Woodson's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

Woodson sat up slow. His head throbbed where the branch had struck. The stag woman had not moved. She fed a stick to the fire, and blue light from the cave crystals shone on her white antlers. He looked at his bow against the wall, then at her calm face. She had every chance to leave him in the snow. She had not. "You saved me," he said. "You had no reason to." "You would have died," she answered. "I do not measure reasons." She named herself Lunara Silverhorn, no more. She spoke in short, even words, and she did not fill the quiet between them. Woodson's jaw tightened. A debt sat in his chest like a stone. He worked alone so he would owe no one. Now he owed his life to the very woman he had hunted for six weeks. "I came to take your antlers," he said. He would not lie to her. "Rangers say they grant true love. I meant to bring you down and cut them." Lunara did not flinch. "Many have tried. The antlers grant nothing." She turned the fire's coals with her stick. "I will not speak of them again." "Then let me pay you back another way," he said. "I don't leave a debt open." She studied him a long moment. "You can hold a bow in a storm. That is worth something." She told him what the fire and the crystals could not hide. She was dying. A season, no more. She would not say what the sickness did. Three years of searching had given her one answer: a silver bloom that opened once every hundred years, far across the peaks. A frost was coming to kill it. She meant to reach it first. "You planned to go alone," Woodson said. "The road kills those who walk it," she said. "I will not risk another life." "You already risked yours for mine." He stood, tested his legs, and reached for his quiver. He drew the bare broadhead she had laid on the stone. He snapped the barbed tip against the rock and threw the iron into the fire. "This one was made to kill you. It's gone now." Lunara watched the metal glow in the coals. For the first time her calm cracked, just a breath. "I owe you a life," Woodson said. "I pay it by guarding yours to that flower. You don't have to trust me. You only have to let me walk behind you." She was quiet. The fire popped. Then she rose, tall and pale, her gown catching the crystal light. "At first light," she said. "You keep three steps back. When I say stop, you stop." "Agreed." The debt still sat in his chest. But now it had a shape, and a road. He had come to take her life. He would spend his own guarding it instead, but little did he know what their destiny together was.