Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 5 of 31

They took the lane behind the smithery to skirt the square. Sterling kept one hand on the cracked blade under his coat. The ash jar knocked his hip with every step. Linny walked half a pace ahead, hat pulled low. The village was still asleep. Smoke rose from three chimneys. The ridge road began past the last well. Two men stepped out from the alley by the cooper's shed. A third came around the well behind them. Sterling knew all three by face. They worked for the governor. The one in front carried a cudgel. The other two carried nothing, which was worse. "Miss Marsh." A fourth voice, from the mouth of the lane. Calloway Hild walked into the gray light with his hands folded behind his back. His spectacles caught what little there was. He wore his good coat. "And the smith. Out early." "Move," Linny said. "I can't do that." Hild stopped six paces off. "Word came to me last night that you meant to cross the ridge at dawn. After what visited the square. After the dead we buried." He glanced at Sterling. "I won't lose more villagers to that woods for a girl's sketchbook." "You don't decide where I go," Linny said. "I decide who leaves the village during a curfew." Hild tilted his head. "Go home. Both of you. Tomorrow we'll speak about it properly." Sterling read the men behind him. The cudgel was for show. The empty hands were for holding Linny while the cudgel worked on him. He had two seconds before Hild gave the nod. He pulled the ash jar from his pouch and threw it hard at the cobbles between them. The clay burst. Gray hearth-ash rose in a cloud and hung in the still air. Sterling grabbed Linny's wrist and pulled her sideways into the cooper's alley. The men shouted. Someone coughed. Hild's voice cut through, sharp, giving orders. They ran. Linny knew the back ways better than he did. She took him past the seamstress shop and up the goat path that climbed toward the tree line. His shoulder wound pulled with every stride. He did not slow. They stopped only when the village was below them and the pines began. Linny bent with her hands on her knees. Her hat was gone. Her hair had come loose. There was ash in it. "That was our mask," Sterling said. "I have yours." She patted her coat pocket. The second jar was still there. "One jar. For both of us. Days out." "Then we ration and gather more when we can." She straightened. She looked back down at the roofs. "He'll send men after us." "He'll send them up the ridge road. Not this way." She looked at him. Something in her face softened for a breath. Then she turned and started up through the pines. Sterling followed. The snow began under his boots before he had climbed a hundred paces.