Joob Doob's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Joob Doob crouched in the mud at the edge of her family's camp and could not read a single mark. The cookfire was cold. Her mother's weaving loom lay on its side. Boot prints crossed the moss in every direction, layered and smeared, as if the men who took her family had walked in circles on purpose. She was a cleric of the wood. She was supposed to know these trees. Two nights ago she had gone downstream to gather river reeds, and when she came back her parents and her two brothers were gone. She pressed her palm to the dirt and prayed for a sign. Nothing answered. Her red hair stuck to her wet cheek. Every hour she knelt here, the captors moved farther. She stood up, wiped her hands on her tunic, and started walking toward the smoke she had seen on the ridge. If the forest would not speak, she would find someone who would. The town was small. One muddy lane, a smithy, a well, a tavern with a crooked door. Joob went from stall to stall asking about wagons, about strangers, about four elves bound with rope. A wool seller shook his head. A boy pretended not to hear. A woman shut her window. Her family was worth nothing to these people. At the smithy, a dwarf woman was hammering a bent horseshoe flat with hard, even strokes. Her braid was the same red as Joob's hair. She wore a leather apron burned in three places. She did not look up when Joob stopped in the doorway. "Slavers," the dwarf said. "That's who you're asking about. Just say it." Joob's throat closed. "You've seen them." "Wagon came through four nights back. Two axles, iron-shod. I know because I fixed the front wheel." The dwarf set the hammer down. "I'm Woo. And I marked the axle before I gave it back." "Marked it how?" Woo held up a small punch. "Notch on the inside rim. Bleeds rust when it turns. Leaves an orange dot every full rotation." She looked at Joob for the first time. Her eyes were pale and steady. "You won't see it on stone. You'll see it on packed dirt and wet leaves. West road, then the fork past the old mill. After that I don't know." Joob's knees almost gave. "Why did you mark it?" "Because I didn't like their faces and I couldn't stop them alone." Woo untied her apron. "You a tracker?" "No." "Then you need one." She reached under the bench and pulled out a pack already stuffed. "I've been waiting for someone to come ask." Joob stared at the pack. The trail she could not read was suddenly a trail she could follow, and she was not going to follow it alone. She nodded once. Woo shouldered the pack and walked past her into the lane, headed west.