Chapter Two
I’ve never been inside the forest at night. As soon as the sun goes down, we don’t venture farther than the thin perimeter that surrounds Keszi, where the trees bloom green in summer and shed their leaves in autumn, and we certainly don’t wander into the true woods, the thick tangle of forest behind it, seething and dark. Here the trees do not abide by the laws of the gods, to change with the seasons or to grow straight up, slender branches straining toward the sky. We pass trees in their full spring display, lush with verdant leaves and needle-thin white flowers, and then trees that are rotting and dead, blackened all the way down to the roots, as if they’ve been struck by vengeful lightning. We pass trees that have grown twisted around each other, two wooden lovers locked in eternal embrace, and then others still that bend backward toward the ground, as if their branches are aching toward the Under-World, instead.
I scarcely even think to fear the forest. I am too busy fearing the Woodsmen.
Although I don’t care to, I learn their names quickly enough. The young blond Woodsman who bound me is Imre, the rugged older one with a bow and quiver strapped to his side is Ferkó, and the surly Woodsman behind me is Peti. Whenever I dare to glance over my shoulder, I see Peti staring daggers into my back, almost certainly wishing he could put an ax through it. Eventually I stop looking behind me at all.
“When are you going to dazzle us with your magic, wolf-girl?” Imre asks as we pass by a copse of trees that bear fleshy, foul-smelling fruit the shade of cloudy river water.
I stiffen. Wolf-girl is one of their many names for us, but I find it more unbearable than any of the others. After all, I have no magic, and I’ve done nothing to earn the cloak that hangs spuriously on my shoulders.
“I can’t choose when the visions come,” I reply, and hope he doesn’t notice the way my face burns with the lie.
“A lot of use that is. Don’t they teach you a way to call your visions?”
His casual tone frightens me more than Peti’s livid silence. No conversation should be easy between predator and prey. “It’s not something that can be taught.”
“Ah.” Imre’s blue eyes gleam. “Just as we in the Holy Order of Woodsmen are not taught to hate all pagans with the greatest passion. The loathing is in our blood.”
My grip tightens around the reins, stomach roiling. “You must hate me, then.”
“Certainly,” Imre replies. “But unlike the dullard on your other side, or the simpleton behind, I’d rather pass the time by talking than staring into the darkness and waiting to die.”
“Perhaps the rest of us would rather die in silence,” Ferkó mutters.
“The Woodsmen do not fear death,” Peti speaks up gravely. “The Prinkepatrios welcomes us to eternal glory.”
“Only if you die with honor. And I intend to run away screaming the moment I see so much as a pair of eyes in the dark.”
“That’s not funny,” Peti growls, bringing his horse to a canter so he can give Imre a steely glare.
“Don’t worry, Peti. I was only teasing. I promise to protect you when the monsters come.”
Peti’s ear tips turn red. “You’re going to tease your way to an early grave.”
“Better to die young with a smile on my face than live a long life without laughter.”
“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t have become a Woodsman,” Peti says.
“Quiet.” It’s the captain’s voice. I haven’t heard him speak since we entered the woods, and he’s quieter now than I expected, almost like he’s embarrassed of his authority. Of course I haven’t dared to ask his name. On the rare occasions that his soldiers do speak to him, they refer to him only as kapitány. He hasn’t fixed me with murderous stares like Peti, or tried to goad me into terrifying conversation like Imre, but I fear him worse than both of them put together. Despite the softness of his voice, his missing eye speaks of one thing—a fierce devotion to his god, which means a greater hatred for pagans and wolf-girls than either of these shorn men.
The captain halts on the path. We skid to a stop behind him, and I peer down at the ground, half expecting to see a mangle of entrails or the corpse of something freshly slaughtered. But it’s only a circle etched in the dirt. I might have believed it was an accident, maybe an animal dragging its tail on the ground behind it, but then I look again. Farther down the path are cloven prints, and then beyond that, the unmistakable stumbling tracks of a barefooted man. Looking at it makes me feel dizzy and sick.