The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 016: Eight Wolves

"It was the box," Tomas said.

He sat on an overturned bucket in the shade of the hull with the grey crate in his lap, his lens pushed up on his forehead, his face drawn tight. Ethan had told him everything Seraphine said, word for word. The old man hadn't interrupted. When Ethan finished, he'd closed his eyes for a long moment, and then he'd said it.

"What about the box?"

"We opened it. At dawn yesterday, in the salt ring. We woke the collar. Every second it hummed, it was calling." Tomas laid a hand flat on the lid. "Voss didn't find the boatyard by luck. He found it because I let the leash ring out like a church bell."

"You didn't know."

"I should have known. I've read three hundred pages on this." He bit the words off. "It's my fault."

"It's the fault of whoever made the collar," Anselm said, from the stern of the half-built hull. He was sharpening a chisel with long slow strokes. "Don't get sentimental, old man. We've got till dusk."

"We have till the chapel bell," Ethan said.

"Same thing."

Ethan walked to the river's edge and looked at the water. It moved slowly, brown and flat, ruffled by a wind that smelled of rain. A skiff lay half-drawn up on the mud, tied to a stake, a one-man boat with a single pair of oars.

"I have an idea," he said. "It's not a good one."

Rhea came back an hour later, earlier than she'd said she would, her face grim. She ducked through the gap in the fence at a half-run.

"The Wardens left the tower," she said. "All of them. I watched them pull out through the east gate, forty or fifty, with wagons. They were quiet about it. Corin said it was a training exercise." She dragged a sleeve across her mouth. "Ethan, they're coming."

"I know. Seraphine told me."

"Seraphine Ward?"

"I'll explain. Not now." He pointed at the skiff. "Tomas, what does the box do to the signal?"

"Blocks it. Salt, lead, rune-etching."

"What if it's open? Out in the air, floating on a boat, with the band inside."

Tomas understood first. His eyes went wide behind his cracked lens. "They'd chase it."

"Every one of them. Wouldn't they? It's what they're bound to."

"It could work. It would work." The old man's jaw tightened. "But someone has to row it out into the current and light a lantern to make it look like a boat in use. And then they have to jump."

"I'll do it," said Anselm.

They all turned.

He set down his chisel. He'd gone a little pale around the mouth, but his voice was steady. "I've pulled that skiff through every eddy between here and the mill since I was nine. I can steer her blind. I can swim the last bend with a lead weight on my back." He shrugged. "It's the best use of me. I'm not a fighter."

"Ans," Rhea said.

"I'm not asking, cousin. I've already decided."

Rhea looked at him for a long, hard second. Then she crossed the yard and pulled him into a rough, short hug, and neither of them said anything.

They spent the afternoon getting ready. Tomas pulled on a pair of Anselm's thick leather gloves and checked the crate's clasps twice. "Closed until the boat is moving," he said. "Open the lid even a finger too soon and the whole ward hears it." Anselm lashed it into the stern with three turns of rope and hung a lantern on a pole above it. Rhea packed bread and water and the three pages of the roster. Ethan fed the Hunger with cold stew and tried not to count the hours.

The sun slid under the roofline an hour later. The first chime came from the north ward chapel.

Bong.

Ethan froze.

Flinch. The sound hit the base of his skull like a fist. He stood stiff as a post at the edge of the water, mouth half open, until Rhea grabbed his collar and hauled him around.

Bong.

Two. They were already inside.

"Move!" Rhea hissed.

Anselm shoved the skiff off the mud and leapt in, the grey crate lashed in the stern with a lit lantern swinging above it. Tomas, wading to his knees, flipped both clasps with a gloved hand and tipped the lid wide. The hum rose at once, pale and thin, and drifted out across the water like a smell. Anselm dug the oars into the current and the little boat slid out onto the river like a leaf, a bright yellow dot drifting east. Ethan watched until the fog swallowed it.

Then he turned his head and opened every sense he had.

Pulses. A lot of them, spreading fast across the ward like spilled ink. Not human. Long, swift, hungry. They came in a fan, from the east road, eight of them, loping on four limbs and then six.

Three veered left, toward the river, toward the lantern.

It's working.

The other five did not.

They kept coming. Straight and fast. Past the dyer's, over the cooper's wall, through a washing-line yard, like hounds that had already found a scent.

"They're not following the box," Ethan whispered.

"What?"

"Five of them. They're coming for us." His mouth was dry. "They're coming for me."

Tomas, wheezing, pulled at his sleeve. "The trace," he gasped. "You ate one of their own. Every Stalker in Aldren would know that smell. Boy, you've been wearing their brother."

No time. No time at all. They ran.

Rhea took the lead, one hand on her sword, the other dragging Tomas by the elbow. They tore through a gap between two houses, down a stair, along a drain. Behind them a Stalker's scream rose, high and long. Ethan stumbled over a bucket and caught himself on a wall. Close. So close he could feel the breath on his neck.

Two more joined the first. Then three. The alleys of the lower ward were narrow, and they funneled the creatures into a single dark column.

The first Stalker leapt from a rooftop and landed in the alley six paces behind them. Rhea spun, her blade already moving. Steel rang off hide. The creature shrieked, one arm hanging by a strip of skin, and Rhea shouldered Ethan forward without looking.

"Don't stop! I've got it!"

"You haven't got it!"

"Then run faster!"

He ran. Her boots pounded behind him. Something thumped against the wall, a long wet slide, and the Stalker's scream turned into a furious, grinding hiss that did not die. It was still coming. It was only slower.

And behind them all, far back, on a rooftop above the street, one more pulse. Slow. Even. Standing very still, watching.

"Left!" Ethan cried.

They went left, and the alley ended in a wall.

A dead-end courtyard behind the chapel. Brick on three sides, thirty feet high, with a barred gate on the fourth that Rhea hit with her shoulder and bounced off. The air was thick with the smell of old candle wax. The bell was still humming overhead.

The first Stalker dropped onto the courtyard stones with a wet thud.

Five of them. Black, slick, four arms spread. The mouths in their chests opened one after another, and a thousand needle teeth gleamed in the dusk.

Rhea drew her sword and stepped in front of Ethan. "Behind me," she said. "Both of you. Now."

"You can't take five."

"I know."

Ethan's heart beat in his ears. Level 3. A bad leg. A hook-knife the length of a hand. He looked at the Stalkers, at their collars, at the dusk behind them.

He opened the status window.

The Evolution Gate hung at the bottom of it, pale and patient, waiting.

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