Brille Covella's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

Brille rode out with Siobhan at first light. The striped hide cloak sat heavy on her shoulders. She had said she knew these roads. Her tribe crossed the flooded stretch each spring. That was true. She had ridden in the wagons, not driven them. She had watched the elders read the water. She had never chosen a ford herself. The old road appeared through the mist. Dark cobblestones ran uneven under shallow water. Weeds grew from cracked seams. In places the stones dropped away into black pools. Siobhan reined up beside her. "You lead," Siobhan said. "Company's an hour behind. Pick the crossing." Brille studied the water. Two paths split ahead. The left ran straight through a wide flat pond. The right curved higher along a ridge of broken stones. Her memory said left. The wagons always went left. But the water looked deeper now than she remembered, and the season was wrong. Spring floods came from the north hills. This was late runoff from somewhere else. She pointed left. Siobhan waited. Brille kept her hand up. Then she saw it. A dead branch spun slow in the flat water. A sinkhole pulled it under. She dropped her hand. "Right," she said. "The left washed out. Cobbles gave way under it." Siobhan looked at the branch, then at her. "How do you know?" "Water's turning where it shouldn't. Stone's gone under." They took the ridge path. The horses picked careful steps. Halfway across, a shape rose from behind a pile of fallen stones. Big as an orc, scaled orange and red, a mane of stiff red spines. He held an axe as long as Brille was tall. Two others crouched behind him with clubs. Muggers working the old road. "Toll," the big one said. His voice was slow. "Coin. Both." Siobhan's hand went to her belt knives. Brille kept her bow across her lap. She counted the men. Three. She counted the ridge. Narrow. The big one blocked the only dry line. "We've no coin," Brille said. "Coin," he said again. He lifted the axe. Brille slid down from the saddle. She stepped to the edge of the ridge and pointed at the flat pond below. "See that branch? Spinning?" The big one squinted. His two men leaned to look. Siobhan's knife left her hand before Brille finished pointing. One mugger dropped. Brille's arrow took the second in the throat. The big one roared and swung. His foot came down on a loose stone. The stone slid. He went sideways off the ridge into the sinkhole. The water swallowed him and his axe. Siobhan pulled her knife from the dead man's chest. She wiped it clean. "Left would have killed the wagons," she said. "You saw it." "I saw it." "Ride back. Bring them up the ridge." Brille turned her horse. The cloak settled on her shoulders. She had not lied. Not today.