Sir Aldric Brightblade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

They ran until the horns faded, then the dogs found their scent. Aldric pushed the party through a dry creek bed as dawn broke. Father Matthias stumbled on torn feet. Rowen half-carried him. Behind them, far back, bandit riders crossed the ridge. Garrick had named Aldric to the whole gang. Now there was no inn, no camp, no road the bandits did not watch. "We can't outrun horses on foot," Rowen said. His sun-marked tabard was black with mud. "They'll ride us down by noon." Aldric looked at the holy sword in his fist. Its engravings caught the gray light. He had come to steal back a relic. Instead he was the hunted one now. "Then we stop running," he said. "We pick the ground." Sylara dropped from a rock ledge ahead, bow already in hand. She had scouted the way while they staggered. "There's a narrow cut above the creek," she said. "One rider wide. I've marked the angles." She nocked an arrow without looking at it. "Get the priest past it. Leave the chase to me." "We stand with you," Aldric said. "You'd clatter and give me away." She almost smiled. "I've killed more of these men than you have. Trust my aim or lose the priest." Aldric trusted it. He hauled Matthias up the cut while Rowen guarded the rear. The riders came fast, bunching where the walls pinched close. Sylara waited in the brush above. Her first arrow took the lead rider from his saddle. His horse fell and blocked the gap. The second man piled into the wreck. She loosed again and again, clean and quick. Men screamed. Horses reared in the choke of stone. From the top of the cut, Aldric and Rowen rolled loose boulders down. Rock crushed the trapped riders against their own dead mounts. The bandits broke. Three turned and fled back the way they came. The dogs ran after them. Silence settled. Sylara climbed up, quiver near empty. "That's half their hunting band," she said. "They'll think twice before the next chase." Matthias sank against the stone and gripped his wooden cross. "Bless you. All of you." But Aldric watched the fleeing riders shrink into the distance. One would reach Garrick. One would tell him exactly which way they had gone. "They're broken, not blind," he said. "They know our heading now." He turned to Matthias. The priest had lived inside that fort for weeks. "Father. You were in the canyon fort. Where does Garrick keep the relic?" Matthias lifted his head. His eyes were raw but steady. "In the deep vault, below his own quarters," he said. "But a courier rides there within days, carrying something he guards above all else." Aldric gripped the holy sword. The hunters were beaten. Now he had a map in the priest's memory, and a deadline he could not miss.