Dragon and Herdsman

Apparently, Frost had followed Alison's same line of reasoning regarding the caves to the west. He was expecting the fugitives to head in that direction, and had arranged his forces with that in mind.

Still, even a thin picket line could be trouble, especially to a crowd of unstealthy Erassvas and Phookas. Draycos and Jack would have to find a way to slip the group past the sentries without being detected.

Draycos had worried a little that Alison might have made too much progress toward the hidden enemy in his absence. To his relief, he found everyone sitting or lying comfortably on the ground not far from where he'd left them.

Jack was walking the perimeter, his tangler ready in his hand. Draycos waited until he was looking in his direction, then lifted a paw into view. Jack changed direction, and half a minute later Draycos was once again pressed against his host's skin.

"You okay?" Jack murmured as he resumed his patrol.

"Yes," Draycos said. "Why have we stopped? Is it the bellwether's turn for a host?"

"No, not yet," Jack said. "I saw Taneem come back leading one of the other Phookas and figured you'd spotted trouble. I thought it might be a good idea to go to ground for a while, so I called a rest break."

"It was well that you did," Draycos said. "We have a problem."

Jack listened in silence as Draycos laid out the situation. "And you don't think we can slip past them even if we keep going north?" the boy asked when he'd finished.

"You, I, and Alison could," Draycos said. "But the others could not."

"So what we need is for all the soldiers to go away."

"Yes," Draycos said. For all the danger they were in, he felt a trickle of encouragement that the thought of abandoning the Erassvas and K'da had apparently not even crossed Jack's mind. The me-first attitude that Uncle Virgil had spent all those years hammering into the boy was fading away with gratifying speed. "Perhaps I can arrange a diversion."

Jack shook his head. "A K'da diversion is the first thing they'll expect," he said, chewing thoughtfully at his lip. "I wonder how clever they think we are. And how stupid."

"What do you mean?" Draycos asked.

"This." Reaching to his collar, Jack removed his comm clip. "I don't know if I ever mentioned it, but there's a way to gimmick comm clips so that they can be made to work as transmission scanners."

"With the ability to search for enemy transmissions?"

"Exactly," Jack said. "You usually can't actually eavesdrop on anyone, since most comm clips operate with full encryption. But if we had a clip like that we could estimate the strength of the mercs' own comm clip signals and get an idea of how close they were."

"Do we have such a device?" Draycos asked.

Jack shook his head. "There are a couple on the Essenay, but neither of the two I have with me can do that. But Frost has to know about the technique. If he thinks I'm clever enough, and if my comm clip suddenly goes on without me talking to anyone, he may think that's what I'm doing."

"But as Alison said earlier, turning it on may also give them the ability to locate us," Draycos warned.

"Right," Jack said, grinning tightly. "And that's the how-stupid-am-I part. How far away did you say you drove that herd of horn-headed plant-eaters?"

Draycos cracked his jaws open in a smile of his own. "Not far," he said. "How shall I attach it?"

"Use this," Jack said. He glanced toward Alison, then surreptitiously slid one of the cartridges out of his tangler. "If you pop off this cap, the netting will just slide free instead of blasting out."

Draycos lifted his head slightly from Jack's shoulder for a closer look. The technique seemed straightforward enough. "What about the electrical shock?" he asked.

"Good point," Jack said, frowning. "I'd better take out the capacitor."

"Or you could simply adjust its strength," Draycos suggested. "We don't wish to put the animal to sleep, but a small jolt may encourage him to leave his grazing and move away from the area more quickly."

Jack cocked his head in salute. "Good point number two," he said. "Let's see what I can do."

Three minutes later, the cartridge was ready. "Remember, just attach it and then get back here," Jack said. "And don't get him moving too fast. We don't want Frost wondering why Uncle Virgil trained me to be a thief instead of an Olympic distance runner."

"I know what to do," Draycos assured him. "Don't leave this place until I return."

"We won't," Jack promised. "Good luck."

CHAPTER 12

Silently, the dragon headed off into the woods. Jack gave him a thirty-count to make sure he was out of sight, then headed back to the resting herd.

Alison was sitting with her back against a tree, her gun in her lap. "All quiet on the western front?" she asked.

"Seems that way," he confirmed, carefully filtering the annoyance out of his voice. Alison had gotten into the habit of peppering her conversation with these obscure comments, obviously references to things he'd never heard of.