Bran Wolfe's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Bran moved into the birches with the hound at his knee. The trees grew close and pale, their bark peeling in strips. He kept the wristblade arm loose at his side. His own signet, turned inward on his other hand, pressed cold against his palm. The hound found the scent first. Its head snapped left and its tail went stiff. Bran followed the line of the dog's nose and saw a shape crouched behind a fallen trunk twenty paces off. Grey cloak. Bow across the knees, unstrung. Watching him back. He had a choice to make in the time it took to draw a breath. Steel now, and if the watcher was a friend, he killed the only ally he had left. Wait, and if the watcher was a killer, he took an arrow in the throat. He did neither. He knelt slow and put his hand flat on the hound's ribs. The dog knew the signal. It walked forward on its own, tail low, nose working. Halfway to the log it stopped. Its hackles smoothed. It sat. The hound had been trained to sit for one scent only. The marker Bran had worn under his collar for twenty years. The marker his First Company had carried to know their own in the dark. The watcher stood up behind the log. It was the woman from the farmhouse. She held the bow low and open, string still slack in her hand. Her face was tight. She had been crying and had stopped. "I followed the tracks," she said. "I thought they were yours." "They weren't." Bran rose. He did not drop the blade arm yet. "Whose horse did you ride?" "Mine. The bay is mine." She stepped over the log. "The rider you were chasing crossed my south field an hour before you came back through. I saw him from the barn. He turned into the birches and did not come out." Bran looked past her into the trees. The wood was quiet. Too quiet for a man on foot to still be inside it. "He watched you find me," she said. "He watched you leave. Then he went ahead of you on the road and doubled back to watch you again." "He wanted me to follow." "He wants you tired and off the road." She looked at his forearm, at the housing. "You brought it with you." "I brought all of it." She nodded once. "Then we don't stay here." Bran whistled the hound to heel. The dog came. He kept the blade arm loose as they walked back toward the horses, but the tightness under his ribs had shifted. He had not drawn on her. He had not been shot. The watcher he had feared was a friend. The watcher he had not feared was still in the trees, and now knew there were two of them.