Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 66 of 150

They were still fifty paces from Paige's gate when the hunters arrived. Ben pulled Eileen down behind the low wall and counted them. Four men on the lane, leather and long knives, one with a horn on his belt. The lead man knocked at the cottage door. Paige opened it with a rag in her hand as if she had been scrubbing a pot. "They'll ask about a plague man," Ben whispered. "Or a crate. If she blinks wrong, they come inside. If they come inside, they see the garden." Eileen didn't look at him. She was watching the lynx. It sat under the elder tree at the corner of Paige's fence, ears flat, tail low. Scars crossed its shoulder in old lines that matched the ones on Eileen's cheek. Ben had not seen the animal in six years either. It had been a kit the last time, sleeping across his sister's boots. "You brought her," Ben said. "She brought me." Eileen unclipped a strap on her pack and slid a small chest to the grass. It was banded iron, marked with crossed swords, the kind soldiers used to carry pay. "Empty," she said. "For show." "For what show?" "The one where the hunters chase a chest that isn't yours." At the door, the lead man's voice sharpened. Paige answered slow. Her hand shook on the rag. Ben saw the man step forward, one boot on her sill. Eileen whistled once, low. The lynx moved. It crossed the lane behind the men in three strides, hit the far hedge, and screamed. The sound was not a cat sound. It was a battle sound, drilled and ugly, and it carried. All four men turned. The horn man got the horn halfway to his mouth. Eileen was already up, running low along the wall with the iron chest under her arm. She let it clang once against a stone. Then she threw it into the ditch on the far side of the lane so the lid sprang and something inside rattled like coin. "There," one hunter shouted. The lead man swung off Paige's step. All four went for the ditch and the lynx and the noise. Paige shut her door. Ben was over the wall before it latched. He dug with his hands through thyme until his knuckles struck wood. He got the crate up on one end. Eileen dropped beside him, breathing hard, and took the heavy side without a word. The lynx broke from the hedge and paced them, watching the lane. They were in the pines before the horn sounded behind them, and by then the hunters were following an empty iron box south. Ben kept walking. His sister carried the other end. The crate hummed once under the sap and went quiet. "Twelve," Eileen said. "Twelve," Ben said.