Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 39 of 150

They kept west through the pines. The chest was quiet now. Ben carried it low against his hip. Al had gone back the way he came without asking where they went. That was Al. He fixed a thing and left. Joe stopped at a flat stone and pointed uphill. "Gray one. Ridge line." Ben looked. Something moved between two trunks and stopped. It stood upright. Thin. Pale gray. Too far to read the face. It had watched them at the blue door two days ago. It had followed since. "Same one," Amanda said. "Same one," Ben said. Anita crouched beside him. "It's closing. It was three ridges out this morning. Now one." Ben set the chest down. If the gray thing reached them before he knew what it was, someone in the group paid. He had to see it clearly, at once, without the chest in his hands. "I need a look," Ben said. "Close." "You go up alone, it takes you," Justin said. "I don't go up. It comes down." He unbuckled the older chest and lifted out the small crate they had carried since the landslide. The boards were split at the corners. Tape held two sides. Inside, the broken creature the stone guard's remains sat curled, one large eye open, sweat beading on its cracked skin. It shivered when the light hit it. "Bait," Anita said. "Answer," Ben said. "If it's a guard, this one will know it. If it's not, it comes for the crate anyway and I see the face." He carried the broken crate thirty paces up the slope and set it on a fallen log. He pulled the top board free. The broken creature blinked at the sky. Ben stepped back into the pines and waited. The gray shape moved down the ridge. Slow. Then faster. It came through the ferns on two legs and stopped ten paces from the log. Ben saw it plain now. Not scaled. Not a hunter. A courier animal, the tall kind, gray-furred, with the herbalist's leather collar buckled at its throat. The same breed as the one that had escaped the cache. It sniffed at the broken creature. It did not attack. It turned its head toward the pines and made a low sound, a call. "Reporter," Amanda whispered behind him. "Not a killer. It's telling her where we are." Ben already had the small pot from his pack, the wooden one Crystal had left at the gap, the one marked Jump. He filled it with a handful of scent from Ollie's old cloth and rolled it downhill east. The courier's head snapped after the smell. Ben stepped out and clapped once. The animal broke east in a long leap and was gone through the ferns. Anita exhaled. "It'll bring her here by dark." Ben picked up the broken crate. The eye inside had closed. "Then we don't be here by dark," he said. "West. Now. The herbalist knows the road we're on."