Free The Starkin Crown by Kate Forsyth

stamping his feet and rubbing his gloved hands together. Jack nodded, his arms crossed about his body.
    Snow drifted lightly in the air, looking like giants were having a pillow fight. The sky was low and dark and menacing. Peregrine’s breath streamed white in the frosty air.
    â€˜Ow, I’m sore!’ he said, trying to speak lightly. ‘What a ride! We were lucky none of the horses broke their leg’.
    â€˜Those starkin must’ve been looking out for us, your Highness,’ Jack said in a low voice. ‘Yet how did they know we would be trying to escape? We weren’t meant to know the starkin were coming’.
    â€˜Scouts?’ Peregrine suggested. ‘I think they were well camouflaged, I could hardly see them at all in the dusk. Those arrows seemed to come from nowhere’.
    â€˜Yet how could they have picked up our trail so quickly, sir? Even if they were on the lookout for someone trying to escape the castle, they can’t have known where the secret passage came out,’ Jack protested.
    Peregrine remembered how Grizelda’s dog had barked. Had the baying of the hounds been a prearranged signal to lead the soldiers straight to them? Or had it simply been an unlucky chance, the dog acting as his nature demanded?
    â€˜I think it was planned,’ Jack said grimly when Peregrine told him his thoughts. ‘I think that starkin girl came to try and lure us out into the open. Remember how insistent she was that everyone flee?’
    â€˜Maybe,’ Peregrine said. ‘Or perhaps the dog was just answering those of his kind. She certainly didn’t try to getaway from us, or leave any signal. I was watching to see if she dropped one of those crimson gloves accidentally on purpose, but she didn’t’.
    As he spoke, Peregrine was scanning the dawn sky for any sign of his falcon, but there was no distinctive scythe-shaped wings soaring high above. He felt an immediate twinge of disquiet, for he had raised his falcon from a downy chick and was used to carrying him everywhere.
    Peregrine pulled off his gauntlets and thrust one numb hand into his pocket, withdrawing his flute of bone. He lifted it to his lips and played a single high, long note. Far away he heard a falcon screech and smiled in relief. Blitz had heard him.
    Behind him, the dog whined, his tail between his legs. Grizelda came out of the cave, grasping her heavy fur mantle close about her.
    â€˜Oskar, piddle,’ she said and made a rotating gesture with one finger. At once the dog lifted his leg against a tree and relieved himself.
    â€˜Is the poor dog not even allowed to pee without your permission?’ Jack demanded.
    She gave him a haughty glance. ‘No, he may not. I suppose you allow your dogs to do their business any old place they like. We of Zavaria prefer to control our hounds properly’.
    â€˜I bet you do,’ Jack muttered.
    Lord Murray was already up and attending to the horses, who had been hitched under some trees nearby. They stood in snow to their fetlocks, their breath steaming gently in the cold air. Lord Murray looked white and tired under the dark bristle on his chin, and Peregrine suspected he had slept only a little, despite the silent guard of the owl whosat hunched on a branch nearby. The guard had wound a bandage about the wound on his arm, but it was stained dark with blood.
    â€˜Good morning, your Highness,’ Lord Murray said. ‘We must ride on as soon as you have broken your fast. I dare not light a fire, so I’m afraid it’s cold rations this morning’.
    He had laid out a repast of bread and cheese and preserved fruits on a wooden tray nearby, and Jack tasted it all, before standing back and saying, ‘I think it’s fine, sir’.
    Peregrine sat down to eat, spreading his cloak over the tree stump and taking the tray onto his lap. ‘Will you not eat with me?’ he said to Grizelda, who was busy trying to tidy her hair