Rowan Steele's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The rider was gone, but Rowan heard hooves fade down the hill. He knew the truth now. He also knew what it cost him. She had seen his face and his broken crest. If he stayed in this town, her house would send more riders. They would corner him before dawn. He had to leave before that happened. He pushed out of the ruined tower into the cold. The rider's horse was already a shadow far down the road. Rowan could not catch her on foot. But her two beasts had not gone with her. They circled above the tower, confused, snapping at the wind. Rowan understood. Those creatures tracked deserters. If they lived, they would lead the rider straight back to him wherever he ran. He needed them grounded, or he needed them gone. A small dragon with blue scales dove at his head. Beside it flew a dog with wide feathered ears, teeth bared. He did not swing his sword. Killing them would only prove what the rider claimed. Instead he pulled the dark cloak from his shoulders. The cloth that had hidden his crest now became a net. He waited. The dragon dove again. Rowan threw the cloak wide and swept both beasts down together. They thrashed inside the folds. He held the bundle tight against his chest and ran. He ran off the road, away from the town, into the trees. The beasts squirmed but could not free their wings. He stopped at the base of a huge tree. Its roots rose taller than a man, coiled like walls. Rowan knelt and forced the wrapped beasts into a deep hollow between two roots. He pinned the cloak with a stone. The dragon shrieked. The dog scratched. But the roots held them, and the cloth held them, and no rider would hear them this far off the road. Rowan stood over the hollow, breathing hard. His chest was bare now. The broken royal crest showed plain in the moonlight, welded shut, useless. He had given up his only disguise to blind his hunters. It was a fair trade. Without the beasts, the rider had no way to track him. She would return to the tower and find him gone. She would find her creatures gone. She would have to guess which road he took, and she would guess wrong. Rowan looked south, toward Blackmoor land. That was where the massacre orders had come from. That was where the noble waited who had burned twelve homes. Now the same house hunted him. So he would go to them. He wiped mud from the crest with his thumb. No more hiding it. No more asking careful questions in dark rooms. They knew his name. He would learn theirs. He turned from the trapped beasts and walked into the dark, toward the house that wanted him dead.