Aldric Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

Aldric sat where Ephrat had left him. The stump had gone cold under his robe. The boy had been gone long enough that the light between the trunks had shifted from gold to gray. Aldric kept his cane across his knees and listened to the wood the way his wife had taught him, forty years back. Something was wrong with the quiet. A branch cracked to his left. Then a low sound came out of the brush, not a growl but a breath drawn through teeth. Aldric turned his head slow. A beige wolf stood between two birches, low on all fours, yellow eyes fixed on him. Its ribs pushed against its coat. Its muzzle was dark with dried blood. Aldric had seen wolves in this country as a young man. He knew the shape of a hungry one. "Old man," the wolf said. "You sit on my track." Aldric did not move his hands. "I'm resting. I mean no harm." "Something dragged my kill past the stones. The trail runs under your feet." The wolf took one step forward. "Move." Aldric looked past the wolf. Twenty paces behind it, half-hidden in ivy and heaped rock, he saw the mouth of a den. Bones lay scattered at the entrance. Tufts of fur clung to the wood braces. Whatever had stolen the elk had dragged it in there, and the wolf meant to follow. If Aldric stood and stumbled off, the wolf would take the trail and the noise would carry. Ephrat would come back from the cemetery to an empty stump and no way to find him. The path to the oldest tree ran through this meeting. Aldric planted the cane and pushed himself up. His knees shook. He did not step aside. "The thing in that den killed once already," Aldric said. "You go in alone, you don't come out. Your pack loses two meals instead of one." The wolf's ears flicked back. "The meat is ours by the stones." "Then bring the pack. I'll sit here till you do. I won't move the trail." Aldric lowered himself back onto the stump, slow, so the wolf saw it was not a trick. "I'm too tired to run. You'd catch me in three strides. Go get the others." The wolf held still a long moment. Its nose worked. Then it turned and went back the way it came, fast, low to the ground. Aldric let his breath out. His hands shook against the cane. He had held the ground. Ephrat would find him here. Then he looked again at the den. The wolf would return with its pack before the boy came back with the flower. Whatever waited inside that mouth of stone had heard every word. Aldric could see the dark past the braces, and something in the dark had shifted.