Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 121 of 150

Ben walked deeper into the pines with the chest against his hip. The trees looked the same in every direction. He had no map and no track under his boots. One wrong turn would put him inside a hunter patrol before he saw them. He stopped at a fallen log and set the chest down. He listened. Wind in needles. No horn, no voices. But somewhere north there were men on this ground, and he did not know where. The latch on the chest ticked. Ben lifted the lid a finger's width. The small creature inside blinked up at him. Orange fur, white chest, blue eyes. It had ridden in the straw since the boathouse. It pushed its nose against his thumb and did not hum. He eased it out and set it on the log. It sat up on its hind legs and turned its head north, then east, then north again. Its ears twitched forward and stayed there. It did not move. Ben watched. When he shifted the chest a step east, the creature's ears flattened. When he lifted it north-northwest, the ears rose again. He tried west. Ears flat. He tried the first line north. Flat. He did not know what the creature heard. He knew what its body said. One path opened. The others closed. He stepped the way its ears pointed. Twenty paces on he found a print in soft dirt. A boot with a nailed heel. Fresh. The line he had been walking two minutes ago would have taken him across it. He backed off and crouched. The creature climbed his sleeve and settled on his shoulder. He carried the chest under one arm and walked the new line, slow, one foot at a time. Twice the creature's ears dropped and he stopped and waited. Twice they lifted and he moved. An hour on, the pines thinned into a shallow draw with a stream at the bottom. On the far bank a coat hung on a branch. A man sat under it with a crossbow across his knees, half asleep. Ben would have walked straight into him on the old line. He eased backward until the trees closed. The creature's ears turned him west along the draw, then north again where the water bent. He kept the stream between himself and the coat until the sound of it covered his boots. By the time the light dropped he was two ridges past the guard and the trees were different trees. He set the chest down in a hollow between roots and let his arms shake. The creature climbed off his shoulder and curled on the lid. He had not found a road. He had found a guide. The patrol was behind him now, not in front. He could keep moving north, if the little animal kept pointing. He scratched its ear once and picked the chest up again.