Free The Prince Who Fell From the Sky by John Claude Bemis Page B

ready?”
    Casseomae huffed, inching closer to the cub. “Dog, tell me. Isn’t there somewhere safe from the wolves?”
    “If there were,” the dog said, “why would I be here?”
    He eased out from the thicket. The child leaned forward to follow, but the dog growled at him. A coyote called out just over the top of the rise. The child blinked rapidly at the sound.
    The dog was out from the laurel thicket. He lifted a leg to spray urine on the outside branches. He trotted around and did it again. “Don’t let him follow me, you understand?”
    “We know!” Dumpster said, twittering his whiskers anxiously. “Get going.”
    “Bear?” the dog said.
    “What?” Casseomae growled.
    “If I were you, I’d ask the Auspectres your question.”
    “The who?” she asked.
    A coyote bark rang out. The dog gave one last look back at the child and then in a blur sprinted up the rise toward the call.
    The child leaped forward, snapping laurel branches. Casseomae lunged for his back and caught the blue hide with her teeth, not puncturing the material but not letting him go any farther either. The child called out and tried to scramble forward, but Casseomae had him.
    Through the trees came booming barks, not the cries of a coyote but what Casseomae knew had to be the dog. His barks echoed through the Forest and soonwere joined by the yowling, yipping coyotes converging on him.
    The child shouted several more times and batted Casseomae’s nose. She didn’t growl but held him until the sounds of pursuit disappeared into the distance. The child reached back to tug the blue skin from Casseomae’s teeth, and she released him. The child emerged from the laurels and stared at the Forest.
    “We’ll never see that cur again,” Dumpster said as he scampered beside Casseomae. “But I’ll have to give it to him. He’s brave. Stupid, but brave.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    T he child continued to look around for the dog as they followed the creek. Casseomae smelled no sign that Rend’s rout was following them, but she knew they had to cover ground fast. Dumpster gave a squeak, struggling to catch up. “You’ve got to move faster, rat.”
    “Look, I’m not a blundering locomotive like you,” he said.
    “A what?” Casseomae grunted.
    “Nothing.” Dumpster sighed. “I’m going as fast as I can.”
    Casseomae cast an anxious glance. “If they catch our scent … Look, just let me carry you.” She reached down with her long lips to pick Dumpster up by the back.
    He scrambled away from her. “Like some sucklingpup? No, no, no. Dumpster will not be slobbered on by a putrid-breath bear.”
    “Well, I’ll leave you, then,” she growled.
    “Argh!” He lashed his tail. “Let me just climb on your back.”
    “What?” She snorted in disbelief.
    “Look, you’ve got plenty of fat for me to hang on to. I’ll just ride on you.” Dumpster flattened his whiskers at her stares. “I don’t like the idea any better than you do, old bear, but there’s no other way for us to go faster.”
    Casseomae flopped down on the ground. “Just until we know we’re not being tracked.”
    Dumpster climbed up her front leg, digging his tiny claws into her fur until he reached the massive hump of muscle at her shoulder. She rose and sniffed back at him. “Comfortable?”
    “Not in the least,” he said, digging his claws in a little tighter. The cub gave Dumpster a baffled look. “What are you looking at?” Dumpster squeaked.
    Once she was moving at a faster pace with the cub jogging beside her, Casseomae asked, “Have you heard of those Auspectres?”
    Dumpster jostled on her back. “No, never,” he grumbled. He crept closer to her ears, finding a better hold away from her bucking shoulders. “It’s probably some Faithful rumor. Just get us back to the highway,Cass. We know my mischief went that way. We need to follow them.”
    As night fell, Casseomae sat atop some boulders listening while the cub filled his water pouch at a spring.