The night watch guard's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

The paw print sat fresh in the mud, and the guard rose from his crouch with the lantern low. He moved off the trail into the brush, following the drag of broken twigs. The bushes on either side of him leaned wrong. Branches snapped down at knee height. Leaves crushed flat in wide, uneven patches, as if something heavy had circled and settled and moved again. He stopped. He counted the patches. Four, then six, then a seventh behind him. He had walked into a ring of trampled ground and only noticed once he stood inside it. A low growl rolled out of the bush to his right. He swung the lantern high and drew his watch sword in the same motion. The light caught yellow eyes and a spine of grey and purple fur before the thing left the ground. He turned his shoulder into the leap. Claws raked the cloth of his coat and split the skin beneath. Hot blood ran down his arm. The creature landed, coiled, and came again — a cat's body with a wolf's weight behind it. He braced his boots and swung. The blade grazed its flank. It howled, a sound too high for its size, and tore back into the dark. The brush shook once and went still. He stood in the ring with his sword up until his breath slowed. His shoulder throbbed. He pressed his palm against the tear in his coat and started walking. The mud gave way to root, the root to packed earth, the earth to worn stone. He came out of the trees onto a square of cobbles laid with moon and star marks between the seams. Lanterns burned on iron posts. He had walked out of the deep woods and into the edge of a town. Across the square stood a low building with a painted sign above the door. A woman knelt on the cobbles beside a man in a blue coat lined with gold. The coat was the missing guard's. She had a cloth pressed to the man's leg and a small clay pot beside her knee with a green shoot rising from the soil. The missing guard was pale but breathing. He lifted his head when the light from the guard's lantern crossed him, and his mouth opened, but no sound came. The woman looked up. She saw the blood on the guard's sleeve and stood at once. She crossed the cobbles to him without hurry and without hesitation, ink stains on her sleeves, the cloth still folded in her hand. "Sit," she said. "You're bleeding." He tried to say the man's name and could not remember if he had ever known it. He sat on the edge of the low wall she pointed to. She knelt and pushed the torn coat back from his shoulder. "Something in the woods," he said. "I know," she said. "He came out of the trees the same way. You found him. That is what matters tonight." She wound the cloth around his arm and tied it off. The missing guard was alive. The thing in the brush was wounded and gone. The trail had ended at a bright square of stone, and he had, against every doubt he carried, kept his watch.