Cinder Shepherd's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Cinder knelt in the ash and counted the lanterns again. Thirty-four iron cages sat wedged between the roots of the bone tree. The mother's lantern lay at the bottom, warm through the cloth. The staff could carry a dozen hooked along its length. No more. The rest would have to be left on the roots, and any lantern left behind would crack open in the next wind. The embers inside would drift. The souls would scatter across the flats again, and years of gathering would end here. Cinder tried anyway. They looped lanterns onto the staff until the iron bands bent. They tied more into the folds of their robe with strips torn from the hem. When they stood, the weight dragged them sideways. Two lanterns knocked loose and rolled. The fox chased one down and pinned it with a paw. The stag lowered its antlers and let Cinder hang three more from the tines. Still, a dozen lanterns remained on the roots. Cinder sat down hard. They could not carry them. They could not leave them. They did not even know which direction led home. The fox growled first. Cinder looked up. A shape came across the smooth ash at a steady walk. Four-legged. Black hide split by orange seams. Smoke curled from its shoulders and the tuft of its tail. A furnace hound, old by the scars on its muzzle, one horn broken short. It stopped ten paces off and watched Cinder with an ember-yellow eye. Cinder had seen these hounds circle the caravan for scraps. They pulled carts when the price was right. This one wore a length of chain around its neck, trailing in the ash. Someone had harnessed it before. Cinder reached slowly into their robe and drew out a single lantern. They set it in the ash between themselves and the hound. The hound stepped forward, sniffed the iron cage, and did not eat it. Its breath fogged hot against Cinder's wrist. Cinder unclipped one of the lanterns from the staff and hung it from the chain around the hound's neck. The hound stood still. Cinder added another. Another. The hound's hide warmed the iron but did not melt it. Cinder hung every remaining lantern from the chain and from a strip of robe knotted across the hound's back. The stag took its share on the antlers. The fox carried one in its jaws. Cinder shouldered the staff, heavy again with the rest. All thirty-four lanterns were with them now. None left on the roots. But Cinder still stood on blank ash with no landmark in any direction, and now four mouths depended on finding shelter before the next storm. The hound turned its head, sniffed the wind, and began to walk. Cinder followed, because the hound seemed to know something Cinder did not.