Telari's Arc

Chapter 2 of 11

The whispers had drawn back into the trees. Telari crouched behind a fallen log, the grey lion at her knee, the white one flat in the ferns. Twelve arrows. That was all. Somewhere ahead waited more of the pale things, and she had no idea how many. Ten? Fifty? Charging blind meant she and the lions could be surrounded and pulled down in the dark. She needed to know the size of that force before she moved another step. She had no way to know it. A branch snapped behind her. The grey lion spun, teeth bared. Telari swung her bow around and drew. "Hold, girl. It's me." A broad man stepped from the shadows, both hands raised. He stood a full head taller than her, gray-bearded, a longsword at his hip and a shorter blade beside it. A small scar marked his left cheek like a dimple. Telari knew him. Katt, the blacksmith from the town below her tower. He had mended her arrowheads all winter and never once asked what she hunted. "Katt." She lowered the bow. Her heart still hammered. "You could have died just now." "I nearly did." He nodded at the lions and did not flinch. "Folk in town saw lights in the trees. Heard screaming. They sent me to find you before you got yourself killed." His eyes moved over the dead scout behind her. "Seems I'm late." "There are more. Deeper in." Telari kept her voice low. "I don't know how many. That's the problem. I can't charge in blind." Katt knelt beside her and studied the trees. "Then don't charge. Look first." He pointed to a rise of ground off to the right, thick with pines. "High ground. You climb, you count. I'll hold here with the cats." It was a good plan. Simple. She should have thought of it herself. Telari slung her bow and climbed the rise, boots quiet on the needles. The white lion followed her up, silent as frost. At the top she flattened against a trunk and looked down. Below, in a clearing, torches burned. She counted the pale shapes moving between them. Not dozens. Nine. Nine of the shrieking things, and one taller figure at their center giving orders. A handful, not an army. She could see their whole camp. She could see the gaps between them. She climbed back down, breathing steady now. "Nine," she told Katt. "One leader. I saw the ground. I saw the gaps." Katt drew his longsword and tested its weight. "Nine, two blades, two cats, and your twelve arrows." He almost smiled. "I've faced worse odds." Telari nocked an arrow. The blind spot was gone. She knew the number now, and she was no longer alone. But knowing the number changed nothing about the taller figure at the center of that camp. Whatever it was, it had brought the others here for a reason. And now it stood between her and the way home.