Aldric Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

Aldric ran until the cold cut his lungs, then slowed at the rise above the open square. He pulled the glass screen halfway from his coat. The dot crawled along a line he knew well — straight through the guarded yard behind the house, where every window held a watcher. He could not cross it. Not openly. Not hidden. And every breath he wasted, the dot slid further from him. Then he saw it at the square's edge — a heavy white delivery truck, blue lights dark, the word POLICE bold on its side. A driver stepped down to check a strap. Aldric did not think. He walked straight to the back, climbed in among the crates, and pulled the canvas flap shut. The engine started. The truck rolled forward, straight toward the guarded yard the law could pass without question. Aldric drew the screen out in the dim. The dot still moved. He was moving with it now — hidden inside the one thing the watchers would wave through. The truck slowed, then stopped. Voices rose outside. Boots circled. Aldric pressed flat behind a crate as the canvas flap whipped back. Light poured in. A gloved hand pointed at him, and a guard he did not know said his name like a man reading off a list. They had been waiting. The truck had not driven him past the watchers. It had driven him to them. He stepped down into the snow with both pendants heavy in his coat, and beyond the guards' shoulders he saw it — a narrow wooden bridge over a frozen canyon, the dot's path crossing it, his only way forward now standing open in full view. Aldric counted four guards, no more. He drew the glass screen out one last time and held it high so they could see. He told them their orders came from a map, and the map was in his hand now. He let it drop. It cracked on a stone. The dot blinked once and held still. The guards lunged for the pieces. Aldric ran past them, boots loud on the planks of the bridge, the canyon white and deep below. He did not know where the dot had stopped. He only knew it had stopped somewhere, and he was across.