Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 11 of 38

By the second day the crow flew low and slow, and Thornwyn knew the weather before she felt it. The wind turned at midday. It came off the eastern ridges with a cold edge that cut through her cloak. She had laid two false camps already, scuffing the elf's boot pattern into the dirt, burning small fires and letting the smoke mark the trees. Two more camps waited ahead. She had counted on mild nights. She had not counted on a front rolling in early. By dusk her fingers would not close on the staff. Her breath hung white. The elf's list named a fourth camp near a stream, but no shelter between here and there. If she stopped to build one, she lost a day. If she pushed through, she froze before finishing the trail. Either failure sent the sellswords toward the cottage. She knelt at the base of an oak and pressed her palm to the ground. She spoke through the staff, low words for calling. Not a summons. A request. She asked the woods for anything warm-blooded that would carry her. The crow landed on a branch above and waited. What came through the brush was not a horse. It stood taller than her deer, heavier in the shoulder, with the long legs of something built to run. Antlers rose from its head. Its snout was narrow and toothed. Dark fur ran down its back like a bear's mantle, and its chest was pale as a wolf's. It stopped ten paces off and watched her. Thornwyn stayed on her knees. She held the staff flat across her palms. "I need four days," she said. "Two out. Two back. There is a child." The creature stepped closer. It lowered its head and touched its nose to the staff. She felt the wood warm under her hand. She rose slowly and set her palm on its shoulder. The fur was thick and dry. She swung a leg over its back. It did not shift or startle. They moved through the trees at a pace no horse could hold in that ground. She laid the third camp by moonlight, dragging the elf's spare boot through frost, spilling oats, leaving a torn strip of his shirt on a thorn. The creature waited each time without sound. By the fourth camp the wind had teeth, but she rode above the cold, her legs pressed to the animal's warmth. She finished the false trail a full day early. She turned west with the wind at her back. The crow flew ahead now, faster, urgent. Thornwyn leaned low against the creature's neck and let it run. Something at the cottage had shifted while she was gone. She did not know what. She only knew the crow had never flown like that before, and that she was still two days from her own door.