Samantha Carrillo's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Samantha walked the road through the night and into a gray morning. The trees thinned at a bend, and she stopped before she stepped into it. A handcart lay tipped on its side across the path, one wheel cracked into spokes. Bolts of red and yellow cloth spilled into the dirt. Linen bundles had rolled into the weeds. No one stood near it. No voice called for help. She put her hand on her sword and listened to the wind in the leaves. She edged closer and crouched by the wreck. A pair of leather gloves lay folded under a bolt of cloth, dry and her size. She pulled them on and flexed her fingers. Near the front of the cart, a leather pouch had tipped over. Coins had spilled across a small pile of dried herbs. She scraped the coins into her palm and dropped them into her inventory. The pouch itself smelled like rosemary and sweat. Someone had carried it against their skin for a long time. She stood and walked a slow circle around the cart. In a soft patch of mud past the shoulder, she found what she was looking for. Three sets of boot prints, none deep, none matched. One print had stepped on another, which meant they had crowded each other. A single set of hoof prints trailed off into the brush, light and uneven, like a pack animal led away by someone who did not know how to lead. No blood on the dirt. No drag marks toward the road. Bandits, she decided. New ones. They had spooked the merchant off the cart, taken the animal, and run before they thought to take the coins. She stepped back to the road and weighed it. Walk on and reach Hollowmere by dusk. Turn back a day to fetch help that might not come. Or follow the hoof prints into the brush after a man she had never met. She thought about the silent players on the benches in the plaza, the ones who had stopped caring what happened to anyone else. She tightened the gloves on her hands and checked her sword in its sheath. Then she stepped off the road and into the trees, following the hoof prints east of the path, where the merchant had been taken.