Ravenna Nightblade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

By dawn Ravenna had crossed the pass. The capital lay a half-day's walk below, its dark spires rising over a wide moat. Armored alligators watched the causeway in a slow line. Between here and there stretched open ground, and her brother's patrols walked it daily. She had no place to hide, no wall at her back. One rider could spot her and bring a hundred. Scarlett scouted the slope while the others waited. She came back at midmorning. "There's a hollow under the ridge," she said. "Dead ground. Patrols can't see into it. Water close by." She pointed. "We build there or we get caught in the open." They moved to the hollow. Fenrir hauled fallen wood while the direwolf circled the rim, ears up. Scarlett stretched a tarp between two poles and lashed it tight. She spread the bedrolls and set a kettle by a ring of stones. "No fire till dark," she said. "Smoke carries." She built it plain and fast, the way she'd built the shelter in the mountains. A rough lean-to, but hidden. A base at last. Ravenna knelt inside and spread the sealed order flat. She studied the twin ravens over the crown. "Finnian wears the crest," she said. "That's how the hunters know his word is law. Strip the crest from him and his orders mean nothing." A red shape slipped over the ridge. The blood cat. It walked straight to Ravenna and sat, tail curled, eyes bright as coals. Scarlett froze. "That one drew off a whole warband," she said. "It should be orc food." The cat pressed its head to Ravenna's palm. She felt the warm weight of it. "It came back," she said. It had crossed the pass alone and found her. Not a distraction now. A friend. She scratched under its chin, and it leaned into her hand. Fenrir crouched at the rim. "Rider," he said. Ravenna went still. A lone patrolman walked his horse along the causeway, eyes on the slope. The direwolf lowered its head. Fenrir's fur bristled, but he waited. The rider paused, scanned the ridge, saw only rock and scrub. He turned back toward the keep. The hollow had held. Ravenna let out her breath. She looked at the three of them, then at the cat, then at the dark spires below. "We have a base he can't see," she said. "Now we plan." She smoothed the order on her knee and drew a line in the dirt from the hollow to the causeway. "The moat. The guards on the water. The gate." She tapped the crown on the seal. "I don't want his head. I want what he stole. The crest comes off him, or nothing changes." The cat curled against her leg. For the first time since the pass, Ravenna was not running. She was hunting.