Samantha Carrillo's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Samantha pushed through the brush for half an hour before the cry reached her. It came thin and high through the trees, then broke off. She froze with one hand on her sword. The light under the canopy had gone the color of old tea. She had maybe an hour before she could not see her own boots. The cry came again from her left, past a stand of pines. She could not tell if it was a grown man or a scared kid. She crouched and listened for a second sound to place it. She found a lantern first. It sat on its side in the leaves, glass cracked but the candle inside still warm. Someone had dropped it running. A few steps past it, the ground showed two sets of prints. One set wore boots and dragged. The other wore boots and ran. The dragged set went one way. The runner went the other. The cry came again from the dragging trail. She picked up the lantern, shielded the flame, and followed the drag marks deeper in. The trees opened on a wide pit sunk into the forest floor. Stone walls dropped straight down, slick with moss and wet earth. At the bottom, a man in a stained tunic sat with his back against the rock, holding one ankle. He saw her light and lifted both hands. "Please," he said. "They left me. I think it's broken." Past the pit, on the far side of a small clearing, Samantha saw a ring of blackened stones around a dead fire. A length of rope hung from a branch beside it. The pack animal was gone. So were the bandits. They had panicked, dumped the merchant down the pit, and run when they heard her in the brush. She set the lantern at the edge so its light reached him. "I'm coming down," she called. "Stay still." She worked along the wall until she found a slope of broken rock she could pick her way down. At the bottom she crouched beside him and looked at the ankle. Swollen, not bent wrong. He could walk if she carried half his weight. He told her his name was Petar and that he had been heading to Hollowmere with cloth. She told him she was going there too. She got her shoulder under his arm and lifted. He was heavier than she expected, and the climb out of the pit would take what was left of the light. She did not know how she would move him through the woods in the dark. But she had found him alive, and she was not going to leave him.