Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 16 of 38

Thornwyn ran the eastern road with the cottage burning behind her. The riders held the road at a trot, letting the horses save wind. She had no horse. She had a staff, a crow somewhere overhead, and legs that would fail before theirs did. If she stayed on the road, they would ride her down inside an hour. If they rode her down here, they would turn back for the smoke and cast for tracks around the cottage. They would find the western prints in the snow. She cut off the road into the trees. The drifts came to her knees. She pushed north through birch and thorn, breaking a trail any child could follow. That was the point. She wanted them off their saddles. She wanted them slow. Behind her, a shout. Then the wet crack of a horse forced into deep snow. She heard one rider curse and swing down. Boots now, not hooves. Six sets, spreading. She climbed a rise and dropped behind a fallen pine. Her lungs burned. She pressed a hand to the bark and spoke into it. The wood answered slow, half asleep under the frost. She asked it for one thing. She asked the roots along the slope to lift. The ground shifted under the nearest boots. A man went down hard. Another caught his knee on a root that had not been there a breath before. They shouted to each other and drew closer together, which was worse for her. Bunched, they would not scatter west. She needed them angry. She needed them fixed on her. She stood up behind the pine and let them see her. She lifted the staff and brought it down. A birch cracked at the trunk and fell across their line. One rider loosed an arrow. It struck her in the thigh and buried to the fletching. She went down on the good leg and did not scream. The crow dropped through the branches and raked the archer's face. He swung and missed. She dragged herself over the ridge and half rolled down the far side into a hollow choked with fern and old snow. She heard them come over the ridge. She heard them stop. She had left a print at the top and none below. She pressed her back into the hollow and pulled the fern over her chest and shut her mouth around her breath. The piebald deer's face came to her — the stitched flank, the long tail, the eye that had watched her work. She held that eye behind her own and did not move. Boots crossed above her head. A voice called north. Another answered north. They chose north. They went past. She lay in the fern with the arrow in her leg and listened to them go. The girl was west. The riders were north. She had bought it with a hole in her thigh and she could not yet stand.