Ash Lively's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Ash Lively had walked the frontier for six days looking for ground no institution could ever take from her. She wanted a stronghold hidden enough to vanish into and hard enough to hold. Every site failed one test or the other. Open ridges saw for miles but offered no cover. Deep gullies hid well but trapped her against the walls. Her militia waited at camp, thirty armed men paid with Games prize money, and none of them could solve this for her. Ground was hers to choose, and the wrong choice would leave her exposed the day someone came to claim her. She crouched at the edge of a dead ravine and read the land the way she read a fighter. The slope leaned wrong. A stronghold here would be watched from three angles. She had learned to trust what her eyes gathered before her mind named it. This place said no. Something moved in the brush behind her. Ash did not turn fast. She felt the weight shift, small and deliberate, and knew it was not a man. A monkey-like creature stepped into the open, bags strapped across its body, pockets stuffed with tools and cuttings and coiled wire. It watched her with a bright, working intelligence. It chirped once, then trotted away and stopped, waiting. A dog rose from the rocks beside it. Tawny, huge, a dark mask over amber eyes, old scars laced along its ribs. The dog did not bark or bristle. It simply looked at Ash, measured her, and turned to follow the small gatherer. Ash had spent her life learning when to move and when to hold. Both animals were telling her to come. She rose and went. They led her along a seam in the rock she had walked past twice. The gatherer slipped through a gap no wider than a door. Ash pressed after it and stopped. The land opened into a bowl ringed by high stone. One narrow entrance. Water somewhere, close, she could smell it. Dark moss with crimson undersides clung to the rocks, the kind Koshi had once called a wound-sealer. At the bowl's center stood an old stone well, wrapped in moss, its water black and still. Cover on every side. One way in. Hidden until you stood inside it. Ash turned slowly and read the ground the way she read an opponent's balance. Defensible. Concealed. Both tests passed at once. She had searched six days for this and two animals had brought her to it in an hour. The dog sat at the entrance and faced outward, already guarding. The gatherer climbed the well's rim and looked back at her, as if the place were his and he had decided to share it. "This is it," Ash said. The words left her before she chose them. She almost never spoke first. She had her ground. Now she had to hold it, and she did not yet know who else knew this place existed.