The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume II

send the wind elsewhere and divert the current around that snag.” The stump and its collection of flotsam seemed too firmly anchored to budge with his exhausted talent.
    “Tampering with the weather is forbidden. We can’t upset the balance.” Strain showed in Quinnault’s neck and shoulders.
    Nimbulan ducked as a huge branch bobbed up out of the water, aiming directly for his head. A wall of water followed the branch.
    “I can’t swim!”

Chapter 6
     
    M yri crept beneath the outer wall of her tent as a sleepy bird chirped a question at the first signs of light in the sky. She stopped to listen for the waking chorus of birds. Notes of a wordless song sprang to her lips. A smile stretched her weary cheek muscles. Every part of her body was tired. But she shouldn’t linger, even to greet the rising sun with the birds.
    Standing hunted-still, she tried blending into the muddy colored canvas walls. Her cloak should be the same color as the tent, effectively masking her presence.
    Not much of a sunrise. The gradual spreading of light only hinted at the presence of a sun behind the clouds. Good. She’d cast no betraying shadow when she moved.
    The guards at the front of the tent paced back and forth. She had heard Nimbulan give orders last night that she be kept secure inside the tent. Escaping them would be a merry game.
    She had considered crawling beneath the tent around midnight. Muffled voices had betrayed the presence of Nimbulan’s assistant and Moncriith. From the secure confines of the tent she had listened to Moncriith’s plans. He was headed east. The same direction the voices urged her to flee. Therefore, she would wait until he was well gone. She would rather follow behind him than have to watch her back in constant fear of him catching up with her.
    Pickets patrolled the edges of camp. Their shoulders sagged wearily. Men in bedrolls on the wet ground stirred and yawned. Some pulled their blankets higher while others sat and stretched. By the dim glow of false dawn, she scouted her escape route around them, picking out hiding places along the way. The back of a tent to her right, a stack of weapons beyond. She tugged the hood of her cloak lower over her face and moved toward the perimeter of the camp. She’d played this game before. But then she’d had trees to climb and no one ever thought to look up. They always looked straight ahead or down.
    Amaranth mewed a protest at being carried beneath the folds of her cloak.
    “Sorry,” she whispered to him. “We have to stay hidden until we’re beyond camp. Besides, you don’t like wet on your feet.”
    The black flywacket settled into her supporting arm. His tail twitched, showing his reluctant acceptance of her wishes.
    “Food first.” Myri followed her nose to the cooking fires, slipping in and out of shadows, making faces at the men who passed her by without seeing her.
    A sleepy-eyed cook stirred a gruel in a huge cauldron over a firepit carefully tended by a dozing teenager. They were protected from the rain by a red, green, and white striped awning. No canvas sides or shadows for Myri to hide within. Besides, she couldn’t carry hot gruel. She needed jerked meat, journey bread, and dried fruit.
    Carefully she scanned the camp for signs of a storage tent or covered sledge. Surely, the cook would need easy access to his supplies.
    Ah. There, on the other side of the cooking pavilion—a low, square tent with alert guards front and back. No slackness showed in the fabric walls. Could she creep under the tent without rippling the canvas and signaling unlawful entry to the guards?
    She skirted the cooking area with all the stealth she’d learned in the woodlands as a child. The far side of the awning offered a little concealment in the form of a sledge piled high with pots and other utensils. The harness end rested atop double crates for easier hitching to a steed. The triangular space beneath made a nice dark cave to hide in. A gust of wind, laden with fresh rain, diverted the guard’s attention long enough for her to slip beneath the vehicle.
    “Stay here,” Myri whispered to Amaranth as she shoved his muscular cat body into the shadow of the crates. Gently she slit the canvas wall of the tent with her belt knife. A moment later she crawled on her belly through the small opening.
    She froze, waiting anxiously for the guards to betray their exact location. They were as loud and obvious as children thrashing through saber ferns.