Read Online Rocking Horse War by Lari Don - Free Book Online

resourceful. How did you find Jasper and his horse?”
    Again, she gave a short but truthful answer. “I followed the rolling ring.”
    “You followed it. How clever. From where?”
    “From the woods.”
    “Why did you think it would lead you to the triplets?”
    Pearl numbered the reasons on her fingers. “Because they’d left the garden on horseback, because I noticed the ring by some hoofprints, because it was obviously a piece of tack, and because it was rolling uphill all by itself, which seemed a little mysterious.”
    “Only a little mysterious? Do you find me a little mysterious?”
    “I find you very irritating.”
    She could see him trying hard not to react to this insult.
    “Don’t you have any more questions for me?” he asked. “You were interested enough in my private business when you were eavesdropping.”
    “There’s no point in asking questions if you can’t trust the answers. Let’s just find Emmie and Ruby. So long as I get them home safe, I’m not curious about your feuds with your neighbours.”
    “It’s not a feud. It’s a battle to the death,” Thomas said grimly. “And now you’re involved, ignorance won’t protect you.”
    “Then why have you involved children? Why pick my sisters and brother?”
    “I didn’t pick them. They were involved before they were born. It’s their destiny.”
    “And they have no say over it?”
    “Of course they do,” Thomas insisted. “I want them to embrace their destiny willingly. That makes it much stronger. Jasper loves the idea of displaying his powers at a crowning ceremony.”
    “The girls will have much more sense.”
    “Will they? Don’t they love being important too? Won’t they want power and glory? Do you really know them better than their brother does? You don’t sing their songs; perhaps you don’t know them at all.”
    Pearl couldn’t answer. She loved her sisters and brother. But Thomas was right: she didn’t sing their songs, and she wasn’t one of them. Perhaps they would listen to this charismatic stranger rather than their boring big sister. Perhaps they would want a destiny, even a dark one, because destiny sounded more exciting than going home for hot buttered toast.
    So Pearl concentrated on the land, her gaze moving smoothly between the brittle heather at her feet and the route ahead. Thomas’s eyes were moving too now, but he was glancing up and around and behind. 
    Pearl preferred the silence to his awkward questions and worrying answers. But as they broke away from the side of the gully to angle right towards the pass, she saw Thomas glance yet again at the sky.
    She blurted out, “What are you scared of?”
    “Scared? I’m not scared of anything!” he snapped.
    “Then why do you keep looking round? You’re like a rabbit who scents stoat.”
    “I’m just being careful. We’re in the mountains now.”
    Pearl snorted. “Of course we’re in the mountains! We’ve been climbing a mountain for the last fifteen minutes!”
    “Yes, but we’ve crossed the line: the boundary between our land and the mountains. We could be attacked at any time.”
    “Attacked? Why? Is this the Laird’s land already?”
    “No, this is no one’s land at the moment: not his, not ours. But he sometimes attacks us when we try to climb here.”
    “And do you attack him if he climbs here too? Or are you always the innocent victims?”
    “Well, we can’t let him have a chance to search for the …” He stopped, glancing up and behind again, his eyes flicking about fast.
    Pearl laughed. “Stop looking round like that!”
    “Don’t you like to know what’s going on around you? I thought you were proud of reading the land.”
    “You see movement more easily out of the corner of a steady eye than if your gaze is flitting around like a butterfly. Tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll find it for you.”
    “I’m looking for the Laird’s spies.”
    “His swans? I think even you could see a swan on a heathery