Carol Emshwiller by The Mount (epub)

Author:The Mount (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

My father isn’t back yet. Jane doesn’t know what to do with twenty-one guards’ mounts. Are they in charge with Heron gone? And where will they be safest? She doesn’t think they should stay here. All she knows is to take them back to the village and wait for Heron. If anybody comes after them, she can hide them up at the mountain ruins. She tells me maybe it’s me they’ll follow, not her. Since Heron isn’t here, it’s maybe only me.

“But they don’t like me with Little Master on me.” (They’d like me even less if they knew he was The-Future-Ruler-Of-Us-All.) “They don’t like me anyway.”

“You’re Heron’s son. You have obligations. Just like he has.”

Not again. I had enough obligations when I was the mount of Little Master About-To-Be-The-Ruler. And I’m still the only one responsible for him because if any of us ever find out who he is, they’ll kill him in a minute.

“Well, if my father’s got all these obligations, where is he? Why isn’t he here doing his obligations like he should be doing?”

That stops her.

“But they won’t like a Sue, let alone a Tennessee, leading them.”

(I know exactly how they feel.)

“Maybe if we both do it. I mean we’re the only ones who know the way.”

The mounts hardly know how to walk, except in rows. Up here the ground is so rough there’s only a few places where they can do that. They’re going to have to change. Well, I had to change in lots of ways, and I didn’t want to, so I guess they can.

We dip down into a high valley and then start up again, towards the last pass before the village. It’s even higher than the one where the halfway hut is—used to be. We’re up beyond trees, even the ones that are blown sideways into funny shapes. We’re up where the lupine is dwarfed and flattened. Everything is.

Mostly we’re walking through piles of rocks. That’s all there is to this mountain, but they’ve made a pretty good path here. The guards’ mounts have to go one-by-one. Their metal heels clang, but not, anymore, in any rhythm. They’re too busy watching their footing to keep track.

Jane goes first. She knows the way the best. And I come right behind her.

But what happens is what always happens up here in the mountains. (Another good reason why they shouldn’t have the village way up here.) Nobody’s been noticing the clouds. Or I haven’t. A hail storm. We run. Any direction. Everybody. Every direction.

I pull Little Master off my shoulders and curl myself over him to protect him as I run. Little Master has his big hands spread over his head. I run, but there’s no place to go. Except I have to go someplace fast. It’s Jane pushes us down, squeezes us partly under a slightly overhanging rock and curls herself around us. These mountain hail stones aren’t just any old hail stones. She’s going to get herself bruised.

No wonder those plants hug the rocks and stay small.

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