I’m well accustomed to these sorts of slights, but the words still sting, and coming from a Woodsman no less. “How about the insult of stealing us in the first place? Besides, I’m not as powerless as you think. You wouldn’t have survived those creatures without me.”
“We wouldn’t have faced the monsters at all if you had been able to see them coming. Ferkó and Imre would still be alive.”
“I told you; that’s not how it works,” I bite out. “Seers don’t choose their visions. The visions choose them.”
Yet my gaze wanders to where their ruined bodies lie. Ferkó’s face is split open like ripe fruit, a maw of pink flesh and slivers of bone. Imre’s heart sits on top of his chest, mottled with bite marks, still weeping rosy spurts of blood. I know they’re my enemies and that I should revel in their deaths, but my stomach roils when I look. When I think of how terrible their last moments were, I feel a jolt of pain between my shoulders.
And grieving dead Woodsmen pains me even more.
Gáspár gets to his feet and dips his ax into the shallow water, washing the creature’s congealed blood from the blade. His knife is still in my hand, fingers clenched so tight that it hurts to let go. I know he’s not a warrior by the way he turns his back to me: I could have the blade to his throat before he even turns around again.
But it’s a terribly ridiculous plan, more absurd than any of my previous imaginings. The Woodsmen are faceless soldiers, bred to be prey for the forest’s monsters. Their deaths are nothing for the king to blink at, and certainly nothing to punish Keszi for. But the death of a prince—
“You can’t go back,” I start. “You won’t survive the woods alone, and Virág is too old to make the journey to Király Szek. She’s the only seer in the village.”
“I’m not going back.” Gáspár stares into the grid of trees, shadows oily and black between their trunks. “And I’m not going to Király Szek. I won’t return to my father with only a useless, impotent wolf-girl.”
The familiar anger coils in my chest. “You’re just as useless yourself, with that ax. Are all Woodsmen such poor fighters, really?”
“Woodsmen are trained to kill monsters with axes,” he replies, drawing himself up with a sharp breath. “Princes are trained to fight their human enemies with sword and tongue.”
I let out a noise of derision. If I had any doubts he was the prince, his haughty, petulant look would have quashed them. His words seem like rehearsed court drivel. But I don’t think squeamish princes with silver tongues are supposed to be Woodsmen at all. They’re supposed to sip wine behind the safety of city walls while other, lesser men die for them.
“Then why are you traipsing around Farkasvár with that massive blade at your hip?” I challenge.
I feel a quiver of satisfaction at how quickly his haughtiness drains from him. Gáspár averts his gaze, face darkening.
“I could just as soon ask why the things you call gods chose not to bestow you with magic,” he says slowly. “But I’m not interested in knowing the minds of demons.”
To any other wolf-girl, it might have been a great insult. But what do I have to thank the gods for, besides short winters and the green promise of spring? My perfunctory faith hasn’t prevented Virág’s lashings, or Katalin’s vicious taunts, or stopped the Woodsmen coming to take me. I’m better off praying to ?rd?g for a swift and painless death.
Or perhaps I should not be praying to the pagan gods at all. My hand goes suddenly to my right pocket, fishing for the gold coin, and relief pools in me when I close my sticky fingers around it.
I push myself to my feet. Keeping the dagger clenched in my fist, I walk toward Gáspár and stand on his right side, so he can look at me with his good eye.
“What will you do, then, Bárány Gáspár?” I ask. “Kill me where I stand?”
He meets my gaze and holds it. Too long. His black eye is burning and I hate him with a renewed ferocity. I hate him for being a slave to his father’s worst impulses, for his ax and his black Woodsman’s suba and for tying me to Peti, but most of all I hate that I was so afraid of him, that he made me feel dead before I even was.
No more. His fingers tense on the handle of his ax, but I don’t flinch. I’ve seen him fight. I’m no skilled warrior myself, but if it does come to blows, I’ll win.
In the end Gáspár doesn’t lift his weapon. He blinks at me, slow and diffident, and asks, “Do you know the myth of the turul?”