Master blacksmith's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

The four pups whimpered in the den, but Aldric could not stand guard over them and cut stone at once. He had the quarry now. He did not have the hands to keep it. If he swung his hammer at the rock face, no one watched the tree line. The pack would smell blood, circle back, and take the flat stone while his head was down. He needed eyes. He had none. He told Tori as much at dawn. She knelt by the den, feeding the pups strips of dried meat from her palm. "You want a wall of men," she said. "You have me and a fox." "Two watchers can't hold a quarry." Tori stood and pointed north, past the pit. A broken stone tower rose above the trees. Its upper walls had fallen, but its base stood thick and whole. Ledges crowned the top where a person could see for miles. "You don't need more hands," she said. "You need higher ground. Set the pups in the tower. The pack comes for its young, not for your rock. If they come, they come to me." Aldric understood. Move the bait, move the fight. He carried the pups up the tower's cracked stairs in a sling of cut hide. Tori climbed to the top ledge with her curved knife and her bow. The fox curled at the arrow slit below, ears twitching at every wind shift. "Cut your stone," she called down. "I'll tell you before they reach you." So Aldric worked. His hammer bit the rock. Blocks came free clean and square, stone enough for every forge wall he had drawn in his head. He did not look up. He did not have to. Tori's eyes held the north for him. Near dusk the fox barked once, sharp. Tori's voice cut down the tower. "Four of them. Coming for the pups." Aldric dropped his hammer and set his back to the tower door. He would not lose a single block. The wolves broke from the trees, drawn to their young inside the stone. Tori's first arrow took one in the shoulder. It rolled and rose. The others rushed the door. Aldric met them there. His claws caught the lead wolf and threw it against the wall. Tori dropped from the ledge, knife first, and opened the second wolf's throat. The last two turned and fled into the dark, and this time they did not stop running. Aldric stood among cut stone and dead wolves, breathing hard. The quarry was still his. His stone was still his. He had watchers now, one woman and one fox on high ground, and it had been enough. Tori wiped her blade and looked at the pups in the tower. "Two ran," she said. "They'll reach the valley pack by morning. Next time it won't be four at the door. It'll be twenty." Aldric looked at his stacked blocks. Enough for walls. Not enough to hide behind twenty wolves.