Chapter 76: THE CREW
The ground south of the stakes dropped into a ditch before it climbed again. Aiden had been sitting in that ditch since first light, his back against the dirt wall, his head below the top edge.
From inside the square and the path, no one could see him. He could see both, and the den.
He heard the crew before he saw it.
Four men came up the road from the east and turned onto the cut path.
Three carried tools: a long saw between two and a marking iron. The fourth carried no tools. He had a beast on a short leash.
A Cinderhound.
The same breed Vane had sent up his lane eleven nights ago. Heat off its rear legs, eyes lit at the back. A flusher. You put it into a den, and what lived inside came out running.
Survey crew. They’re not here to take her. They’re here to write down what she is and how many are inside so the next crew takes her.
The fourth man unclipped the leash at the last stake and pointed the hound at the den.
The hound jumped the stakes and ran north, nose down. Twenty paces in, it stopped. Its head came up.
It swung south.
Days watching from the same place. Aiden smelled it on his own coat. The hound smelled it too. A flusher took the freshest scent first, and they were fresher than the den.
It came back toward the stakes, low and fast. The handler watched it go. From where he stood on the path, the hound dropped below the slope’s edge and out of sight.
Can’t let it bark. I have to reach it first.
Aiden pressed the boy flat against the back of the ditch.
Nyx was at the ditch’s edge, flat and dark.
The hound came over the edge of the ditch. Its amber joints lit the ground under it. Its jaws opened to bark.
Aiden stepped. He crossed the gap in one blink.
The pull hit his gut, cold through the chest, and he was at the hound’s flank with the knife already moving.
His left hand caught the jaw and forced it shut. The bark died behind its teeth. The knife went in behind the ear, into the vessel.
The hound thrashed. One foreleg raked his arm. The amber flared in its joints. Heat poured off it. Its weight rolled over him. His grip on the jaw loosened. The hound’s head wrenched sideways, and its teeth scraped his wrist.
Miasma’s green eyes snapped wide inside the ditch. She lunged out, fast, dark green pulsing at her spines. Then she stopped.
Something else had moved faster.
Nyx came up through the ground under the hound and pressed both forepaws into its spine.
The hound stopped. Its legs locked. Its eyes stayed lit, but nothing behind them moved. The heat died out of its joints in a slow fade, amber to dark.
Aiden held the jaw shut until the chest under him went still.
His arm was bleeding where the foreleg had caught him. He looked at Nyx. She was still pressed flat on the hound’s back, pale eyes on his.
He wiped the knife on his coat, tore a strip from it, and bandaged his wounds. His hands were shaking enough that the knot slipped off his fingers twice.
Nyx’s pale eyes hadn’t moved off him. He nodded at her. He smiled at her.
That hound almost took my arm... Thank you. Really.
The handler whistled. Short, flat. The whistle he’d trained the hound on.
Nothing came back. He whistled again.
Aiden pulled the hound deeper into the ditch and scraped loose dirt over it. Miasma and the boy helped him. The amber in its joints had gone out. The body was dark.
The handler started walking south toward the stakes.
Aiden pressed the boy flat. The cat went still. Nyx sank into the dirt and was gone.
The handler reached the stakes. He stood at the row and looked south, down the slope. The ditch was six paces to his left and two feet below his eyeline, wrapped in the slope’s shadow.
He looked left. He looked right. He did not look down.
Behind him, the mother came up out of the roots.
She stood at the mouth of the den, black against the grey slope, the ember patches burning along her spine.
The handler turned toward her.
"The hound can wait. We’ve confirmed the breeding female. Three pups." He leaned, then shook his head. "The last one costs Lord Harken more alive than dead. Two."
The mother was bigger than his hound. She was the job. The hound was not. He called the crew forward. They came up the path. One of them pulled a slate and started writing.
They had what they came for. The mother, in the open, on the record. The hound was a problem for later.
Aiden sat in the ditch with the dead hound behind him and the boy beside him and blood drying on his arm.
The mother was still at the mouth of her den. She was not looking at the four men on the path. She was looking past them. At the ditch south of the stakes.
At Aiden.
He held still. Eyes on hers.
She held. Body low over her pups. The hound had come from that direction. The hound was not coming back. The man was still there.
She went back into the roots.
The boy breathed out. "She looked right at you. She didn’t even move." He was quiet for a moment. "How did you kill that thing?"
Aiden wiped the blood off his arm with his sleeve. He did not say anything.
The crew stayed another hour. They measured the den. They wrote on their slates. They walked the path once more, looking for the hound. They walked south of the stakes once, past the ditch below their eyeline.
When they left, they went east, back down the road.
Aiden sat with the dead hound at his back. The crew had their survey and a flusher that was not coming back. The clearing crew would come next. The clearing crew would bring more than one flusher.
He did not know how many days he had. He knew it was not many.