Aldric Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

The dark inside the den shifted again. Aldric heard a wet sound, a claw scrape on stone. Whatever waited in there had listened to the whole talk with the wolf. Now it knew he sat alone. The stump gave him nothing. No rock at his back, no ditch, no low branch to swing under. When the thing came out, it would cross the open ground in two bounds and he would be under it. Aldric pushed himself up on the cane. His knees held. He turned a slow circle and looked for anything he could put between himself and the den mouth. Ten paces off, half swallowed by nettles, a wooden signpost leaned out of the ground. He limped to it. The board was old, the letters carved deep and darkened by rain. Whispering Woods. The post ran thick as his arm and stood taller than him, braced by a cross of iron nails at the base. Someone had driven it deep, long ago, to mark a trail no one used now. He set his back against the post. It held. It would not stop a charge, but it would break the line. A thing coming fast would have to swerve, and a swerve would give him one swing. He heard the claw again, closer to the mouth. Aldric planted the cane in the dirt beside his boot and waited. His wife had carved the cane over three winters. He had leaned on it for forty. He knew its weight the way he knew his own hand. The creature came out low. It was not a wolf. It was longer, gray, with a flat head and too many teeth. It saw him at once and lunged. Aldric did not move from the post. At the last stride the thing cut left to take him from the open side, exactly as he'd hoped. He swung the cane two-handed across its skull as it passed. The wood cracked against bone. The creature spilled sideways into the nettles and rolled up snarling, one eye shut with blood. It did not charge again. It circled once, low, testing him. Then it turned and slunk back toward the den mouth, dragging one foreleg. Aldric stayed against the post until it was gone. His arms shook. He looked down at the cane. A long split ran up the shaft from the tip, white wood showing through the dark grain. His wife's work, cracked. He lowered himself to the base of the signpost and sat in the nettles. He would not make it back to the stump. When Ephrat came with the flower, he would have to find Aldric here, under the old sign, with a broken cane and a wounded thing bleeding somewhere in the rocks between them and the path forward.