CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Caim slapped at the insect crawling across his face and groaned as a pain erupted in the palm of his hand. He opened his eyes.

He was lying in the burrow he’d dug in the snow. Liana curled up against him. The warmth of her body reminded him of the last time he’d been this close to a woman. Moving slow so as not to wake her, Caim scooted away and sat up.

Muted sunlight sketched the inside of the shelter. The ends of the branches poked through the carved-out roof above them. What he thought was an insect in his semi-dream state turned out to be a maddening itch down the side of his face. He probed the skin with careful fingertips. The cuts were healing, but the scars would be bad. Or good, depending on your point of view. Scars kept away bravos spoiling for a fight, and women liked scars. Some did, anyway. The kind that might fancy a roll in the snow with someone like him.

Caim drew his right-hand knife. The blade was charred from guard to tip. He ran his fingers along the length and felt a myriad of tiny imperfections in the metal. It was ruined. A waste of a good knife, and he hadn’t even gotten the satisfaction of killing its target. His upper lip twitched at the thought of the witch, whatever she was. He didn’t even know, except that he wanted to stay clear of her, for now and for good. He had enough problems already. He glanced over at Liana, but she was still fast asleep.

He put away the knife and held up his hand. The skin of the palm and the undersides of his fingers were red and puffy like he had been burned. While he probed the tender flesh, his forearm began to throb. Caim peeled off his jacket and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. He couldn’t help hissing at what he found. The bandage wrapping his forearm was completely soaked through with yellow and red stains. He smelled it even before he started tearing off the binding. The wound underneath was a raw hole oozing pus and blood. Caim clenched the muscles of that arm, making the wound yawn wider. He was at a loss. He didn’t have access to doctors, not even a decent army barber, and he knew next to nothing about healing herbs. If the wound festered for much longer, he might lose the whole arm.

Caim sat back against the snowbank and wondered what to do. He could try to sear out the infection again, but he would need a fire for that. He looked up and was taken aback by the mass of shadows clinging to the roof of the shelter. He hadn’t noticed them before, but an idea came to him. It had worked before; it might work again. Caim reached up with his burnt hand and caught hold of a shadow. Chilling cold seeped into his injured hand as it wriggled between his fingers. This is crazy. I don’t have the first notion of what I’m doing. Before he could stop himself, Caim pushed the little darkness into the mouth of the wound. He gasped as the shadow squirmed inside his flesh. There was a moment of biting pain. Then, just as he started to dig it back out, the pain ceased. Caim sat back in amazement. The bleeding had stopped. He flexed his forearm again. It didn’t ache as badly. He grunted in spite of himself, and Liana stirred.

Shrugging back into his jacket, Caim leaned over her. He wondered if the shadow-healing trick would work on her, but under the crust of blood pasted in her hair the scalp wound appeared to be closed. As he touched it, she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

“It’s quiet,” she said.

He pulled back. “I guess the storm passed sometime in the night. How do you feel?”

Liana sat up with his help. She let her hand linger in his. “Not so bad as last night. A little tired. Something to eat would help.”

Caim’s stomach stirred at her words. He could use some food himself, but he didn’t have high hopes for a decent meal anytime soon. Before he could ask, she was pawing through the burlap sack slung under her cloak.

“I’ve got this.”

She held up a packet of cheesecloth, inside which was a slab of cured bacon. The smell made Caim’s mouth water.

“Now if we had a fire to cook it over,” he said.

“Why?”

Liana bit off a hunk from one end before handing the slab to him. With a smile, Caim took a bite. He tried to picture Josey sitting beside him in a bed of packed snow, chewing on half-frozen bacon, but it was too crazy to contemplate. Right now she was probably still abed, with a long day of dress changes and flower arranging in front of her. Why had he come north again?

Caim shoved the rest of the food in his mouth. Wiping greasy fingers on his jacket, he turned around to the cave entrance. It was almost entirely blocked with fresh snow except for a sliver of open space at the top. Peering through, he saw a curtain of white. Everything was covered in a dazzling patina of snow. He put up the hood of his cloak and started clawing a way out. By the time he had carved out an exit, Liana was finished with her breakfast, and they crawled outside together.

The air was icy cold after the relative warmth of the shelter. The snow came halfway up his thighs, which was going to make traveling difficult. The hilltops staggered across the horizon before them, their rugged shoulders clad in fresh powder.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Yes. I think so.”

“So which way?”

She looked around, her eyes touching on the hills, up and down the range. Finally, she pointed to the centermost peak, which was also the largest.

“That way. Just south of the summit.”

He considered her for a moment. “The castle?”

She gave him a tight smile. “I don’t know where else to go, and we won’t last long out here in the open.”

“Good enough.”

Caim started off according to her directions. He went first, plowing a path through the snow. It was slow going, but he managed to keep up a decent pace. Every few paces he looked back to make sure she was doing all right, but she stayed on his heels, never faltering, never complaining. The only acknowledgment she made to the cold was to pull up the hood of her cloak, leaving just her eyes and nose visible through the circle of fur lining.

As the sun climbed into the brooding sky, Caim focused on his navigation, which wasn’t perfect as the forest thickened around them. Whenever he felt they were turned too far south, he adjusted for it. A layer of sweat built under his clothes, but his legs, encased in a coat of snow, became numb as the day wore on.

Caim was pushing through a stand of denuded bushes to get to a broad clearing beyond when his knee slammed into something hard.

“Fuck!”

He reached into the snow. His hands encountered a solid surface. Liana came up beside Caim as he brushed away a section of snow to reveal a low stone wall. On the other side, big snow-covered hummocks rose from the ground all around the clearing.

“This place looks—” Liana started to say, but then her expression changed.

“What?”

Something didn’t feel right. Caim reached for his knife as he pulled Liana down into the snow. She pressed a hand to her mouth, and a muffled sound emerged. Shocked, he realized she was sobbing.

“What is it?”

He didn’t see any sign of danger, although the scene was deathly quiet.

Liana shook her head. “This place … It was called Joliet. My father and I came here each spring, to trade.”

Caim scanned the clearing. At first he thought she was seeing things, perhaps on account of her head wound, but then he considered the snowy mounds. That one could be the remains of a hut. That one was a little larger, perhaps a store, adjacent to a flat space at the center … like a village square. As the pieces came together in his mind, Caim smelled smoke, but it was an old scent. Whatever had happened was now past, days or weeks ago, its ravages covered by the snow.

“We can go around,” he said, to spare her from whatever horrors might lie beneath the surface.

“No. I want to see.”

She started to stand up, but he caught her arm. “Wait. There’s nothing to be done here.”

“Yes,” she said. “There is.”

She pulled free and swung her leg over the wall. He stayed put as she pushed through the snow toward the middle of the clearing. Then she stumbled over something, and stooped down, clearing the snow away. A wail made him leap over the wall and plunge after her.

He found her kneeling beside something in the snow. It only took him a moment to recognize it was a body. Liana had cleared away a woman’s face, her long red hair clotted with ice crystals. The long shaft of an arrow with spiraled yellow fletching jutted from her chest. It looked like animals had gotten to the body. Loose flaps of skin hung from her face, and there were gouges torn from her naked shoulders and arms.

“Her name was Alysse,” Liana said, so low he could barely hear her.

Caim bent down and hooked his hands under Liana’s arms, hauling her upright. “We can’t stay. The killers might be nearby.”

“Northmen.”

Caim looked down at the arrow. The fletching was distinctive.

“You’ve seen this before.”

Liana nodded, a tear running down her cheek. “They first came two summers ago, down from the mountains. They killed everyone they found.”

Caim gazed around, trying to make sense of it. “And the duke allows his people to be slaughtered like this?”

But Liana had left, trudging deeper into the ruined hamlet. Caim took a path around the outermost mounds. Coming around a tall hillock of snow, he stumbled onto a scene of carnage the likes of which he’d never seen. Bodies were impaled on stakes, their twisted limbs drooping toward the ground. None of them looked older than ten. Two were mere infants. Their expressions were horrific. Caim could imagine the screams as they died. Then he looked beyond the bodies, and his fingers curled into painful fists. One wall of a longhouse stood a few paces away. Four corpses were likewise pinned to the wall, facing the children. Frozen streams of blood ran down their nude bodies from gory holes where their breasts had been. Long slits across their bellies exposed the entrails. Mothers, forced to watch the murder of their children, and then denied the mercy of a quick death.

Bile filled Caim’s mouth. He had witnessed many cruelties in his life, including the murder of his best friend, Mat, but nothing like this. This went beyond raiding, beyond war. And it’s happening all across this land.

He imagined Kit’s voice. These are your people, Caim. Your father’s people. Can you turn your back on them? And if you do, what will you become?

The horror turned to anger inside him, and then ignited into a full-on rage. He studied every detail of the scene. This was what Liana’s people were fighting against.

Snow crunched behind him. Caim intercepted Liana before she saw the massacre. She didn’t ask why, but let him lead her in another direction. As they made their way through the clearing, Caim imagined the dead all around him, scores upon scores buried beneath the virgin snow. Come spring, this meadow would become a charnel pit. Swarms of insects would feast and lay their eggs in the bloated flesh of these people who had lived and breathed just a few short weeks ago. As they approached the trees lining the edge of the village, Caim heard a scraping sound half a heartbeat before several dark figures emerged from the vegetation. Snow dusted the hoods of their heavy cloaks. Light glinted off drawn weapons. Seven men in all, unless more remained hidden. Caim counted four bowmen among them, their arrows pointed at him. Liana stiffened at his side.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

While Liana stood as if frozen in place, Caim shifted his weight away from her. If the archers fired, he didn’t want them hitting her by mistake. He took a small step and reached back for his suete knife.

“Take another step, boyo,” one of the figures said. “And you’ll be food for the crows.”

Caim’s hand tightened on the hilt.