Raewyn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Raewyn crouched at the edge of the firelight and counted them again. Ten men, maybe twelve, broad and armored, their axes stacked against a felled oak. One strike from her would draw them all. They would cut her down before she thinned their number. She needed the grove itself to fight beside her. She crept back through the dark to the great sentinel tree. Its ironwood trunk twisted up out of the roots, and the sleeping face carved in its bark seemed to watch her. She pressed both palms to the bark. "They cut toward the old ones," she said. "I cannot stop them alone. Lend me your roots." The ground trembled under her feet. The sentinel's carved eyes stayed shut, but its voice moved the soil. "Then bring them to me. The rest is mine." Raewyn understood. She could not win a battle in the open. She could win an ambush. She circled wide and slipped into the trees behind the invaders' camp. She found a fallen branch and struck a trunk, hard, twice. Wood cracked in the dark. The men jumped up and grabbed their axes. A big one pointed toward the sound. Raewyn struck another trunk farther off, then another, drawing their line away from the fire. They followed, cursing, boots crushing leaves. She led them straight beneath the sentinel's vast canopy. When the last man passed under the branches, the tree woke fully. Roots tore up from the ground and coiled around ankles. The men shouted and swung their axes at the wood. The sentinel's limbs bent low and swept them off their feet. Branches wrapped two of them and lifted them screaming into the dark leaves. Raewyn moved among the ones still down. She was quick and silent between the roots. She took them one at a time, cutting throats before they could rise. The tree held them; she finished them. This was the ambush she had planned, and it worked. When it ended, the ground was still. Roots dragged the bodies down into the loam. Raewyn stood in the quiet, breathing hard, her blades wet. The warband deep in her grove was dead. Then a horn sounded, far off through the trees. Deep and low, answered by a second. Raewyn turned toward it. This band had not come alone. They were the forward camp of a larger host, and now that host knew their scouts had gone silent. The sentinel's voice came once more, quieter. "You cleared one nest. The swarm still comes." Raewyn wiped her blades on the moss. She had proven the grove would fight with her. But the horns kept sounding, closer now, and there were far more axes still moving through her forest than one tree could swallow.