Stephanie Laurens – The Daredevil Snared (страница 12)

But Fate had smiled and sent the boy to them.

When they came upon the next path, Diccon walked confidently on to it. “That place I told you about—the nice clearing—is just along here.” He led them down what was clearly a very much less well-traveled track. There were small saplings springing up, and vines laced across the path. Phillipe muttered, then told the men to work on keeping their passing as undetectable as possible. So they avoided the saplings and ducked under the vines, all of which Diccon whisked light-footed around.

Then he turned off the path onto a narrow animal track. Fifteen yards on, it descended into a clearing that—as Diccon had promised—was perfect for their needs. Big enough to comfortably house all of them and with a tiny stream trickling past on one side.

“Here you go.” Grinning, the boy spun, holding his arms wide.

Caleb grinned back. “Thank you—this is just what we need.”

Phillipe smiled at Diccon and patted his shoulder as he passed. “You’re an excellent scout, my friend.”

The other men made approving noises as they filed into the space.

Diccon positively glowed.

It took only a moment for Caleb and Phillipe to organize the establishment of their camp, then, summoning their quartermasters—Caleb’s Quilley and Phillipe’s Ducasse—they presented themselves before Diccon.

The boy looked at them expectantly.

“First question,” Caleb said. “Have you got enough fruit in your basket to satisfy the cook?”

Diccon lifted the floppy basket, opened it, and examined the pile of fruit inside. “Almost.” He looked up and around, then pointed to a small tree with dangling yellow fruit. “If I got some more of those, I’d have enough.”

Two captains and two quartermasters dutifully gathered several handfuls of the ripe fruit.

Diccon smiled as they filled his basket, then he clamped the handles together and looked at Caleb. “More than enough.”

“Excellent. What we need next,” Caleb said, “is for you to lead us to a place where we can see into the camp, all without alerting any guards. Do you know of such a spot?”

Diccon snapped off a salute. “I know just the place, Capt’n.” He’d heard Caleb’s men using his rank.

“In that case”—Caleb gestured toward where he assumed the mine must be—“lead on.”

Diccon did. He lived up to their expectations, leading them first along the disused path again, then cutting left into the untrammeled jungle. He looked back at Caleb and whispered, “This will be safest. We’re moving away from the other paths and into the space between that northward path and the one leading to the lake. The mercenaries take some of the men to the lake to fetch water every day, but they do that in the morning. There shouldn’t be anyone at the lake now.”

Caleb nodded, and they forged on, increasingly slowly as Diccon took the order to be careful to heart.

Eventually, he halted behind a clump of palms. Using hand signals, he intimated that they should crouch down and be extra careful while following him on to the next concealing clump.

Then he slipped like an eel through the shadows.

Caleb followed and instantly saw why Diccon had urged extra caution. The compound’s palisade lay ten yards away, separated from the jungle by a beaten, well-maintained perimeter clearing—a cleared space to ensure no one could approach the palisade under cover. The compound’s double gates were five yards to their right. And the gates stood wide open with two armed guards slouched against the posts on either side. Both guards’ attention was fixed on the activity inside the camp, but any untoward noise would alert them.

Given the gates were propped open, Caleb surmised that the real purpose of the guards—and, indeed, the fence, the gates, and the guard tower in the middle of the compound—was to keep people in; the mercenaries had grown sufficiently complacent that they didn’t expect any threat to emerge from the jungle.

Well and good.

They watched in silence for more than half an hour. Caleb noticed that heavily armed guards appeared to be patrolling randomly through the compound, but the attitude of all the mercenaries was transparently one of supreme boredom. They were very far from alert; the impression they gave was that they were perfectly sure there would be no challenge to their authority.

Against that, however, he saw some of the captives—he had no idea which ones, but both male and female—walking freely back and forth. More, some met and stopped to chat, apparently without attracting the attention of the guards.

Curious.

Then he noticed Diccon peering up at the sky. The sun was angling from the west. Remembering the boy’s concern over returning in good time, Caleb tapped him on the shoulder, caught Phillipe and the other men’s eyes, then tipped his head back, into the relative safety of the area behind them.

Diccon retreated first. One by one, the rest of them followed.

They gathered again well out of hearing of the guards on the gates. Caleb dropped his hand on Diccon’s shoulder and met the boy’s gaze. “Thank you for all your help. Now, we have to tread warily. Who is the person you trust most inside the camp?”

“Miss Katherine.”

Caleb blinked. He’d expected the boy to name one of the men, but his answer had come so rapidly and definitely that there was no real way to argue with his choice. Slowly, Caleb nodded. “Very well. I want you to tell Miss Katherine all we’ve told you. Can you remember the important bits?”

Diccon nodded eagerly. “I remember everything. I’m good like that.”

Caleb had to grin. “Excellent. So tell Miss Katherine, but no one else, and see what she says. Then tomorrow, when you come out, go and look for fruit in this area—between our camp and the lake. Behave as you usually do and gather fruit, and we’ll come and find you. We’ll be waiting to hear what Miss Katherine, and any others she thinks fit to tell, say.”

Diccon’s face brightened. “So I’m like...what is it? A courier?”

“Exactly.” Phillipe smiled at the boy. “But remember—the mark of a good courier is that he tells only those he’s supposed to tell. Not a word of this to anyone else, all right?”

Diccon nodded. “Mum’s the word, except for Miss Katherine.”

“Good.” Caleb released the boy. “I would suggest you circle around and come in from some other direction.”

“I’ll go to the lake and walk in from there—that way, if you keep watching, you’ll see where that path comes out a-ways to the left.”

Caleb’s approving smile was entirely genuine. “You’re taking to this like a duck to water.” He nodded in farewell. “Off you go, then.”

With a brisk salute and a grin for them all, Diccon melted into the jungle; in seconds, they’d lost sight of him.

“He is very good.” Phillipe turned toward the gates. “But I’ll feel happier when he’s back inside where he belongs.” He waved toward their previous hideaway. “Shall we?”

They returned to the spot. Five minutes later, Diccon appeared out of the jungle to their left. He passed their position without a glance and, basket swinging, all but skipped back through the gates. He headed to the right, vanishing into an area of the compound that from their position they had no view of.

Caleb consulted his memory. “He must have gone to deliver his haul to the cook—he said the kitchen was that way.”

He’d barely breathed the words. Phillipe merely nodded in reply.

Sure enough, ten minutes later, they saw Diccon, no longer carrying the basket, cross the area inside the gates, right to left. He appeared to be scanning the far left quadrant of the compound—but then he whirled as if responding to a hail from somewhere out of their sight to the right.

Even from where they crouched, they saw his face light up. Diccon all but jigged on the spot, clearly waiting...

A young woman appeared. Brown haired, pale skinned, she moved with a grace that marked her as well bred. Smiling, she came up to Diccon and held out her hands. Diccon readily placed his hands in hers, all but wriggling with impatience and excitement.

Closing her hands about the boy’s, her gaze on his face, the woman crouched as Caleb had done.

Immediately, the boy started talking, although from the way the woman leaned toward him, he was keeping his voice down.

“Miss Katherine, obviously.” Caleb scanned all of the area around the pair that he could see, but there were no guards or, indeed, anyone else close enough to hear the exchange.

As Diccon poured out his news, Caleb saw the woman—younger than he’d expected by more than a decade; he’d had no idea a governess could be that young—start to tense. Clearly, she’d realized the import of what the boy was telling her—and she believed his tale.

That last was verified when she glanced out of the gates—not directly at them but in their direction.

Immediately, she caught herself and refocused on Diccon again.

But Caleb had seen that look, had caught her expression. However fleeting, that look had been a visual cry for help that had also held a flaring of something even more precious—hope.

By some trick of the light, of that moment in eternity, he’d felt that hope—fragile, but real—reaching out to him, something so indescribably precious he’d instinctively wanted to grasp it. To hold and protect it.