickly that he didn't know anything about Devon's sister or her friend: he had no idea how old they were, or what they looked like, or what their names were, which would make his task that much harder. At least he could make a few inferences. They were most likely close to one another in age, and Devon had said she was his younger sister and he had been about fifteen or sixteen by Gareth's best guess, so both girls were probably somewhere between ten – old enough to go out into the forest on their own plus the year and a half they had been missing – and fourteen – young enough to be Devon's younger sister. They would also have dark brown or black hair, and the olive-colored skin unique to forest-dwellers. But the slave lines did not seem to be organized by age or sex, all dark hair looked the same from a distance, and all the slaves were so covered in dust and dirt that one skin tone was indistinguishable from another. This was going to be impossible, but he wasn't about to give up so easily.

He was so preoccupied with his search of the hundred or so slaves spread out before him that he had forgotten he wasn't alone in the wagon. A hand reaching out to touch him on the shoulder almost caused him to jump out of his skin.

“Gareth? Is that you?”