Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 15 of 38

Thornwyn barred the door and pressed her ear to the wood. Hooves broke into a walk on the frozen road. Six riders. She had seen the shapes at dawn from the ward line, and now she heard them slow at her fence. The cottage was logs and daub. The ward would turn a blade but not a fire. She had one witch, one wounded elf, one silent child, and a stitched deer by the hearth. She could not hold this house through a siege. She crossed to the piebald deer. Its patchwork flank rose and fell in shallow lifts. The long tail twitched when she touched its ear. She spoke close to its face. "I need one more thing from you," she said. "Not to fight. To carry." The girl looked up from the deer's side. Thornwyn met her eyes. "You are going with him," Thornwyn said, and nodded at the elf against the wall. "Out the cellar door. West through the trees. I will hold the road." The elf pushed to his feet on the good leg. "You cannot hold six." "I do not have to hold them. I have to send them past." She took her staff and went to the hearth. She drove the base into the ash and spoke the summoning her mother had taught her only once. The fire drew inward. Smoke gathered and thickened and shaped itself against the stones. A body stepped out of it. Antlers. A wolf's set to the shoulders. A bear's weight through the chest. The staghound-shaped thing lowered its head under the beam and waited. "West," she told it. "Carry them until dusk. Do not stop for a voice you know." She lifted the girl onto its back. The elf climbed up behind, jaw tight against the pain in his leg. The girl reached down once and put her palm on Thornwyn's cheek. Thornwyn held it there a breath. "I will come find you," she said. She opened the root cellar hatch. The chimera folded itself down the steps and out the low back door into the trees. Snow closed behind them. Thornwyn walked to the front window. She pulled the shutter wide so the riders could see her staff in her hand and no one else inside. She spoke a green word and set the shed roof burning. Then the woodpile. Then the eave above the door. Smoke rolled up thick and black over the ward. The riders spurred forward and split around the fence. She heard them shout to circle the fire. She stepped back from the window and let them see her turn east through the smoke, staff high, alone. They followed. All six. The cottage burned behind her. The girl was gone west. The ward was already breaking in the heat, and Thornwyn ran the eastern road to keep them on her heel.