Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 2 of 21

Mercedes rode north for two days before the horse began to shy. The big Clydesdale tossed its pale mane and stamped at every crack of branch. On the third dusk she smelled what the horse had smelled all afternoon: a wet, meat-heavy stink drifting between the pines. Something had been pacing them since noon. She turned in the saddle and caught a shape sliding behind a trunk. Black fur. Shoulders as high as her chest. A direwolf, drawn by the horse, and closing the distance. She needed cover before dark or the wolf would take one of them. She pushed the horse through the drifts until the trees broke around a low timber cabin, half sunk in snow, with a stall built onto its flank. The door hung on one hinge. She dragged the Clydesdale inside the stall, wedged the gate shut with a split log, and climbed to the cabin roof. From there she could see the whole clearing. She unwrapped the bow she had bought off a border trader in the fall, strung it, and laid five poison-tipped arrows across her knee. The venom was old. She did not know if it still worked. The wolf came out of the pines at a walk, unhurried, testing the wind. It circled the stall once and set its shoulder against the gate. The log cracked. Mercedes drew and shot. The first arrow struck the ribs and held. The wolf spun, bit at the shaft, snapped it off. She shot again and hit the hindquarter. It charged the cabin. She put the third arrow through its neck at ten paces. The wolf hit the wall below her and slid down into the snow. It tried to stand twice. Then the poison caught it and it stopped moving. Mercedes climbed down. Her hands were shaking so hard she dropped the fourth arrow twice before she got it back in the quiver. The horse was alive. She was alive. She checked the stall and found the gate splintered through the middle plank; one more shove and the wolf would have been inside. She could not ride tonight. She dragged the carcass away from the cabin so the smell would not draw more, then barred herself and the horse inside the stall. By lamplight she counted what the fight had cost her. Two arrows spent, one broken. The gate would need repair before morning. The horse had a gash along its shoulder where it had torn itself on a nail in the panic, and the wound was already stiffening in the cold. The mountain was still days north. She had a wounded horse, a broken gate, and no way to know what else the wolf's scent trail would bring to her door before dawn.