Rook Fenwall's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

The last hound lay still in the tunnel mouth. Rook pulled himself free of the rock and looked up. The ranger sat against an ironwood trunk, one hand pressed to his side. Blood soaked his sleeve. His wolf whined and pushed its nose under his arm. The old man had come down to fight, and the fight had cost him. Rook climbed to him. "You're hurt." "A hound got its teeth in before your wolf-cousin here finished it." Walter Pinewood tried to stand and failed. His face went gray. "I can't make that climb. And I can't go down that hole. Not like this." He looked at the black gap breathing cold air. "You'll go alone, iron man. Same as always." Rook said nothing. He had spent three years alone at the forest's edge. He knew the shape of it. But the ranger's arrows had saved him twice now, and the dark below was worse than anything he had faced. Walter gripped Rook's wrist. "Listen. Before you go down there. This isn't the first time men came to kill that thing." He nodded toward the trees. "Past the grove, there's a chapel. Broke and roofless. Knights held it once. They marched down that same throat to end the horror, and none walked back out. But they left their gear behind." Rook turned. Through the ironwood trunks he saw it now, half-hidden in the dark. Broken arches. Shattered stone. A doorway still standing, its frame carved bright with old paint and letters worn but readable. He crossed to it. The vow above the door named all who guard the weak as friends. The knights had believed it. The knights had died anyway. Inside, armor stood along the walls, empty suits gone green with age. Swords leaned in the corners. A scroll lay sealed on a cracked altar. Rook lifted a blade from the pile. Its edge held. He tested a breastplate against his dented one and left his own where it lay. He carried what he could back to the ranger. Walter's eyes had gone dim, but he still breathed. Rook set water beside him and dragged the dead hounds clear, so nothing would smell fresh blood and come for the wounded man. "Go on," Walter said. "I'll hold the top. What I can hold." His wolf lay down across his legs. Rook stood at the tunnel mouth. He had a fresh blade and the gear of dead men who had walked this road before him. He had no ally at his back now. The cold air pulled at him, steady and patient. He stepped into the dark and began to climb down toward the thing that killed his people.