Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 51 of 66

Rebecka left the cave with six arrows, the compass, and the count in her head. Two riders with the woman. One at the milestone with horses. A lamp in a shepherd's hut she had to snuff before moonset. She took the ridge path on foot and the cold cut through her jacket. The hut sat where the captives said. One window on the north side, one yellow lamp inside. She crossed the last fifty paces low and put an arrow through the base of the flame. The lamp fell. The oil caught the sill and then died on stone. The window went dark. She counted to sixty and nothing moved on the road. She climbed above the coast road and lay flat in the heather. The compass warmed. Three dots, close together, riding hard from the north. The woman and her two riders. She strung the bow and set five arrows point-down in the dirt. Then the trouble. She raised the magical eye and looked. Three riders at a hard gallop, cloaks up, hoods drawn. All three the same shape in the dark. She could not tell the woman from the men. If she shot the wrong one first, the leader would turn her horse into the trees and be gone before Rebecka nocked again. She pulled the small vial from her jacket. A coiled length of braided cord lay beside it in the pocket, runes stitched along its length, the binding rope her grandmother had left in the cabinet. She had not known what to do with it until now. She dropped the vial into a puddle under a flat stone. Old water. The gold and blue caught. She spoke her daughter's name over it and asked for eyes that were not hers. The puddle showed a woman with mocha skin and braided hair, jellyfish shells at her collar, a green tail curled in a coral hall far from any road. A tide-witch her grandmother had bargained with once. The woman looked up from her shell chamber and listened. "The center rider," Rebecka said. "Which one leads." The tide-witch tilted her head. Water carried voice a long way. "The one on the left. Shorter stirrup. Right hand free of the rein." The puddle went dark. Rebecka set the binding rope in a loop across the road under a scatter of leaves, the free end tied to a birch. Then she climbed back to her line and waited. They came around the bend at speed. Rebecka watched the stirrups. Left rider, short. Right hand loose. She drew and shot. The woman took the arrow through the throat and went off the horse. The other two hauled reins. Their mounts hit the rope loop. Both animals went down in the leaves. Rebecka put an arrow into each rider before they cleared the saddle. Three dead. One left at the milestone with fresh horses, waiting for a signal that would not come.