Pell Ashvorn's Arc

Chapter 7 of 4

Pell pushed the branches from the door and stepped into the red light. The court would sit at nightfall. But between the shelter and the city walls ran open road, and the throne's riders patrolled it. He needed a path they would not watch. He did not know one. Aldric came out behind him, leaning on his staff. "The road is death," the old man said. "They'll have men at the eastern gate. They'll have men on every cart track." "Then we don't take the road." Pell crouched and studied the ground. Two winters cutting timber had taught him this forest. He knew the deer trails, the dry creek beds, the low places where a man could move unseen. "There's a stream that runs under the wall. I hauled logs along it once. It comes out near the old tannery, inside the city." Aldric's eyes narrowed. "A woodcutter's back door." "The only kind I have." They went in silence, Pell first, breaking a path through fern and bramble. He tested each step before he trusted it with weight. When Aldric stumbled, Pell caught his arm and held him upright. The old man's breath rasped, but he did not complain. Half a mile on, Pell heard hooves. He dropped flat and pulled Aldric down beside a fallen trunk. Three riders passed on a track twenty feet away. Torchlight swung across the trees. Pell pressed his cheek to the dirt and did not breathe. A horse snorted. One rider reined in. "Something moved," the man said. Pell's hand closed on a stone. He waited. His heart struck against the ground. "A fox," another rider said. "Ride on. He wants us at the gate." The hooves faded east. Pell let out his breath. He had chosen right. The riders watched the gate and the road. They did not know the stream. They reached the water where it slid under the wall through a low stone arch, black and dripping. Pell had squeezed logs through that gap in daylight. In the dark it looked like a throat. He waded in first. The cold gripped his legs. He guided Aldric after him, one hand on the old man's shoulder, until they stood inside the city, dripping, in the shadow of the tannery. Pell wiped the mud from the signet ring on its cord. The court was close now. He could hear the bells calling the lords to their seats. "We're in," he said. "They never saw us." Aldric squeezed the water from his beard. "No. But they'll know soon." He looked toward the torches of the court hall. "The moment you speak your name in that room, every hunter in this city turns and comes for us. There's no stream to hide us then." Pell held the ring in his fist. He had found his way in. Now the only path left ran forward, into the court, into the open.