Imre tugs the end of the rope snarled around my wrists, leading me toward the beginnings of their campsite. There is already a bed of cold wood, and a cast-iron kettle, rusted around its edges. We will have to boil the water before we can drink it. The Black Lake is touched with salt, as if Isten carved out a hole in the earth and then poured the ocean into it to make Régország its own tiny, landlocked sea. Beyond it is the Little Plain, a scraggly prairie flecked with salt flats and occasional stretches of marshland, spilling out beside the tributaries that carve the land like a cracked mirror. It marks the western edge of Farkasvár, the region containing Keszi, which King István made when he diced up old tribal territories into tidy new districts and installed a preening count to rule over each one.
The captain lights a fire on the bank and Imre sets his kettle over it. He boils tough game and vegetables for stew, the onion stinging my eyes but making my belly whine. With the captain’s brutal pace, I haven’t eaten at all since leaving Keszi.
It should be unthinkable to share a meal with the Woodsmen. I don’t want to acknowledge that we have anything in common—even something as small and silly as liking this stew. It’s the same kind of lean meal we would eat in Keszi, scrounged together in the dead of winter when our stores have nearly been emptied. It reminds me of home, and I don’t want the Woodsmen poisoning my memories. Along with my coin and my braid, and Katalin’s wolf cloak, they’re all that I have left.
But I’m hungry. Every bite of the stew feels treacherous, and I think, suddenly and viciously, of Katalin. My people, she said. Virág had stopped her before she finished, but I know what she would have said. That I don’t belong in Keszi. That half my blood is tainted, and I’ll never really be one of them.
A true wolf-girl would have refused the stew. She would let herself starve rather than making nice with Woodsmen.
My relief at making it out of the woods is corroded by the knowledge that we are growing closer to Király Szek. Closer to my end. I only have the vague shape of it in my mind, the icy claw of fear around my heart, the taste of blood on my tongue. I would rather know how I will die than spend the journey wondering whether it will be by blade or by fire.
“What do you expect is waiting for you when we reach Király Szek?” I ask carefully. “A personal commendation from the king? A festival in your honor?”
Imre snorts. “I’m just hoping one of the other soldiers hasn’t stolen my cot.”
“Is this your first mission, as a Woodsman?”
“My first into Ezer Szem. We go all over Régország, many places other than the woods. I suppose the name Woodsman is a bit misleading.”
I want to ask what they do when they’re not fighting monsters or abducting wolf-girls, but I’m not sure I will like the answer. So instead I say, “I thought that’s what the king’s army is for.”
“The king’s army has been tied up on the border for twelve years. There are scarcely enough soldiers left to guard the capital.”
I draw an uneasy breath. I don’t like thinking of the Woodsmen doing the work of regular soldiers. It’s more difficult to loathe them if I imagine they are fighting only for gold, hoping to one day go home to their families.
“Don’t look so disappointed,” Imre says, noticing my startled expression. “Most of us are still God-fearing men. Some more than others.”
“Like Peti.”
Imre gives an embattled sigh. “Peti was not a particularly pious man; he was only a wide-eyed simpleton, an easy mark for those with cunning tongues. He believed, as many other desperate peasants have been led to, that the presence of pagans in Régország is the cause of all our kingdom’s ills.”
This startles me too. We have the occasional bad harvest in Keszi, or the especially bitter winter, but we can only blame ourselves for that, or our fickle gods. Some years, ?rd?g is stronger, and sickness claims more of our people. When Isten manages to wrest back control, however—like the sun rising after a long night—we have bountiful, verdant springs, and a glut of new baby girls.
Of course, some years the Woodsmen come, and that is far worse than a bad harvest, or even the wiles of ?rd?g.
“What sort of ills?” I ask.
“Mostly the war,” says Imre. “I’ve heard the front line is soaked with Régyar blood. Merzan seems to grow stronger every day.”
News of the war rarely makes its way to Keszi. I know only the barest facts: three decades ago, King Bárány János married a Merzani princess in an effort to forge an alliance with our powerful neighbors to the south. It worked, for a time. She even bore him a son. But Merzan was too ambitious and Régország too stubborn. When the queen died, any hope of peace perished with her.