Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 55 of 150

Ben spent the first night in the stone barn awake against the chest. By dawn he had counted his problem out plain. He could not stay. He could not walk twelve pieces across open country alone. He needed a vehicle, a driver, and a place at the other end. He had none of the three. He had two days. He left the chest wedged in the dry stall under loose straw and walked the half mile back to the plank bridge. Crystal was gone. Al was gone with the cart. Ben cut down the west slope on foot until he found a track wide enough for wheels. He followed it until he heard engines. The transport hub sat in a clearing, a tall timbered building with double doors thrown open. A blue three-wheeled runabout idled in the yard. Behind it, a gray wolf-shaped transport creature stood harnessed, head low, eyes tracking every movement. Ollie Tabooger was checking a strap on the creature's saddle. He wore the same navy coat and cap Ben remembered from the freight yard, and he did not look pleased to see Ben's face at his door again. "You," Ollie said. He did not stop his hands. "I need out. West. Tonight." "West is closed. Snow in the pass by week's end." "Before the snow." Ollie tightened a buckle. "Cargo?" "One crate. Heavy. Silent." "Silent how." "Sealed. Waxed. It won't sing on your road." Ollie looked at him then. He knew what Ben carried. He had watched Ben pack it in his own back stall while engines ran. "Herbalist's man watched my gate a week," he said. "He isn't there now. He's on the border road. He thinks you went east." "He'll learn." "He will." Ollie spat into the dirt. "Greywood route. Through the pines. My guild's waiting on a shipment past the far side. Your crate rides under theirs. You ride the wolf. Runabout goes empty as a decoy." "Price." Ollie named a figure. Ben did not have it. Ben said so. Ollie looked at the wolf. The wolf looked at Ben. "Then you owe me a run," Ollie said. "Any run. One I name. Before spring." "Done." They went for the chest at dark. Ollie drove the runabout up the track with the wayfarer crate strapped in the bed, empty. In the stone barn Ben slid the chest into the crate. Ollie nailed the lid, roped it, and stacked two sacks of guild oats on top. The wolf stood in the doorway, silent, waiting. Ben climbed into the saddle. Ollie took the runabout south, loud, lanterns bright. The wolf turned north-west into the pines with Ben and the crate on its back. Within a mile the track was gone and only the animal knew the way. By the second dawn Ben was thirty miles past the barn. The herbalist's hunters reached the stone barn that morning and found straw, rope ends, and an empty stall.