Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 30 of 38

The elf breathed under Thornwyn's hand. The girl stayed pressed to her side. The stream ran loud in the quiet, and every sound the water made hid another sound she could not hear. Thornwyn counted in her head. The two riders who fled north had a day's ride, maybe less, to reach whoever waited for them. They would come back with more. She could not carry the elf. She could barely stand. The stream bank offered nothing: open gravel, thin willows, one bend of cover. If the riders followed the creek south they would see the trampled moss and the blood on the stones. She looked at the piebald deer where he lay in the leaves. His long tail flicked once. The patchwork coat was dark along one flank where she had closed the gore wound that morning. He was watching her the way he watched a threshold. "I need a place," she said to him. "Somewhere close. Somewhere thick." The deer got to his feet. He took three steps upstream and stopped. He looked back at her. Thornwyn wrapped the elf's arm across the chimera's shoulders and lashed him with her belt. The girl climbed up behind him and held his shirt in both fists. Thornwyn walked at the chimera's head with the staff, one hand on its neck for balance. Her thigh burned through the magic she had laid over it. The deer led them off the stream and up a slope of pine litter that took no prints. He moved slow for her. He stopped when she stopped. After a long climb he turned into a run of laurel so dense she had to bend to pass under it. The laurel opened onto a hollow beneath a fallen oak. The trunk was mossed over and the roots stood up in a wall taller than her head. Under it, dry ground. A back wall of stone. She eased the elf down into the dirt. The girl slid off after him and put her hand on his forehead. Thornwyn set her staff at the mouth of the hollow and spoke the ward. The words came slow but they took. She felt the boundary close around the oak, the three of them, the deer, the chimera. She sat down hard. The girl looked at her. "They can pass within ten feet and not see us," Thornwyn said. "If we stay quiet. If nothing crosses out." The deer lay down across the opening. His long tail settled over his hooves. The chimera folded behind him. Thornwyn put her back to the stone. She kept the staff across her lap. Outside the laurel the light was already going. She let her eyes close for one breath, then opened them. The girl was still watching. Thornwyn reached out and the girl came under her arm and stayed there.