hoping beyond hope that Legon was safe.
* * * * *
Safe was not how Legon saw himself at the moment. He found himself instead scared out of his mind and laying in mud. The men had been in the forest for hours looking for them. They had finally managed to track them to about ten feet from where Legon lay in the mud. He was right to think they were easy to track; even he hadn’t thought about what he was doing when he was running, so he figured a blind man could see the tracks they’d left.
But the soldiers were having a bit of a hard time now. They knew that the three fugitives were someplace in these woods, but the tracks ended and so they’d been branching out looking for them, and then returning to this place to start over again. One man always stayed behind, giving the others a point of reference. Legon was fine. He had spent many hours stalking deer while out hunting, so his muscles wouldn’t cramp for a long time yet. He knew how to move his weight without being seen.
However, he knew Kovos and Keither couldn’t do this, so he had put them somewhere they could just lay and not have to move. Legon was curled up in the roots of a tree and with the moss he had on himself he just looked like another root. The only problem was that this moss was full of bugs, one in particular that was trying to burrow its way into his back. After a few hours of this he didn’t know what was worse: the thought of being killed like Moleth, or having this bug spend another few hours burrowing into him. The more he thought about it and the more the irritation and pain in his back grew, the nicer the knife looked.
The bug bit into something sensitive. Pain shot through him and he gave an involuntary twitch… the soldier turned and looked right where he was but he didn’t do anything. He could see that the man was looking for whatever had made the noise, but was confused at the lack of anything other than moss-covered roots. Legon heard the sound of a bird landing on a branch above him.
The man relaxed and shook his head. Legon heard him mutter something but couldn’t make it out. He couldn’t see much. He needed to keep his head down, but after listening to the men he figured out who everyone was. The man in their area now was the one who had killed Moleth, which was something that the guard had spent a lot of time laughing about. This made Legon want to stand and fight the man, but he couldn’t. He needed to keep his head in this. He had to get Kovos and Keither out of here and then he had to make sure that his family was ok.
After a bit, the man started over to the tree and Legon felt the fear of knowing that while he might look like a root, if stepped on he wouldn’t feel like a root. The man’s feet stopped on either side of his head. Legon had his body contorted to look more random and sprawled out. He had most of his back against the tree. He wasn’t in a good fighting position. He couldn’t look up without giving away his location. He heard cloth being moved above him… the man was fumbling around with his cloak. He wasn’t making much noise, as if he were slowly and carefully getting something. It had to be a dagger. Probably the same one that killed Moleth.
He heard a soft chuckle. “There you are. You couldn’t hide forever.”
Chapter Eight
Into the Night
“Some say that when something ends, it’s just the beginning. Does this mean that nothing ends? No. Sometimes the end is just that—the end.”
-The River of Change
Arkin thought of the years of planning that had just gone out the window. They were early, way too early. It was probably the blasted star that had made them anxious. If only they had waited just two more months, everything would be going according to plan. At least one plan, anyway—he had three. He had always planned for this day but had hoped it would never come. Still, there was excitement coursing through him. The fact that they were here meant the prophecy had to be true, and they weren’t going to stop him, not after this long. All was