Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 12 of 66

The crawler slid through the mist under its cloak of light. Marcus drove slow to keep the engine quiet. In the back cabin, Ninka slept in the swing Lark had hung, her breath steady, her fingers still curled from holding the dome. Rebecka watched the ridge rise ahead, gray teeth of stone above the pines. The caves were an hour off. The prism on the dash flickered. She counted the flickers. "Charge is thinning," Marcus said. "Twenty minutes, maybe less." Rebecka leaned to the side window. Something moved on the slope behind them. A rider, low on a shaggy horse, nose to the ground where their wheels had bruised the moss. A raider outrider. He had found the track the mist could not hide. "He'll mark the trail to the ridge," she said. "They'll follow it straight to the caves." "Then we lose the caves," Marcus said. "And everyone waiting in them." She already had the bow in her hand. "Stop at the next bend. Behind the rocks. Keep her asleep." Marcus eased the crawler off the track. Rebecka slipped out under the shimmer of the cloak and dropped to the wet ground. The prism would hide the vehicle a few minutes more. It would not hide her. She ran back along their trail, keeping to the low brush, quiver light on her hip. Five arrows. She would need one. She found a rise above the path and knelt. The bow warmed in her hand and read the slope. It found the rider two hundred paces out and hummed the small warning she hated. Close enough to die. Her jaw tightened. She did not lower the bow. The outrider stopped. He swung down and crouched over the wheel prints. He pulled a strip of red cloth from his belt and tied it to a branch. A marker. Another would follow. Then another. A road drawn straight to her daughter. Rebecka drew. The arrow sang a low note against the string. She let it go. The shot took him through the throat before he could stand. He fell across the marker branch and pulled it down with him. She waited, counting to thirty, watching the trees. No second rider. No horn. Only the horse, wandering off into the mist. She went down to the body. She untied the red cloth and put it in her pocket. She dragged him off the path into the ferns and scattered leaves over the wheel prints as best she could. Four arrows left. When she climbed back into the crawler, the prism died. The turquoise plates showed bright through the trees. Marcus looked at her. "Drive," she said. "He was alone. But he tied a marker before I dropped him. Someone taught him to tie markers. Someone will come looking when he doesn't come back." Marcus drove. The ridge closed around them. Ninka slept on.