Running with Rogues

Picture, if you will, a dark and rainy evening. It's nearly midnight. I'm hurtling down a busy road in the city centre with my uni-allocated family and as we pretend to be horses and jump over garden walls. Oh, and we're all dressed as minions, face paint included. To our right, four students are dancing naked in a fountain while their friends film the whole thing. They're drunk but not, like, that drunk. They reckon they'll get extra points for stripping. It's not true.

I have been at uni for six weeks now. This makes sense to me. This is normal. It's not even the strangest thing that's happened all day. So yeah. If you're still stuck in high school, hang on in there. It gets better. Weirder ... but definitely better.

Anyway, welcome to Austria, Belarus and Nigeria and on with the story, because you've waited long enough for this. (PS get the family tree ready, lads. It's ... it's bad. Don't worry about trying to remember everyone just yet — you'll get to meet them all properly.)

When I woke up, we were approaching the big-ass roundabout on the far side of Lowland territory. As always, Lily went around it three times to check that no one was following us. Once she took the exit, we crept around the first bend — the faded paint on the road ordering us to go slow — and turned onto a muddy track. It ran for about a mile and ended in a disused farm yard.

Arlow wasn't the fastest way to Haven by any means, and there were plenty of closer places to park, but it wasn't by chance that we'd managed to keep it secret for the last nineteen years. I'd been wrong earlier. If there was a patch of earth that was safe for us, it was Haven, if only because the flockies didn't know it existed.

We parked there and tucked a fiver under our windscreen wiper in case the farmer came by. I got out, stretched my legs, and scanned the rest of the yard idly. Sam's seven-seater was there, but Dad's was missing, so there was probably a raid on today. And I'd missed it. Great.

"So, who wants to link?" Nia asked from behind me. I jumped a little. "Eva? Wow, thanks, super generous of you to volunteer."

I gave her a flat stare. "Oh, my pleasure."

She was grinning as she bent down into the car and began hauling the woman out. She propped her up against the door and eased her onto her shoulders, crossways, with annoyingly little effort. We could have shared the load, of course, but I was still limping and Lily had the upper body strength of a stick insect.

A minute later, we started down the track. It wasn't a track, not really, because that would give the game away, but we followed a tiny little stream for most of the way. I knew where to put my feet, even if the ferns looked unbroken to the untrained eye. Nia led the way, of course, and I had to concentrate on walking slowly so I didn't bump into her.

It was lovely and scenic. You could see for miles across the forest, and there were bluebells in the spring. The walk was long enough to let you enjoy it but not so long that it got boring. Utterly perfect in every way except for one — it stank.

There was a cow field just downwind. Most days, the wind swept the stench of the animals and the shit across the path, so the packlings would have difficulty following our scents even if they somehow managed to find this place. It served its purpose, but I did have to breathe through my mouth.

Once I was settled into the rhythm of putting one leg in front of the other, I slipped away from the world to find the mind-link to my mam. It was buried deep after two months of disuse, so I had to dig for it. At the slightest tug, I felt her stop what she was doing and direct her full, undivided attention at me.

"You're never gonna guess where your favourite child is!" I drawled.

"Eira's right next to me," Mam replied without even, like, hesitating. "Who is this?"