Graylin also understood this stance and would honor it as best he could.
He reached to the arrow at his mouth and drew its fletching across his lips, wetting the feathers. He bent his knees, nocked the arrow, and drew the string until his fingertip found the corner of his lips. He tilted the bow slightly away from the arrow, aimed for the whorl of fur behind the elk’s front leg, then gently released the taut string.
The arrow shot away. Graylin followed it with his hunter’s sense. He could almost feel the impact of the bolt through fur and skin, sensed it cross ribs and impale a proud, tired heart. The elk only shuddered, took a single step, then with a great majesty, toppled to the grass beside the stream.
Graylin straightened and walked out of the woods toward the bulk of the downed elk. He silently thanked the Mother Below—both for the bounty given to him and for the long life bestowed upon the old bull.
He loosened a pack slung low to his hip and removed knives and unfolded roughspun sacks. He set about quartering the elk. It was cold enough that he kept the skin on the meat. He had a long haul back to his cabin, so he stripped out the bones to lighten his load. As he worked, he built a steaming pile of bowels beside the stream to feed the forest after he left.
Unfortunately, these woods had little patience and far more hunger.
A rumbling growl was the only warning.
He froze, skinning knife in hand.
Beyond the stream, a huge shadow separated from the forest. The knoll-bear ambled toward him. It was a rounded hill of shag and rolling muscle. Its head was a stony crown topped by round ears. Thick jowls rippled back in tune with a grumbled threat, exposing fangs as long as his forearm. He remembered the deep claw marks in the black pine and suspected here was the culprit, a full-grown sow. Off to the side, he noted a pair of eyes glinting deeper in the wood, surely a summer cub.
The bear’s shoulders shifted, its haunches bunching, readying for a charge.
There was nothing more dangerous than a sow with a hungry cub. And nothing that these giant monsters had to fear in these woods.
But Graylin hadn’t come alone.
And his companions were not from these forests.
Out of the shadows to either side of the bear, his two brothers stalked into view. They looked like wolves, only a handsbreadth taller in the front. No growl marked their approach. No fangs were bared. They slunk low, a staccato chittering flowing from them. It escalated in volume and pitch, raising hairs on his neck.
The bear stopped with a tremble. Its large head swiveled between the two approaching beasts. It recognized the threat, as did all who lived here.
The vargr were the scourge of the heartwoods. Their dark-striped fur was nearly impossible to discern amidst the fog and darkness. Some considered them more spirits than flesh, just shadows with teeth. The vargr seldom roamed east of their shrouded forests, but when they did, no one dared cross them.
The sow heeded this warning and backed step by step. Even if she chanced taking on the pair, she had her cub to consider. Wisely, she retreated into the forest, and a moment later her large bulk could be heard barging away.
The two vargr finally bent their necks, ruffed by short manes, toward him. Two sets of amber-gold eyes stared at him. Still, his brothers’ tufted ears remained turned back toward the forest, continuing to listen to the bear’s retreat.
Born of the same litter, the two looked identical, but Graylin could pick out subtle differences that seemed glaring to him after so long. The mischievous Aamon was a fingersbreadth shorter than his brother, with one ear that always hung slightly crooked when relaxed. The more stoic Kalder had thinner stripes across his haunches and a bushier tail.
Still, they were two kindred spirits bearing one heart.
And they allow me to share it for now.
Graylin pressed a hand to his chest, then turned the palm toward them, silently thanking them. He owed them his life, not just now, but many times over, especially a decade ago. As he worked on dressing the elk, he fell back into that darker time. He remembered a glint of moonlight on snow, marking where the Crown ended and the endless frozen wastes began.
* * *
I’VE REACHED THE end of the world.
With the day over, Graylin gazed at the full face of the moon hanging bright in the sky through the thin, high branches of the heartwood forest. He stood mesmerized. A swath of stars—a rare sight in his homeland in Hálendii—spangled the dark arch above, sparkling like a crush of diamonds. And farther to the west, a serrated line of silver marked the jagged peaks of the Ice Fangs. They glowed as if lit from within, a jagged rampart that marked the Crown’s westernmost border.
He tried to imagine the frozen lands beyond that snowy range, but all he could picture was an endless plain of broken ice.
And maybe that’s all there is.
He was new to the lands of Aglerolarpok. Three fortnights ago, he had arrived on a prison ship. He and a handful of others had been dumped in Savik, banished and forbidden from ever setting foot in Hálendii again. He had barely healed from the tortures in the dungeons of Highmount. His flesh was knitted with raw sutures; more wounds had been burned closed. His broken arm had healed crookedly and still hurt to move. Still, if not for the compassion of the king for a former friend, he could have lost toes, fingers, an eye or two, and likely both bollocks.
He knew it was that same mercy that led to his banishment across the seas. He understood the punishment. King Toranth could no longer look at me—yet, couldn’t bring himself to kill me.
So, after his tortures, broken inside and out, Graylin had been stranded here, a knight forever prohibited from carrying steel. Some might call it mercy. He considered it one final torture that was intended to last a lifetime. He was sentenced to forever remember his broken oath and what it had cost him. Even now, with the wondrous spread of stars in the sky, he could picture the remains of his lover, Marayn, thrown into his dungeon cell. Her body—the little that was left of it—had been discovered in the swamps of M?r. They left her remains in his cell, flybit and maggoty, to serve as a horrific testament to his broken oath.
As he stood in the dark heartwood, he took a deep breath of the cold air. He lowered his eyes, feeling unworthy to gaze at the pantheon above. Still, the natural beauty around him could not be ignored. Here at the edge of the world, the heartwood trees were giant gray columns, enshrined in wisps of ice fog. The march of their trunks glowed with rafts and conks of phosphorescent fungi, while the bowers created lofty vaults overhead, allowing peeks at the sky’s splendor.
It was as if he had trespassed into a living kath’dral, a holy shrine to the Mother, hidden away from the gaze of the Father Above.
He came to one firm conclusion.
This is a good place to die.
From deeper in the woods, this desire was given voice. A single ghostly cry, eerie and high-pitched, echoed to him. The birdsong fell silent. Even the chirp-chirp of beetles in the low bushes hushed in respect. Then another throat joined the first, then another, until an entire chorus wailed at him.
Every hair on his body shook. His heart pounded in an age-old tympani of the hunted. He had heard tales of the predators that haunted the deep heartwood. The shadows with teeth. But he had not truly believed them, dismissing stories of their bollock-icing cries, their savage cunning, of jaws powerful enough to crush an ox’s skull. He thought such tales to be just fancy and boast. Especially as Graylin had raised war dogs at the Legionary himself, even some who bore the blood of wolves. So, tales of the shadowy monsters in the mists sounded preposterous to him.