Zade's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Zade moved fast through the pines with the cub inside his cloak. Its heartbeat pressed against his ribs, small and quick. He meant to find the killer's trail again before dark. He got a mile before he understood he was the one being followed. The first sign was a raven going the wrong way. Then a silence in the branches that spread outward instead of ahead. He stopped and set his hand against a trunk. Four scents on the wind. Frostwolves, by the weight of the tread. They had never hunted him before. They were hunting him now because of what he carried. Aurora-kin scent clung to the fur lining of his cloak like smoke on wool. Every predator in the valley would know it within a day. He could not run and track the killer at the same time. He had to end this here. He pulled the cub out and set it in the hollow of a root. Then he unclasped his own cloak, the black one he had worn for three winters, and dropped it in the snow. From his pack he drew the traveling cloak he had taken from a dead trader's sled a month back: heavy purple wool, fur-trimmed, silver clasps at the throat. Clean. No blood, no leopard scent. He fastened it around the cub and tucked the hood over the small silver head. The fur swallowed the cub whole. "Stay," he said. He pushed the bundle deep into the root hollow and drew a line of shadow across the opening. The Nightveil closed like a shut eye. Then he picked up his old cloak, still rank with aurora-kin, and walked back down his own trail carrying it in his fist. They came at him in the clearing he chose. Four of them, lean and white, jaws already open. He let them see the cloak. He let them lunge for it. When the first wolf hit the wool, he dropped it and stepped sideways through its own shadow. He came out behind the pack. His wings snapped wide. He drove three spears of solid dark into three backs before the last wolf turned. That one he took with his hands, shadow crushing its throat until the legs stopped kicking. It was over in the time it takes to breathe six times. He stood in the red snow and listened. No more feet in the trees. He walked back to the root hollow and lifted the veil. The cub blinked up at him from inside the purple hood, unharmed. He left the old cloak in the clearing with the wolves. It was ruined bait now, and the scent on it would draw the rest of the valley here, away from him. He wrapped the cub against his chest under the new cloak and turned north. The killer's trail was a full day colder. He had bought the cub's life with it.