Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 98 of 150

Ben cleared the mill gate with the purse against his ribs and the small creatures pressed close at his heels. The horn behind the wall meant Cage would open the fourth box within the hour. When she saw beads instead of stone, she would send men on every road out. Ben had the coin. He had eleven real pieces still with him. He had no safe road left. Chilly Willy limped beside him at the tree line. His wrap was dark again where the paste had given up. "Which way?" "Not the road," Ben said. "Not the river track. She'll watch both by dusk." "Then what?" Ben looked at the small blue-gray creatures ringing his boots. They had carried the chest for him once. They could not carry a grown man. He needed a road that did not look like a road. A thin shape stepped out from the pines ahead. Gray fur, drooped tail, one ear bent. It sat down in the path and watched him with tired eyes. Ben knew the look. It was Ollie's wolf, the one he had left in the pines to die three weeks back. Thinner now. Alive. "You," Ben said. The wolf yawned. It stood and walked ten paces north off the path, then stopped and looked back. Chilly Willy shifted his weight. "That thing owes you?" "Ollie owes me," Ben said. "Maybe it's the same thing." Behind the mill, the horn sounded a second time. Two short notes. A signal, not an alarm. Cage had opened the box. Ben moved. The small creatures moved with him. The wolf led them through pine to a dry wash and along the wash to a stand of alder where a soft-sided wooden crate sat half-sunk in leaves. Its top had a worn handhold. Its planks were cracked but nailed tight. A guild mark was burned on one side. Ollie's mark. "He left it," Ben said. He knelt and lifted the lid. Inside, folded oiled canvas. A coil of waxed rope. A ledger tag with one word in Ollie's hand: OWED. Chilly Willy laughed once, then coughed. "He plans ahead." Ben loaded the eleven boxes from the small creatures' backs into the crate. The wood took the weight without complaint. He wrapped the canvas over the top and tied it down. The crate looked like something a hauler had abandoned. Nobody would open it in daylight without a reason. He set the small creatures loose into the alder. They scattered without sound. "North," Ben said. "The wolf knows a way." Chilly Willy took one handle of the crate. Ben took the other. The wolf walked ahead at its own slow pace, and they followed it into the trees before the third horn could sound. Behind them, the mill yard filled with shouting. Ahead, only pine and the tired animal that would not hurry.