Amara Bennett's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

Amara woke to fresh snow. It had fallen all night, smooth and white across the ridge. She stepped outside the greenhouse and saw the problem at once. Trails cut through the powder in every direction. Boot prints from the wood teams. Drag marks from the crates. The deep tracks of the pig in its harness. Any regime scout who crossed the ridge would read the trails like a map and find the whole camp in one glass building. Jin-Ho came out behind her, his blade already at his belt. The scar over his left eye tightened as he studied the snow. He had ridden with her since the convoy raid, and he had stood at her side when the old leader fled. He did not waste words. "We can't cover all of it," he said. "Not before dark." "We don't cover it," Amara said. "We change what it says." He frowned. "Say that plain." "A scout follows tracks to find people. So we make the tracks lead somewhere else." She pointed past the ridge, away from the greenhouse. "There's an old butcher shop down the slope. Empty. Timber walls. If the trails all run there, a scout thinks that's where we are." Jin-Ho understood. "A false camp." They worked fast. Amara sent two teams to trample a wide path from the greenhouse to the butcher shop, deep and obvious. She had them drive the pig down and back three times, so the harness marks pointed to the shop. Inside the shop they lit a small fire and let smoke curl from the chimney. They dropped empty crates by the door. From the ridge it looked lived in. Then came the harder part. Amara took a pine bough and swept the true trails near the greenhouse, backing away as she brushed. The fresh powder was soft and filled the grooves. Jin-Ho worked the other side. By dusk the ground around the glass walls lay smooth again, unbroken, while the churned path to the butcher shop stayed loud and clear. A scout found them that night. Amara saw the lone figure on the ridge at moonrise, watching the smoke from the shop. She held her breath in the dark greenhouse, one hand on Jin-Ho's arm. The scout circled the butcher shop twice. He never turned toward the glass. Before dawn he rode off the way he came. "He'll report the shop," Jin-Ho said quietly. "Good." Amara let out her breath. "Let them raid an empty building." But she watched the smoke thin over the false camp and knew what she had done. She had pointed the regime at a spot down the slope. When they came in force, they would come close. Too close. She had bought hidden days, and paid for them by drawing an army to her own ridge.