Marcus Blaze's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Marcus carried the captain off the beach at first light. Evelyn walked beside him with her satchel, but she stopped at the tree line. "I have to get back before dark," she said. "The road forks past those rocks. Take the wrong branch and you'll wander until his fever takes him." She pressed a hand to the pendant at her throat. "I can't draw you a map of ground I've never walked myself." Then she pointed to the dark woods ahead. "Find someone who knows it." Marcus went in alone. The trees pressed close. He reached the fork Evelyn spoke of. Both paths looked the same. He set the captain down against a trunk and stared at the ground for tracks. There were none. One wrong turn and the old man died out here. Then the leaves moved without wind. A small figure stepped from the brush. She looked like a child made of the forest itself, vines in her dark hair, a dress of stitched leaves. Green eyes watched him. A sapling dryad, born of some great tree. She tilted her head at the captain's gray face. "He's dying," she said. Not a question. "I need the inland tavern," Marcus said. "A woman named Evelyn keeps it. I don't know the safe road." The dryad crouched by the captain and touched his brow with two small fingers. She frowned, as if she felt the fever herself. "The left branch drops into a bog," she said. "Men go in and don't climb out. The right one crosses the wolf ground." She looked up at Marcus. "Neither is safe." "Then which is less deadly?" She stood and brushed her hands on her leaf dress. "There's a third way. A deer track between them. It doesn't look like a road. That's why it's clear." She pointed where Marcus saw only ferns and shadow. "I'll walk it with you. The trees tell me where it bends." Marcus studied her. She was half his height and looked breakable as a twig. But she stood without fear beside a dying man, and she knew this ground the way he knew fire. He lifted the captain across his shoulders. "Lead," he said. The dryad pushed into the ferns. The hidden track opened under her bare feet. She named each turn before it came. Left where a fallen log blocked the way. Down along a stream so the bog stayed behind them. Marcus followed close, boots sinking, arms burning under the captain's weight. By midday she stopped on a rise. Below, smoke curled from a chimney. Not the tavern yet, but a rough cabin of weathered timber, tucked in the wind-tossed woods. "We rest there," the dryad said. "The tavern's still half a day on. Your captain won't last it without water." Marcus looked at the cabin, then at the pale man on his back. The safe road was found. But the fever had won the race to reach him.