Marcus Webb's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The yellow eye did not blink. Marcus sat in the roots of the bone-tree and watched the jawless deer circle. His body wanted sleep. His shoulder throbbed where the skull had struck him. Dawn was still hours away, and he knew the danger now. If he dozed, he might rise and walk without thinking. His legs would carry him past the bones and into the teeth. The deer seemed to know it too. It had stopped screaming. It only waited. He needed pain to stay awake. Pain was reliable. He pressed his thumb into the cut on his shoulder and hissed. The sting cleared his head for a minute, no more. He would not last the night on cuts alone. He needed a plan, not a wound. Marcus studied the tree behind him. Pale bones grew through the bark. Ribs, long bones, two skulls fixed near the base. The deer feared these bones. He wondered why. Then he wondered if he could carry that fear with him. He worked a loose rib bone free from the trunk. It came away with a dry crack. The deer flinched at the sound and stepped back. Marcus held still, watching. The animal kept its distance from the bone in his hand. Not just the tree. The bones themselves. He pried two more loose and tied them to his forearms with strips cut from his sleeve. He worked slow and kept his eyes on the yellow glare. When he stood, the deer backed away. He took one step past the roots. The dead thing retreated. He took another. It gave more ground. He was moving now, and moving kept him awake. That was the point. He walked the edge of the clearing with bone strapped to each arm, and the deer would not close. His heart steadied. Charm had failed him in these woods. Fear had not. He had found the one thing the dead respected. Gray light touched the treetops. The deer's yellow eye dimmed as the sun climbed. It backed into the brush, turned, and was gone. Marcus stood alone in the wet leaves, still breathing, arms wrapped in bone. He did not drop them. He would need them past the woods. The spymaster waited behind stone walls, and Marcus meant to reach him with a smile and a lie. But first he had to cross ground the dead still walked. He tightened the bindings and started toward the tree line. At the clearing's far edge he found something the deer had left. A worn leather case lay half-buried in the mud, dark stains soaked into the hide. It was not his. It had belonged to someone who had run these woods before him and had not reached the bones in time. Marcus knelt and pulled it free. Whatever was inside, it was a lead. He tucked it under his arm and walked out of Thorngrip into the pale morning.