Gareth Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The last wagon rolled through the gap just as the vine closed behind it. Gareth counted forty refugees and their carts on the clear road. He wiped sap from his hands. Then his dragon dropped from the sky and clamped its wings shut on his shoulder. The road ahead was not safe after all. Gareth walked forward alone. A hundred paces on, he found the reason. A second wall of red vine choked the path. This one was thicker than the last, threaded with thorns and dark leaves. Its stems curled and shifted like they watched him. He touched a stem with his knife. It bled, and two new shoots reached for his wrist. He stepped back fast. Derien came up beside him, rainbow scarf bright against the gray trees. He looked at the vine and stopped grinning. "The lady's bottle is empty, Gareth. There's no medicine left. And no road back." He glanced over his shoulder at the waiting caravan. "They followed you in here. They can't follow you out." Lady Evangeline crossed from the wagons, her blue gown dragging through leaves. She had shifted the refugees' trust to Gareth with her own word, and now they watched her face for a sign. She knelt at the vine and shook her spent bottle. Nothing came out. "I can't kill this one," she said. "Whatever we do, we do without me." Gareth studied the vine. Cutting it made it grow. But no one had tried the right blade. He drew the curved machete from his belt. Green vinework twined up the steel, and the edge caught the gray light. A hunter had once told him it was made for magical greenery. He had never tested that. He raised it and struck. The blade passed through three stems at once. Where it cut, the vine did not bleed. It hissed and blackened and curled away from the steel. No new shoots rose. Gareth cut again, and again, and the wall opened like cloth under shears. The thorns snapped at his arms and missed. The dragon lifted its head. The refugees pressed forward to watch. A murmur ran through them. Gareth cut the last stems free, and the road ran clear beyond. He turned, breathing hard, machete dripping black sap. Evangeline stared at the blade, then at him. A slow smile crossed her face. "You didn't need my father's medicine," she said. "You needed that." An old man near the front called out that the ranger had cleared the road with one blade. Others took up the words. For the first time, they looked at Gareth without doubt. He lifted his wrist, and the dragon spread its wings and flew through the gap into open sky. "Safe ahead," Gareth said. But he looked at the black sap on his steel and frowned. The vine had died too easily. Something had wanted him to swing that blade.