Beast Trials: The Last True Tamer novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Thornwood Run
Cassian's men sabotage Bran in the first trial; Anwen saves him and a wolf pack boxes her in.
The first trial began three days later, at sunrise, at the edge of the Thornwood.
Thirty of us stood in a line on the frosted grass with our beasts beside us.
Mine was asleep in my hood.
"The Thornwood Run," a herald announced from a high platform. "Reach the Standing Stone at the far end of the wood by sundown."
He was a thin man in Thornwick blue, reading from a scroll.
Lord Aldric sat beside him in a fur-lined chair and never once looked at me.
"The wood has been stocked with wild beasts," the herald said. "Entrants may use their bonded companions. Entrants may not kill each other."
He paused.
"Entrants may, however, be killed by accident."
Some of the nobles laughed.
Bran muttered in my ear, "I love this event. It's so warm and welcoming."
His hound, an old brindled badger-hound with a grey muzzle, sat on his boot looking tired.
"Does she run?" I asked.
"She walks fast. Mostly she lies down and thinks about her life."
The horn sounded.
The line broke, and the nobles surged into the trees on their big beasts, gryphons beating overhead and horse-lizards crashing through the brush.
Bran and I went in at a jog.
Within an hour I understood how the wood worked.
Nothing attacked us.
The wild beasts we passed, the boar-bears and the thorn cats and the long grey stalkers, stepped out of the path and lowered their heads.
I kept my hand on my bell and thanked each one as we went by.
"Why are they doing that?" Bran whispered.
"I don't know."
"It's the most upsetting thing I've ever seen."
"You're welcome."
Around midday we came to a ravine, and we heard Bran's hound yelp.
She had stopped on the rope bridge with her front paws stiff, and she wouldn't move.
"Come on, girl," Bran said, and took a step toward her.
Something snapped, and the bridge dropped.
I grabbed Bran's coat with both hands.
The hound screamed as she fell.
Bran hung over the ravine from my fists, his boots kicking, and the bridge ropes flapped below us, cut clean.
"Hold on," I said through my teeth.
"I am holding on! You are holding on! The hound is falling!"
Moth jumped out of my hood, ran down my arm, and bit the rope tied to the near post.
It was a spare line, someone's safety rope, still anchored.
The fox hauled it into my hand.
I looped it around Bran's wrist and pulled until my shoulders burned.
He came up over the edge on his belly, gasping.
"My hound," he said.
I was already looking down.
The old hound lay on a ledge twenty feet below, whining, but alive.
"She's caught on the roots," I said.
I hooked the rope around the post and climbed down hand over hand.
The ledge was no wider than a table.
I got my arms under her ribs, and she licked my chin.
"Good girl," I said. "Good, good girl. You don't have to be brave."
It took us an hour to get the three of us back up.
When we did, I saw the cut ends of the bridge ropes.
They weren't frayed or rotted.
They'd been cut with a blade, and the cuts were fresh.
"Somebody did this," Bran said. He was still lying on his back. "They cut the bridge when they saw I was on it."
"They cut it when they saw the two of us on it," I said.
We found the small blue ribbon on the post.
Thornwick blue, tied in a neat bow.
Bran stared at it.
"They wanted to kill a stable girl and a farm boy and make it look like the wood did it."
"That is exactly what this is."
I tore the ribbon down and shoved it into my pocket.
We still had to reach the Standing Stone.
The sun was already low, and we ran.
We came down into a dry hollow with a stream running through it, and the trees stopped.
I'd stopped hearing birds a few minutes ago, but I only noticed it now.
The hollow was full of eyes.
I counted twelve Hollow wolves ringed around the clearing, grey and enormous, with their heads low.
They were the largest wolves in Eldmark.
Hunters called them the Hollow because nobody ever came back to say what was inside them.
They weren't kneeling like the others.
They were stalking.
"Anwen," Bran said carefully. "I would like to leave."
"I know."
"Is the thing you do with the animals going to work on these?"
"I don't do anything," I said, which was the truth.
The alpha stepped forward, a grey male with a torn ear, and his lips peeled back from teeth as long as my fingers.
Behind me, in the trees, I heard a horn blow.
Not the Run horn.
A different note, long and low, used only by the Watch.
Somebody had called these wolves.
Somebody had sent them to me.
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