CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Jane couldn’t believe the treachery. Trinket had promised the halfy that they would take the Silver road, and that they wouldn’t go through the Frogswamp. She told Trinket, that no, she wouldn’t follow her into the swamp, but Trinket kept insisting. They argued back and forth until Jane raised her voice.
‘We promised the little man.’
‘I don’t care about that promise. I have only one goal, and that is to rescue Elion. I’m surprised you don’t care more.’
‘What an awful thing to say.’
Trinket suddenly got very serious, and a strain came into her voice. ‘The Silver road goes west for several hours to get around the Bearded canyon, and if we go that way we will not make it in time.’
‘No.’
Trinket made a noise of disgust and thumped her heel into the horse's left flank, and pulled down on the right rein. Her horse kicked out its front feet, surged to the right, stopped, reared, and whinnied. Trinket kicked her horse again, but it balked, not wanting to go into the Frogswamp. Trinket leaned forward and murmured something into the horse’s ear, and the horse dropped its shoulders and with grave, slow movements, it stepped down between the two large boulders onto the Bleached Bone trail.
Skittery and tense, Jane’s horse stepped left and right. Steamy breath drifted into the air. Jane swore under her breath. She thought of Tom and she thought of the Wyld Book of Secrets, and she felt helpless and confused. She realised that she was afraid.
The Silver road drove straight and wide off into the distance.
Jane held her reins in the air and kicked with her left shoe, showing her horse that she meant to continue along the Silver Road. A vibration of relief rose through her horse’s shoulders. The horse fell into an easy trot along the wide and safe Silver road.
A second later Jane pulled back hard on the reins. She swore again.
For a moment she and the horse were paused in the middle of the Silver road, waiting for something to happen.
‘Buggar this.’
Jane pulled the reins hard to the left, and the horse's head came around. Its left eye shone with betrayal.
Urging, urging, the horse cantered back along the Silver road and down between the two boulders onto the Bleached Bone trail. Scrubby, stunted trees, reached out with stubby branches that were devoid of leaves. Swamp algae hung in beards from dead branches
The air smelled of decay.
A moment later Jane caught up with Trinket
Trinket just nodded her head, as though she had been expecting Jane to change her mind. Jane had an urge to shout ‘shut up’, even though Trinket hadn’t said anything.
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The path became increasingly muddy. The horses’ hooves made sucking sounds. A creek appeared between the black trees. The creek was wide and divided by isthmus and islands and muddy bars. The horses slurped up over an island of glassy sand and came to the main width of the creek. Here the water was dark and covered by dark green algae.
Trinket reined in her horse, and Jane reined in beside. For a moment they stayed quiet and listened to the noises of the swamp: the plop of a frog, an owl somewhere in the trees, a crack of a branch. Trinket turned in her saddle. Her face was broken with hard green shadows.
‘Thank you.’
Jane wanted to tell her to go to hell, but she stayed silent.
’The path crosses the creek here, so ride close behind,’ said Trinket. ‘If you stray off the path you will fall into deep water.’
The river was black with a wavering line of moonlight. Bubbles formed then burst on the surface. The stench that rose from the bubbles was powerful and offensive.
Trinket’s horse put its head up and sniffed the air, then neighed nervously. Trinket placed her hand on the horse’s neck and clicked her tongue, and dug her heels into the flanks, urging her horse into the ford. Jane followed. Shallow water splashed around the horses’ legs.
Eventually the rocky ford gave way to mud. The swamp trees looked dead beneath old-man beards of algae. Arteries of roots ran across the mud. Lily pads moved away from the horses’ legs.
All sorts of strange clicks and rustles and splashes and bubblings and hisses came from amidst the scrub and vines. A larger plop might have been a surfacing alligator. Jane felt her nerves bundling and releasing. She pressed her lips together. The rotten smell gathered strength. A weird slug-like creature slipped over a tree root.
‘We are now in the Frogswamp,’ Trinket whispered.
The horses slopped forward past the twisting skeletal trees. A giant spider web shone in the moonlight. A narrow path ran through ferns and long grasses. The trail appeared moonlight white. The horses walked with mountain bred instinct. Their hooves thudded.
After several moments of walking the horses paused and they snorted and Jane could tell that they had picked up on a scent that she couldn’t yet smell. Their eyes opened impossibly wide, the pupils becoming marbles and the whites like saucers. They whinnied in unison.
Jane squeezed with her knees and whispered to Trinket, ‘What is wrong?’
‘The horses have picked up a scent.’
The horses waved their heads. Their ears twitched to catch sounds.
‘What do we do?’ asked Jane.
‘We keep going,’ said Trinket.
Trinket kicked her heels into the horse's flanks and it surged forward with obedience, only to stop short again, stopped by some immense fear. It swayed. It shook its head. Its eyes flared white.
Jane spoke from behind, ‘The horses know something we don’t.’
Trinket tried to urge the horse forward again, but it resisted.
‘Frick,’ she said.
A sound came from ahead that was different from the night sounds. It was a phlegmy snuffle. Then a scream shot into the morning, like a woman’s scream.
Trinket’s horse reared and Trinket went up with the horse, balancing on the vertical cliff of its back. The horse's teeth were out, its mouth open with a scream that sounded like the scream of the hogs.
Jane’s horse bunted into the rump of the rearing horse.
Up ahead came two swamp hogs, uglier than those Jane had witnessed earlier, running like rag dolls out of the long swamp grass, with sheets of skin flapping off their bodies, and their heads so raw and scratched it was possible to see their skulls through the sores.
The hogs stopped, about fifty feet ahead, cautious, trying to read the situation in a stupid, primaeval way. You could almost smell their desire to kill. Their eyes roved over the horses, Trinket and Jane, looking for danger, looking for a moment to attack.
The horses’ mouths stretched open, their teeth bucked out, and whinnies screamed up their throats. They reared into the moonlight and their hooves slashed out.
When their hooves hit the ground the hogs began their run.