Raewyn's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The horns kept sounding, closer now. Raewyn stood beneath the sentinel and counted the calls. Three horns, maybe four. The host was too wide for one killing ground. She could not lead a hundred men under one canopy. They would scatter through the whole grove and cut it apart. She needed more than one tree that would fight. She went to find the only other who might come. Thorn Hollowbark was her lover, and he had hunted these woods longer than he cared to count. He guarded his own grove far to the north. He had not come near hers in a long time. She found him crouched over a fresh scar in the earth, where something had torn a young ash up by the roots. "Axes are in my grove," she said. "A host. Too many for one tree." Thorn did not look up. He pressed his palm flat against the broken root. "Something's pulling my trees up too." He was quiet a moment. "Same night. Same horns." "Then we have the same enemy." Raewyn crouched beside him. "My sentinel will fight. But it can only kill what walks under it. I cannot funnel a whole host into one canopy alone." He stood. He was small and gnarled, twigs bristling from his head, but his black eyes held steady on her. "You want a second mouth." "I want you to wake yours. Two groves. Two killing grounds." Thorn said nothing for a long breath. She knew what she asked. He had killed a thing once and buried it under his widest grove, and the grove had died from the burying. He had not gone back since. Now she asked him to wake trees that might carry the same grief hers had carried. "The old grove is dead," he said. "But the young ones aren't." He closed his hand into a fist. "I'll wake what I can." They split the work before dawn. Raewyn returned to her sentinel and pressed both palms to its bark. "He comes with his own," she told it. "We drive them between us." The carved face stayed shut, but the ground hummed under her feet. When the host poured into the grove, the two elves worked as one. Raewyn struck trunks on the eastern edge and drove the first column under her sentinel's limbs. Roots seized them; branches swept them down. Thorn cracked wood to the west and turned the second column into his own young trees. His ash trees bent low and took them. The host broke in half. Neither wing could reach the other. By the time the loam swallowed the last of them, the grove was quiet again. Raewyn found Thorn among his standing ash. His hands were dark to the wrist. He met her eyes and did not smile. "More coming," he said. "I heard a fifth horn."