A Dime a Dozen

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---The Hunted---

The water splashing beneath my feet is jarringly loud in the silence of the forest. I miss the soft crunch of leaves underfoot. Part of me wants to slow, to quiet my passing, but I can't. I continue to plunge forward, water splashing loudly. The soft mud of the brook's bed slows my progress a little, though the track of my passing would soon be gone.

Go to the brook. Run and don't look back; don't slow down. Make it to the brook and you'll have a chance. Follow it north and stay in the water. It will hide your tracks and your scent. It will give you more cover than the forest. Only when the bed turns to stone and slows your progress do you travel by the river instead of in it.

I can hear Tiberius's voice ringing in my ears. How many times had he told me that? How many times had he warned me this day would come? How many times had he ordered me to run and not look back when it did? I couldn't count. Yet when the wind shifts, I can't help but come to a halt. The silence washes over me as the faint scent beings to weave through the air. Smoke. 

A voice urges me in my mind to get back to running. If that was smoke, that means the cottage is on its way to being nothing but ashes. They wouldn't let anything remain. There would be nothing left. They could leave nothing behind. That means, if they weren't already on my trail, they soon would be. The further upstream I got, the better. There would be nothing left to go back to. Tiberius would be gone, just like the cottage and everything in it. Me and the pack on my back were all that remained. He would be relying on me to get the metal box and notebook inside across the border to Sorchal. They would be my ticket to safety and protection within Sorchal. One last kindness from Tiberius. The only way he could look out for me now.

---The Hunter---

The remains of the cottage sit in blackened heaps. If the cottage had contained any secrets, there was no way it'd be giving them up now. I toe what I can only assume is the remains of a chair. It slowly crumples and crumbles, a small plume of ash rising only to settle back down over my boot. Nothing useful left of the cottage, a trail that was two days old now, and a crippled doctor who was as likely to die from his injury as he was to wake up. There really was hardly anything to work with.

That's why I need you, my best.

I had felt pride when Premier Constantine had told me that. Now I felt I understood my father's concern. It may have been praise, but a lot was weighing on it. 

This should have been a very simple job. The easiest one could ever hope for. Come to this small town- hardly more than a village- collect anything left of the doctor's work, destroy the rest. Yet the two militiamen sent had completely botched it and had paid with their life.

The doctor's work was gone, carried off by the girl that had been in the cottage. That much had been confirmed by the doctor before he had slipped into his comma. One had gone after the girl while the other had set to work destroying the rest. It wasn't until the other had returned, finding that the girl's trial had ended at a brook in the forest, that they had realized how badly they had messed up. The girl was in the wind with the doctor's work. The doctor was the only person capable of recreating that work or telling where she was headed and by then, he had nearly been dead. Now he was just in a coma and I'd get nothing from him. Or this cottage.

I'm scowling as I head to the edge of what had once been the cottage. There was nothing to work with. Premier Constantine was asking for a miracle. He couldn't fault me for not finding anything, but failure still wasn't an option. I couldn't disappoint him. I had to find something.

Read the rest of The Hunted and The Hunter in Fox Hunt
A girl on the run and a boy with a mission. When a dark past comes back with a vengeance, it's a high-stakes race and only one can win.
Sylvaine promised to take Tiberius's work to Sorchal. Will her quick thinking be enough to keep her one step ahead?
Adrastus has been given a task. He's the best at what he does, but will that be enough?

Launching 3/21/22