Oswin Merrick's Arc

Chapter 5 of 9

Oswin turned the disc in his hands. The engraved lines ran off its edge and pointed somewhere he'd never mapped. He could not read the rest without hauling the thing back through the bog to open ground. The disc was heavy. Too heavy to carry far alone. He looked to the gap where Garret Ironhand stood wiping his tools on his apron. "I need help moving this," Oswin said. "Back across the hollow. Into the light where I can study it." Garret didn't reach for the disc. He looked at it for a long moment. Garret was the wandering blacksmith who'd pried the slab loose an hour ago, a broad man with old burn scars and a folding kit of tools. He'd asked for nothing then. He asked now. "That thing's worth something," Garret said. "Or it leads to something worth more. I heard it in your voice." He set the iron bar down. "I moved the wall. My back carries it out. I want a share of whatever it finds." Oswin's grip tightened. Three years he'd walked for this. The disc was his. "It's not treasure. It's a map." "Maps lead to treasure." Garret's voice dropped, quieter and flatter. "I don't ask for much. A man learns not to." His hand went to his pocket, then stopped. "I lost more than tools this year. I'm not walking away empty again." Oswin studied him. He knew the look of a man chasing something he couldn't afford to lose. He'd worn it himself in every mirror for three years. Without Garret's back, the disc stayed here, and the path beyond it stayed a rumor cut in metal. "A fair share," Oswin said. "Whatever the map leads to, we split it. But I keep the disc itself. I read it. I choose the road." Garret held out his hand. The palm was thick with callus. "Fair." They shook. Then Garret crouched, worked his arms under the disc, and lifted. His face went red. The muscles in his neck stood out like rope. Oswin took the far edge and pushed. Together they hauled it through the gap and onto the trail. The parrot dropped from a branch and landed on the beetle's armored shell. The beetle waited at the edge of the mud where the invisible roots began. Oswin and Garret set the disc across its broad back and lashed it down with cord from Garret's kit. "You know the way across?" Garret asked, eyeing the bog. "I know the roots." Oswin stepped onto the first hidden ridge. His boot held. "Follow my feet. Not the mud." They started across, the beetle between them, the disc riding its shell. Oswin had his relic and now a partner who'd share whatever it promised. He didn't yet know that a shared prize meant a shared claim, and that Garret's grief would want more than metal.