Aela Darkwood's Arc

Chapter 21 of 22

The moon came up thin and cold. Aela crouched on a slope above a dry creek bed, the crescent stone warm in her closed hand. Kalen lay flat beside her. Lyra was thirty paces east, downwind of the trail they had picked. The witch's familiar had passed this way twice in the last hour — a gray wolf, ranging wide, checking the same three points along the ridge. Aela had watched it long enough to know the pattern. Now she only needed the wind. The wind was wrong. It came off her back and rolled down toward the creek. Any wolf on that trail would smell her before it saw her. She pressed her face to the dirt and waited for a shift. None came. The trees above the ridge moved, but down here the air held steady, pushing her scent straight at the path the familiar would take. "It's not turning," she whispered. Kalen watched the tree line. "Then we move." "If we move, we lose the ambush point. There's no other cover before the flat." She thought through it fast. Circle around and she'd cross the wards. Wait and the wind might never change. The familiar would come, catch her scent, and run for the cave. The witch would have hours to prepare instead of minutes. Aela looked at the crescent stone. One sense at a time. She could take the wolf's eyes. She could take its ears. She could not take its nose from a hundred feet away. She pulled a handful of crushed leaves from her pocket — the glow-bush she still carried since the first chase. She rubbed them into her collar, her wrists, her hair. The green smell burned her throat. It would not hide her. It would only muddy her. "Lyra," she breathed. Lyra's voice came back through the brush, low. "Here." "Wind's wrong. I need you across the creek. Break a branch when it comes. Loud." A pause. "Yes." Aela heard Lyra move — no faster than a walking deer, no louder. Two minutes. Three. Then a sharp crack across the water, twenty yards south. The familiar came up the trail at a trot. Its head turned toward the sound. It slowed. It sniffed the air — and got Lyra's scent first, carried clean off the creek, before it got Aela's. It swung south to investigate. Aela dropped from the slope and hit its flank while its head was still turned. She got the leather cord over its ears in one motion and pulled the crescent tight against its skull. The stone flared cold under her palm. The wolf's eyes went blank white. It did not howl. It could not see to. Kalen was there with the rope before it thrashed twice. They bound its jaws. They bound its legs. Aela sat back on her heels, breathing hard. She had the witch's eyes in her hands. Now she had to walk them to the cave before the witch noticed they had gone dark.