Sierra Ashwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

Sierra stood on the ridge crest with the torch guttering in her fist. The valley she needed to map spread below, cut off by the pack on the slope. She swung the flame at the nearest wolf. It only crouched lower and held its ground. The others fanned out, patient, no longer fooled. The trick that had cleared her path now meant nothing. She backed toward a stand of rock and thought. The wolves feared fire, but they had learned her one move. She needed a new one. Her eyes fell on the slope itself, dry grass and loose brush baked pale by weeks without rain. Not a torch to wave. A wall. Sierra crouched and pulled the hatchet from its sheath. She hacked at the dry brush and dragged armfuls into a long line across the slope, between herself and the pack. The lead wolf watched, ears flat. She worked fast, sweat stinging her eyes, until the pile stretched wide enough to close the gap. She touched the dying torch to the near end. The dry grass caught at once. Flame ran along the line, crackling, throwing smoke down at the wolves. This was no single flame they could circle. It was a barrier, growing, spitting sparks into the wind. The pack broke. Two wolves bolted uphill. The lead wolf held one breath longer, then turned and fled after them, tail low. The slope below Sierra stood empty. Her path to the valley floor lay open at last. But the wind shifted. The fire she had lit did not stay put. It leaned downhill, into the brush and dry timber that filled the valley she meant to map. Flame spread past her control, eating toward the trees below. Smoke rolled thick and black across the slope. Sierra stood frozen, hatchet in one hand, spent torch in the other. She had beaten the wolves. She had also set fire to the very ground she came to chart. The valley floor, the river, the tree line she had sketched an hour ago, all of it lay in the path of the flames. She could not go down now. The heat drove her back up the crest, coughing, eyes streaming. Below her the fire raced on, unmapped country burning before she could draw it. The pack was gone, but so was her way in. She would have to find another route down, and fast, before the whole valley turned to ash.