Minecraft: Mob Squad: Never Say Nether: An Official Minecraft Novel

So I have to say, as a big fan of pigs, that horses don’t quite compare.

These horses that Jarro found—they’re not cute; they don’t oink. They honestly look kind of stupid. But I know Mal’s been dreaming about them ever since she saw them in Nan’s book, so for her sake, I hope they don’t suck. At least she’s standing now. It scared me, when she was so weak I had to carry her.

“So these aren’t cows?” Jarro asks, holding the horse’s lead.

Mal limps over to Jarro’s horse and reaches up to rub its nose, a look of pure joy on her face. “No! Have you seriously never seen a cow?”

“Only when he looks in a mirror,” I say with a grin.

He rounds on me, his available hand in a fist and the horse looking startled at his anger. “Shut up, Chug! Of course I’ve seen a cow! I just thought maybe, uh, wild cows were different.”

Mal stares at him doubtfully as Lenna says, “You’ve never been out of the Hub, have you? We’ve never seen you anywhere else. There are sheep in the Hub sometimes, and chickens and cats, but no cows. I think you’re lying.”

Jarro’s eyes twitch back and forth like his brain is searching for something and coming up totally empty.

“It’s okay,” Mal says with a smirk. “We’re not bullies, so we’re not going to make fun of you too much, even if there are literally cows just down the road from your house. It’s not your fault if your mom can be a little…”

“Mean? Pushy? Rude? Sour? Aggressive?” I offer.

“Strict.” Mal throws me the look that means shut your piehole, Chug, I’m working here. So I do shut my piehole, even though I don’t want to, because over many years of putting my foot in my mouth, I’ve learned to just trust my best friend.

Jarro is clearly upset and fighting his rage as he strokes the horse’s neck. “Yeah, she…she doesn’t like me to be too far away.”

“Well, the good news is that I’ve seen a lot of cows, and these horses are way cooler. And we can even ride them, which will get us where we’re going a lot faster.” Mal looks to me. “I know Chug has a saddle, but did anyone else bring one? I know it’s a long shot.”

I fight the grin forming on my face as I search my pockets along with everyone else. I pretend to root around as I subtly watch everyone else look up and frown.

“Chug?” Mal asks.

“I’m so sorry, Mal,” I say, chin quivering. “I wish I could help you. But…”

I throw four saddles on the ground and watch as Mal’s eyes go as big as Nan’s cookies. “All I’ve got are these three extra saddles.”

“Chug, you magnificent genius!” she squeals.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say I’m a genius.” Although I’ll tuck that compliment away for a rainy day. “I would just say I’m a salesman who keeps his pockets stocked with high-value items. The first time Inka went to the village, she traded a bunch of melons to a farmer for emeralds, but then she accidentally traded the emeralds to a leatherworker for saddles because she didn’t quite understand how to barter and thought she couldn’t say no. Inka doesn’t need saddles but she does need hoes for her melons, so here we are. I thought they were pretty useless, but she threw in a free melon. Which I ate immediately,” I add hastily as Jarro’s eyes light up.

Mal squats down to run her hands over the saddle. It’s much more elaborate than the one Nan let us use on our last trip, the one I’ve used exclusively for Thingy and that now smells a bit of pig. I’m trying to puzzle out the look on Mal’s face when she says, “I don’t think I can lift it. Lenna, do any of your books have any suggestions for taming horses?”

Lenna pulls a book out of her pocket and flips through it, nodding. “So the best way to tame a horse is to just…get on the horse’s back and ride it out. They might throw you a few times. And some horses are easier to tame than others.” She looks into the eyes of the horse on the end of Jarro’s lead. “It looks nice enough, but I guess it’s impossible to know what it’s thinking. One of us just needs to…hop on up.”

Lenna looks to Mal, and Mal looks to me. Lenna’s leg isn’t fully healed, and Mal can barely move. I’m the one who needs to hop on the horse and take my licks. But…

I…don’t wanna.

The horse’s back is pretty high up, and I don’t know this horse, I don’t know anything about horses at all. As much as I’d like to make fun of Jarro for thinking this was just a weird cow, it’s not like I have any big advantages over him in animal husbandry. I can ride a pig that Tok trained, and I can distribute scraps to cats and wolves, but I absolutely have no interest in sitting on this horse, and I suspect the horse has no interest in being sat upon. I’m certain I wouldn’t, if I were a horse. I love climbing trees, but…well, trees don’t have minds of their own. If I fall out of a tree, that’s my own fault. But if the horse wants to kill me, it just might try. And we don’t have any Potions of Healing.

Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that my friends expect me to do this. They need me to do it. And Tok needs it, too. If we have any hope of catching the people who kidnapped my brother, we need to be faster than we can be on foot, especially with Mal injured. I was going to let her ride Thingy, but he’s not any faster than we are. We need these horses, which means I need to suck it up and hop on up there.

“I’ll do it,” Jarro says.

We all stare at him.

See, Jarro is taller than me. He has big jug ears and a dumb, punchable face and a ponytail. And, sure, it’s got to be easier for a tall person to get on the horse’s back because his legs are just flat out longer, it’s just…well, I’ve never seen Jarro volunteer to do anything to help anyone else, ever. Especially not something that might be dangerous. And part of me wants to jump in front and say I’ll ride the horse just so everyone knows I’m braver than he is, but most of me desperately does not want to do that. I’ll fight anything that needs to be fought, but I’d rather stick to riding pigs, thanks.

“Are you sure?” Mal asks. “I mean, normally I’d do it—I want to do it—but…” She looks down at the black burned bits on her clothes and frowns. “I wish I could, but I was recently nearly blown up.”

Jarro winces at that, which is exactly what he should do. He did almost get her killed.

“It’s probably best if Jarro does it,” Lenna says. “He’s taller, and he’s the person we need the least.” His eyes bug out at her, and she shrugs. “No offense, it’s just…we have the brains, the brawn, the bow, and…you.”

“Bully starts with B,” I remind them all.

The look Jarro shoots me is both angry and embarrassed. “I haven’t bu—I mean, I haven’t been mean to anybody since—”

“Since we untied you from that tree?” I ask.

“Since we were outside the wall,” Lenna corrects. “Away from an audience.”

Jarro looks at me. “She really tells it like it is, doesn’t she?”

“When she doesn’t feel threatened, yeah.”

He nods and turns back to the problem at hand, running his hand down the horse’s neck to its back, where the skin twitches at his touch. “Well, back up, everybody. If I get hurt, you’ll heal me, right?”

“We’ll feed you.” Lenna holds out one of her cookies, which are quickly becoming a hot commodity. “But there are no potions out here. Hence Mal’s problem.”

Lenna helps Mal shuffle away from the general range of the horses. The one on the lead is watching Jarro warily, which I can relate to. The other four are alert but chill. Jarro looks like a jangling ball of nerves, and I can see him shaking from here.

“Okay, Speckles,” he murmurs, running his hand down the horse’s back. “I’m going to sit on you, and you’re going to not kill me. Deal?”

“Promise him a carrot,” I say, but I know enough about farm animals to not hold out said carrot.

“Speckles is a girl,” Jarro says without looking at me. He’s entirely focused on the horse, touching its—her—back and rump and legs like he’s trying to get her used to being touched. Speckles twitches and watches him, curious but not, as far as I can tell, bloodthirsty.

“What do horses eat?” I ask Lenna in a whisper.

She’s been scribbling in her journal, but she trades it out for Nan’s book to answer me. “Wheat and apples, mainly. Sugar, if you have it.”

“We’ve got to find some wheat, or else I’m lying to a horse.”

Now Jarro has a handful of the horse’s neck hair—why would an animal need neck hair?—and he’s bouncing on his toes. I don’t like him, and I’d love nothing more than to see him go arcing across the sky like a shooting star and land on his dumb head, but I need this to work. I need Mal and Tok to be okay more than I need Jarro to suffer.

“Come on,” I whisper under my breath.

In one smooth leap, Jarro flops onto the horse’s back on his belly. The horse neighs angrily and bucks around as Jarro attempts to get a leg over the horse’s back. The horse wins, and Jarro lands on his face in the dirt.

And the strangest thing happens.

Nobody laughs.

I grimace, Lenna catches the horse’s lead, and Mal hobbles over to Jarro and asks if he’s okay.

“Nothing hurt but my pride,” he grumbles as he stands, his nice town clothes stained with dirt for the first time.

“Do you need—” Mal starts, but Jarro is already back at the horse’s side, one hand clutching a handful of hair, the other running over and over the horse’s back. He jumps again. The horse neighs and bucks again. He eats dirt again.

I’m actually…kind of worried for him.

As many times as I’ve punched him in the gut, this is a different kind of hurt. Looking back, our relationship in the Hub was like a game little kids play, whereas this is real life. Lives are at stake here. He could get seriously hurt. And every moment we spend trying to tame these horses is a moment we’re not pursuing Tok and his kidnappers. If this gambit doesn’t work, we’ll have three injured people and be hours behind.

“Maybe we should just walk,” I say.

Jarro glares at me, looking more determined and real than I’ve ever seen him. “No! I can do this. I’m close. I’m sure of it. If you want to help, find some wheat or something. Distract her with food.”

As much as I want to watch the Jarro Show, I head off toward a promising patch of land, glancing back whenever I hear the horse make that angry neh-heh-heh sound. Luckily, it’s easy enough to gather a handful of wheat, and I run back and hold it out to Jarro. He nods and takes it, feeding it to the annoyed horse, whose eyes soften as it snuffles against his hand.

“Let’s try it one more time. Now behave,” he warns the horse, and he sounds a lot like I do when I talk to Thingy.

This time, when he leaps on the horse’s back, the horse just gives a fussy little hop and settles down. He leans forward, stroking the horse’s neck.

“I could kick your teeth in from here,” he tells me, but he’s grinning, and I don’t think he really means it.

“And I could grab your foot and yank you flat on your face,” I shoot back.

“Nice job!” Mal says.

Jarro smiles, and I realize that in all our years together in school and all our encounters in town, I’ve never heard anyone compliment him before. He’s never cared about school, and he’s never done anything nice or helpful, to my knowledge. Outside of bullying people, he’s never exhibited any skills. But now, he’s kind of glowing.

He slides down from the horse’s back and selects one of the saddles—the fanciest one, of course. He takes his time, carefully arranging it on the horse and making sure it’ll stay on without pinching her too badly. Speckles watches him with loving eyes, just like Thingy watched me and like Mal’s llamas used to watch her, before they were stolen by brigands at a river crossing. The horse bumps his shoulder with her nose and nuzzles him, and he laughs and rubs the star between her eyes.

“Wait your turn,” he tells her, turning to the next horse, which has been watching the whole thing curiously. “Now it’s up to Dotty.”

The final count is Jarro: 4, Horses 11.

Ten times Jarro gets tossed in the air to land in the dirt, sometimes on his belly and sometimes on his back, and once, miraculously, impressively, on his feet. Each time, he dusts himself off and stands, eyes latched onto the horse with a mix of focus, drive, and curiosity. I didn’t know Jarro was capable of anything beyond tattling and bullying until today. Then again, most people thought I was only good for one-liners and gut punches before I ventured beyond the wall. Out here, I discovered that I was great at fighting mobs—and cooking. Lenna found her skills with the bow and arrow—and applied her dreamy curiosity to Nan’s lore. Mal always knew she was a leader, but out here, she led us with purpose and learned how to dig shelters and mine ore. Tok, wherever he is, went from creating nonsense machines that never worked to crafting better than our town’s Elder craftsman. I guess people just discover who they really are in the Overworld.

Now we have four saddled horses, a confused spare, and one very indignant, unsaddled pig staring up at them from a paddock hacked into the grass. Thingy wants to come with us, I can tell, but he can’t move as fast as the horses, so he has to stay here. I hate leaving him behind. It happened accidentally on our last trip, and it’s happening on purpose now. I give him all my potatoes and carrots, but I’m still nervous about leaving him alone. I borrow Mal’s pickaxe and dig until I have ten stone blocks, which I stack up to form a tower.

“There. Now we’ll be able to find him on our way home,” I say, returning the pickaxe, as I know Mal doesn’t like to have it out of her immediate area.

I squat down and rub my pig’s ears. “I’ll be back soon, buddy. I’ll ride you all the way home.” I lean in closer to whisper, “I like you better than horses, I promise.” Before I turn around, I dash away the stubborn tears speckling my cheeks so Jarro won’t see them.

The horses are waiting in a line, with Dotty, Bee, and Mervin saddled and ready to go and Ol’ Stinkeye unsaddled and annoyed, which is why Jarro didn’t even try taming him. As it turns out, Jarro isn’t very good at naming things.

We’ve packed up our little camp, leaving the door behind but taking the bed and crafting table, as poorly constructed as they may be. Jarro and I gently hoist Mal into Mervin’s saddle, as he’s the shortest and calmest of the horses. I give Lenna a boost onto Dotty’s back, and Jarro swings up onto Speckles like he’s been doing it every day of his life. Honestly, I’m kind of jealous—of his horse skills and his height. But I’ll never tell him that, not in a million years. I tell myself riding a horse can’t be any harder than riding a pig and clamber up into Bee’s saddle. He grunts a little but doesn’t seem too annoyed. Thingy oinks like he’s been betrayed, and I can’t look him in the eyes.

We haven’t really discussed how things will work now, because normally that would be Mal’s job, but she’s weak, and we all know that being in pain makes it that much harder to think a normal thought. I guess that makes me second in command. I grab a handful of Bee’s neck hair and gently guide him in the direction we were headed yesterday, before we stopped in the copse to make camp. I’m nervous at first, wondering if I’ve chosen the right path. Mal is behind me, then Jarro, then Lenna, and they’re all relying on me to get us headed in the right direction, which is not usually one of my skills. As soon as I spot a chunk of coal sitting in the grass where no chunk of coal should be, I know we’re headed the right way.

I…kind of can’t believe the most important thing in my life right now is coal.

Whoever took my brother is clever. When they grabbed him, I didn’t wake up, and the animals were kept busy. In town, Jarro was the only one who saw them, and they kidnapped him, too, to make sure no one interfered. I know Tok is dropping the raw materials for us to find, which means he was probably dropping the berries, too. But his captors themselves are being very, very careful. No noise, no evidence. If they’re killing mobs or building shelters along the way, they haven’t left any signs of their passing behind, not even the grossest chunk of zombie meat or an arrow stuck in the ground. These people—they know exactly what they’re doing. They planned for this. It sends a chill down my spine, to think that they must’ve been watching us in our own home, at some point, to determine exactly how to kidnap my brother.

But there’s something else bothering me. Along with the llama hoofprints, I now see bigger, U-shaped tracks. Now that I’ve met a horse up close, I know that this means that Tok’s captors are also on horseback. Which means they’re just as fast as we are, now.

We’ve got to hurry. We’ve already lost too much time.