High druid of Shannara_ Jarka Ruus - Terry Brooks [43]
But Pen stood his ground. There was nothing else to do except to run, and he knew that would be a big mistake.
“Can I help you?” he called out as the other neared.
The Dwarf came right up to the cat and climbed aboard without being invited, an act that in some quarters was considered piracy. Pen waited, fighting to control his terror, catching sight of the heavy blades the Dwarf wore strapped beneath his robes.
“Going somewhere?” the Dwarf asked him bluntly, glancing around in a perfunctory manner, then back at Pen.
“Home,” Pen answered. “I’m done for the day.”
He thought he kept his voice from shaking, but if he hadn’t, there was nothing he could do to steady it that he wasn’t already doing.
“Is this the Ohmsford place?” the Dwarf asked, squaring up before him, much too close for comfort. Behind him, the Gnomes were beginning to poke around in the shed and under the canvas-sheltered stores and equipment. “Bek Ohmsford?”
Pen nodded. “He’s away, gone east on an expedition. I don’t expect him back for weeks.”
The Dwarf studied him wordlessly for a moment, eyes searching his, measuring. Pen waited, his heart frozen in his chest, his breathing stopped. He didn’t know what to do. He understood now why Tagwen had been so afraid. The Dwarf’s gaze made Pen feel as if wild animals were picking him apart.
“Left you to look after things?” the Dwarf pressed.
Pen nodded again, not bothering with an answer this time.
“He must have some faith in you, boy. You don’t look very old.” He paused, a lengthy silence. “I’m told Ohmsford has a boy about your age. Penderrin. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”
Pen grinned disarmingly. “No, but he’s my friend. He’s up there at the house, right now.”
He pointed, and when the Dwarf turned to look, Pen shoved him so hard the Dwarf lost his balance, tumbled off the deck of the cat, and fell to the ground. Pen didn’t think about it; he just did it, an act of desperation. He leapt into the pilot box and shoved the thruster levers all the way forward, unhooding the parse tubes completely. The response from the cat was instantaneous. It lurched as if it had been struck from behind, bucking from the surge of power fed into the crystals, snapping the bowline as if it were string, and careening directly toward the Galaphile.
Pen, braced in the pilot box and hanging on to the controls for dear life, had only an instant to respond to the danger. He pulled back on the port thrusters, swinging the cat left to sweep past the foremast of the Druid airship, coming so close that he might have reached out to touch her. Shouts and cries followed after him, then a volley of arrows and sling stones. The whang and snap of them caused him to crouch deep in the box, gasps escaping him in me rushes as arrows embedded themselves in the wood frame of his momentary shelter. The cat shot out over the waters of the cove and surged through an opening in the conifers to Rainbow Lake and the approaching storm.
What had he done?
There was no time to consider the matter and little time for much of anything else. He caught a glimpse of Tagwen flinging off the canvas covering and peering back at the flurry of activity onshore, where the Dwarf and the Gnomes were rushing for the long boat. Pen’s heart was pounding so hard he could hear it inside his ears. It would take them only minutes to reach the Galaphile, and then they would be coming after him. As big and fast as the Druid airship was, they would quickly run him to earth.
If they caught him now...
He didn’t bother finishing the thought. There