Maren Goldweaver's Arc

Chapter 38 of 42

They walked until the light turned gray under the pines. Maren's legs moved on habit. Miller stayed a half step behind her, close enough to catch her if she tipped. The road hummed faint to their left. She counted trees to keep her feet honest. Her boot met something that did not give. A thin line pressed against her shin, low, taut, wrong for a root. She stopped and threw her arm back across Miller's chest. "Wire," she whispered. Miller crouched beside her knee. He followed the line with his eyes, not his hands. It ran from a stake by her boot up into the ferns. He traced it further with a slow turn of his head. "Snare line," he said. "For meat." She eased her foot back. The wire held. She lifted it clear. A small bell rang above them. A cage of green wood and iron dropped from the branches. Miller shoved her sideways. The cage crashed into the dirt where she had stood, bounced, and settled on its ribs. They pushed it off their legs together. It was heavier than it looked. It was not the danger. Boots hit the ground fast through the ferns. A boy came first, no taller than her hip, cheeks red from running. He stopped short when he saw them and stared at Maren's face. Behind him a man came through the brush with a long knife at his belt and a coil of wire on his shoulder. Not a soldier. A trapper. His eyes went to the sprung cage, then to her. Miller stood up in front of her and set his hand at the small of her back, guiding her behind the trunk of the nearest pine. He stepped into the man's line of sight. "Sorry for the trap," Miller said, easy, like he was buying nails. "My wife's a clumsy walker. We'll pay for the reset." The trapper did not smile. "Woods are posted. What are you doing off the road?" "Short cut to the crossing," Miller said. "Storm took the bridge south. We heard from a farmer." The boy leaned to see around Miller. Maren pressed her cheek to the bark and kept her braids inside her collar. Her face was on notices in every village they had passed. A copper coin was a week of meat for a boy like that. "Bridge is fine," the trapper said. "Step out where I can see you, missus." Miller did not move. He reached back without looking and closed his hand around Maren's wrist. "Run," he said, low. He threw the sprung cage at the trapper's knees and drove his shoulder into the man's chest. The knife came halfway free and fell. Maren ran. She heard the boy shout her description at his father's back as she cleared the ferns. Miller caught her at the next rise, breath hard, blood at his lip. "They saw," she said. "Enough of you," he said. "Move."