Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 18 of 66

Rebecka laid the five arrows on the cave floor and counted them again. Five shafts. A war party of forty, maybe more, marching down the ridge by morning. The math had not changed since Marcus told it to her an hour ago. She would drop five and the rest would walk over her body into the deeper chamber, where her mother and daughter waited behind sealed stone. She needed more arrows. There were no more arrows. The quiver from her father's cache had been full when she pulled it out of the birch wood, and star-forged shafts did not grow back. She walked to the mouth of the cave where the crystals in the walls threw pale light on the floor. She sat with her back against the cold stone and closed her eyes. She thought of her brother, seventeen and dead in the yard. She thought of the person who had run and left the quiver behind. She thought, help me. When she opened her eyes a woman was standing in front of her. Bare feet on the stone. War paint dry on her cheeks. A quiver on her back, full, the fletchings the same dull silver as Rebecka's five. A pendant of small beads at her throat, the kind a child would string. Rebecka did not move. She had seen this woman at the edge of dreams for years and never in a room. "Stand up," the woman said. Rebecka stood. "I am Aiyana. I carried these before your grandmother's grandmother. They answer the same blood." "I have five." "You have what is in my quiver too. Reach." Rebecka reached. Her hand did not pass through the leather. It closed on a shaft. She drew it out. The hum was the same as her own. She drew a second. A third. She counted twelve before her hand met the bottom. "They spend when you loose them," Aiyana said. "They do not come back. Use them on the ones who will not turn." "Why now." "You asked. And the other one is close to your girl again. I mean to be here when he tries." Rebecka's throat closed. "Dirk." "I know his knot. I know what it costs him. I will be at your shoulder when he comes for her." Rebecka gathered the arrows into her own quiver. Seventeen shafts now. Not enough for forty. Enough to matter. She walked back to Marcus and Lark at the fire. Katia looked up from where Ninka slept against her side and saw the full quiver and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that a mother did not already know. "We hold the mouth," Rebecka said. "I have twelve more. And I am not alone at my back." Outside, on the ridge road, the first horns of the war party sounded.