Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 31 of 150

By midday Ben was moving north along a stony draw with Justin and Joe. The chest bumped his hip on the rope. Ten relics inside. Two days until the trade stop meeting. Behind them, somewhere past the last ridge, the blue-scaled thing was closing. Ben could feel the chest getting heavier with every step, and he knew why. He could not carry it to the trade stop. Carrying it there would drag the creature straight to Anita. Joe stopped at a bend where the draw opened onto a flat shelf of gray rock. "It's tasting the wind," he said. "Two hours. Maybe less." "We can't lead it to the meet," Ben said. Justin looked at the chest. "Then we don't." Ben crouched and cut the rope. He set the chest on the stone. "We hide it. We go on light. It hunts what sings, not us." "Where?" Justin said. "Under what?" Joe pointed with his chin. Below the shelf, a narrow crack ran under a slab the size of a cart. Dry inside. Deep. Stone above and stone around. Ben opened the chest. Three carved boxes. Seven relics wrapped in felt strips. He worked fast. He wedged the felt bundles between the boxes so nothing shifted. He closed the lid and pushed the whole chest into the crack until only its back edge showed. He piled loose rock over the opening until the seam was gone. He stood back. He listened. Nothing. No hum. Just wind on the shelf. "It'll hold," Joe said. "Stone eats sound." Then Ben heard the second problem. Claws on rock, coming down the draw fast. He turned. A lean blue-gray shape came around the bend at a dead run, low and long, ears back. Not the hunter. Smaller. Different. Justin already had a stone in his hand. "Wait," Joe said. The creature stopped ten paces off. Its sides worked hard. It watched Ben, not the cache. Behind it, a smaller animal skidded into view, dark-furred and yapping, tail up, teeth bright. "Courier stock," Joe said. "The fast one runs. The loud one covers." "Whose?" Ben said. Joe did not answer. He looked at the fast one's collar. A strip of orange cloth. The same orange as the runner's box at the inn. "The herbalist sent them," Ben said. "For the chest," Justin said. Ben looked at the pile of rocks. Then at the fast creature. It had tracked him here. It knew where the cache was now. So did whoever was behind it. He made the call. "We take the loud one. We run it north with us. It draws the hunter off the cache and away from Anita's line." Joe caught the yapping animal by the scruff. It thrashed and barked louder. The fast one turned and was gone up the draw before Ben could move. "It'll be back," Joe said. "With company." Ben picked up the empty rope. The chest was safe under stone. The creature would follow the noise, not the silence. But the herbalist knew where his relics slept now, and someone else was running for them.