Chapter 17: 17 : Lanterns in the Pines

Will’s gut knotted. Trackers already? Yet their direction felt wrong; they approached from inland rather than the bridge. Could they be hunters? smugglers? He dared not assume.

He crouched, crab-crept to a darker cluster of boles, and stilled. Heartbeat hammered; Bram’s cut along his side pulsed fire where cloth rubbed.

The lanterns were drifting together—two yellow eyes sliding among the trunks, then three, then more voices than Will could count on one shaking hand.

He flattened behind a pine wide enough to mask his rag-wrapped torso. Breath feathered icy from his lips; every inhale scraped the rope-burn circling his throat.

His footprints began at the river, not in these trees, but a veteran hunter could read broken ferns, wet bark, the drip-line where water had fallen from his clothes—he’d left a map of panic. He tried to quiet the saw-buzz of fear: wait, watch, learn the pattern, just as he did stalking game back on the farm.

Minutes stretched. Lantern-light wove slowly, speakers conferring in low, brisk tones—too composed for villagers drunk on vengeance, too few for a regiment. Maybe a three-man scout team? Will eased a splintered branch from the mulch, fingers raw, knuckles white. Crude club or last insult—it felt better than empty hands.

At length one lantern peeled away, bobbing down-slope toward Veyorth’s market. The others lingered, beam swinging. Searching grid, Will guessed. He began to hope they’d quarter away.

A gust rattled pine crowns; with it came the crisp snap of a twig directly behind him. His pulse slammed.He froze; so did the unattended lantern-group. Silence rang. Run? Fight? He could do neither well.

The lantern swept nearer, illuminating a broad man in a travel-stained hood. Weather etched lines around alert eyes. Ten paces behind, a smaller shape raised a bow, arrow already kissing string.

Will gripped his branch tighter but stayed half-crouched.

Whffft— An arrow hissed past and thudded into trunk beside his ear.

“Hold,” the older man said, voice calm but unblinking.

Mud, leaf litter, and dried blood clung to him; river-water still dripped from his sleeves.

“I’m not looking for trouble,” the lantern-bearer said.

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Will straightened, branch lifted chest-high—half threat, half lifeline.

The man tilted his head. “Strange way to say hello.”

The archer advanced—a young woman whose movements reminded Will of a lynx: fluid, deadly. She kept the arrow nocked. “Where’d you come from, boy?”

Will blinked, mind skipping like a cracked wheel. “River,” he managed.

“On the run,” the man observed, lantern tilting to study rope burns, bruises, the cut under Will’s ribs. “Not a threat—barely alive.”

“I’m not going back,” Will said, the branch quivering now from exhaustion more than menace.

“To who?” the woman snapped. “Soldiers? bounty tag? Some lord’s pet monster?”

Will’s silence answered nothing and everything.

The man turned slightly. “He’s half-dead. Chain marks. We leave him, he freezes by dawn.”

“Father, he’s not our cargo,” the woman shot back.

“Neither are half the crates,” the man replied. He regarded Will once more. “Name’s Edric Faln. Our wagon’s west, beyond the pines. Walk if you can, crawl if you must.”

Will’s knees almost buckled at the offer. Distrust stabbed—another Osric?—but life flickered stubbornly. He nodded, branch dropping from numb fingers.

The archer lowered her bow with a disgusted exhale. “Lenna,” she muttered. Not friendship; simple facts. “Crates don’t bleed on the floorboards, though. You collapse on our cart, that’s your mess to clean later. Understood?”

“Come, then,” Edric said.

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They guided him along a faint game-track, Edric in front with lantern, Lenna ghosting behind. Every ten steps Will stumbled; every stumble Lenna’s arrow twitched. Edric offered no arm—just pace Will could match if he chose life badly enough to try.

The track debouched into a shallow hollow where a stout wagon crouched between trees, horse already hitched. Canvas covered its load; he smelled smoked fish, dried chicory, hemp cord. Smuggler? Trader? Will lacked strength to wonder.

Edric flipped the tail-flap. “Inside.” Will crawled over the board, collapsing amid burlap sacks. Lenna climbed to the driver’s plank but kept bow across her knees.

Edric doused the lantern to a coal-glow, wedged it by his boots, then rapped twice on the wagon wall. Wheels rolled. Hoofbeats clopped rhythmic, carrying them deeper into forest shadow where dawn-light barely filtered.

Under the tarp darkness pressed, but it was warm darkness, smelling of spice and smoke instead of mildew and death. Edric tossed an old blanket back to him. Will dragged it over his shoulders, shuddering as trapped heat stung chilled skin.

He listened to wheels squeal, to Lenna’s quiet curses when low branches whipped the canvas, to Edric’s low whistle of some fisherfolk tune. Behind eyelids fireflies seemed to swirl—pink and blue like those impossible butterflies—but when he opened his eyes only pitch remained.

Trust? Not yet. But the shore of terror felt one step removed.

At last exhaustion anchored him. Thoughts frayed into threads—elder deer, cave sword, three eyes, Bram’s “Devil,” rope snapping like fate—then slipped into a dark river without current. The wagon creaked on, farther from every place called home.

And for the first time in endless hours, no one shouted for his neck. The exhaustion that haunted him took over. His eyelids closed without awareness.