Sir Aldric Thornhaven's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Sir Aldric Thornhaven knelt in the cold mud and pressed two fingers to the dead man's throat. No pulse. The farmer lay near his broken fence, chest torn open. Aldric had sworn to keep Floeridge safe from the Fel beasts of the wild. As Captain of the Guard, he had walked the outer walls that very morning. Now something had slipped past them, and a man was dead. The claw marks in the dirt were wide and deep. Aldric measured one against his gloved hand. The beast stood tall, and it moved fast. He followed the tracks to the fence line, where they stopped. Rain had washed the trail away past that point. If he could not find the beast's path, it would strike again by nightfall. A woman stood at the farmhouse door, watching him. The dead man's wife. She wore a stained apron and heavy boots, and her hands would not stay still. She was the only one who had seen it. "Mistress Harwell," Aldric said. He rose and kept his voice low. "I am sorry. I need to know what you saw." Ruth Harwell did not cry. She stared past him at the body. "It came from the trees. Low to the ground. Gray, like ash." Her voice shook, but she pushed on. "It went back that way when it was done. Toward the water. Not the road." Aldric turned. The tracks by the fence pointed toward the road, away from the water. "You are certain?" "I watched my husband die," she said. "I am certain." He believed her. The clear tracks were a false trail. The beast had doubled back to hide its true path. Aldric walked past the fence toward the stream, ignoring the marks he was meant to follow. Twenty paces on, he found it: a single print in the soft bank, toes turned toward the water. Then another. The trail ran along the stream, hidden by reeds. He followed it until the light began to fail. The prints led to a low cave mouth beneath a rise of stone. Bones lay scattered at the entrance, some old, some fresh. This was no lone hunter passing through. The beast had made a den inside his walls. Aldric crouched and studied the ground. He counted the prints. Large ones, and smaller beside them. Not one beast. Several. A grown Fel and its young. He drew his sword an inch, then let it fall back. One knight could not clear a den alone, not in the dark. He marked the place in his memory and turned back toward town. The Lampshingle Tavern glowed ahead, its lamp bright against the coming night. His men would be there. He would need every one of them. Aldric had found the trail. But the danger was no longer a single beast on the loose. A whole nest of them nested behind his walls, and morning would come too slowly.