We were lost.

All had seemed to go well enough for two days, but then a fog had settled down into the forest while we slept, and when we awoke we went the wrong way and lost the road.

We reassured each other that sooner or later the fog would lift, and sooner or later we would come upon a Roman road running along a ridgeline. We kept on through the forest, following animal tracks up and down slopes and crossing trickling streams, though with each step of the sturdy donkey, I felt doubts rise higher within me.

Once, we heard the distant baaing of sheep; at another point, my heart leapt into my throat as a snarling dog lunged out of the mist. Bone sent him on his yipping way with his tail low and a torn ear.

Whose land were we crossing? What people were they? We might stumble into a village before we knew it was there, and how would they treat strangers who could not speak their tongue?

Maybe we were going in circles and would never cross a road. It was an eerie land we were lost in, the tree bark black with damp and the withered yellow leaves falling to the sodden earth like reminders of death. In sunlight, it might have been beautiful; in fog, it felt as if we wandered through the realm of ghosts.

And then, when my panic was chilling me far more than the dampness that had seeped through my clothing, we found the road.

At least, it looked like the same road.

We stayed much closer to it this time and continued on our way. Every sixteen or seventeen miles, we passed the ruins of Roman way stations, half their stones missing. The locals had doubtless taken them for their own use.

A day later, we reached a crossroads. If there had once been a Roman mile marker giving the names of routes, it was gone. We turned left. The forest canopy obscured the sun; we cast no shadows and couldn’t tell which way was east, which was west. But if we’d been heading east, then left should take us north.

We came to several more crossroads, passing straight through them; although, with each crossroads passed, I grew more uncertain that we were going in the right direction. Each crossroads offered a decision that may have gone wrong. Terix was not more confident than I, but neither of us was yet ready to seek out a Briton to ask.

On our sixth day of travel, we came down off the hills and started to cross a wide, flat valley; as we came out from under the trees, we saw that our fears were accurate, and we had been headed east, not north. Terix let loose a string of curses involving pig anatomy and priests, while I sat with the donkey’s reins slack in my hands and tried not to weep. I was cold, damp, and exhausted, and our food was running low. I was growing frightened that we’d wander these misty wilds for eternity, like spirits of the dead.

We chose to leave the road and head to the northwest, and as the sun lowered toward the horizon, we caught a hint of woodsmoke on the air. The scent was comforting, speaking of a warm fire with family gathered around for an evening meal, and also alarming: we knew we were far from Maerlin, the only person on this isle who might welcome us. People lived nearby, but who or where they were we had not discovered by the time darkness began to fall. The cursed fog was returning, too, and we decided to make camp.

“There’s a ruin of some sort over there,” Terix said, pointing through the growing mist.

I could just make out the shadows of a structure. It would give some small protection from the night, and as we were now miles from the road, we needn’t fear being set upon by bandits as we slept. “If there’s a flat space inside free of roots and rocks, I’ll count it the softest bed in Britannia.”

The structure was farther off than it had looked; we realized it was no ruined cottage but something much larger. The moon illuminated the fog with gray-white light, and as we drew closer, we realized what it was.

Standing stones.

We’d seen them once in Gaul: a circle of stones, placed by unknown people in the past, perhaps as a temple to worship a god. But those stones looked like children’s toys compared with these.

Rough rectangular stones three times my height loomed out of the mist. Across some of their tops, yet more stones stretched, turning them into immense gallows. Some had toppled, their impossible weight lying at pained angles like fallen soldiers. The mist drifted between the silent rocks, caressing them like old lovers.

We drew our mounts to a halt at the edge of a wide ditch that surrounded the circle, and without us looking at each other, I reached out my hand and found his, already seeking mine. Bone whimpered. Terix and I stared at the stones and felt ourselves in a place that touched between this world and the next. A shiver shuddered up the back of my neck and across my scalp.

“Sleeping out in the open suddenly doesn’t seem like such a bad idea,” Terix said.

“They’re just rocks,” I said, trying to convince myself.

Terix snorted.

“I don’t believe in ghosts and gods,” I insisted, letting go of his hand and nudging my donkey forward. It wouldn’t go, so I dismounted and led it down the bank of the ditch. Bone whined, then followed.

“Nimia . . .”

I knew Terix well, though. He’d rather be with me and Bone inside the unsettling circle than alone outside it in the dark and mist. He dismounted and followed.

There was a second ring of stones inside the first, and at the center of it all was a stone laid on the ground that looked to be an altar or dais. The eeriness of the stones continued to make my skin prickle, and I didn’t know if it was out of a sense of some otherworldly power or my imagination. I was too weary to think clearly, which in itself was answer enough for what we should do.

“We should spend the night here,” I said, and then went on over Terix’s groan. “Our fire will be better hidden from view; if we sleep out on the plain, we don’t dare build one.”

“I’d rather spoon Bone all night for warmth than have a fire here.”

“You’d make the dog suffer for your fears?”

“He likes spooning.”

Which was, oddly, the truth. For a massive beast of a dog with a ferocious bite, Bone did have a strong love of snuggling. “I admit the place feels a little . . . haunted,” I said.

“A little?”

“But that makes it even less likely that a local is going to stumble upon us in the dark, don’t you think? They’re probably as nervous around these stones as we are. And I’m cold, Terix. I want a fire more than I can say.” I let my teeth chatter loudly for effect.

“It’s rotten of you to play on my soft heart like that.”

My chattering got louder, and I shook my arms in exaggerated shivers.

He threw up his hands. “Have it your way! But when the ancient ghosts of sacrificed Celts appear, I’m going to tell them it’s your fault we slept on their graves.”

I waved my hands in the air and made gibberish noises.

“What are you doing?”

“Casting a spell to protect you from evil spirits.”

He scowled. “I’d be happier if I thought you really could.”

I would, too.

Together, we tended to the donkeys and then built a fire using the twigs and wood we’d collected during the day and strapped to our pack animal. It was a small fire, built behind the altar stone, and as we huddled by it, gnawing our bits of dried fish, I felt far from comforted by the meager flames. They did little to burn through the mist yet cast flickering shadows onto the tall stones surrounding us, making them look as if they breathed. I felt as if the stones were leaning over us, listening, waiting for us to fall asleep and let down our guard.

We put our trust in Bone to wake us should anyone approach and settled down to sleep. I faced the fire, with Terix holding me from behind, the shared body warmth a necessity.

“You’re not too scared to raise a mast,” I muttered, feeling his arousal against my backside.

“It’s possessed by an evil spirit.”

“Ah. So nothing new.” We’d slept like this many nights, and I gave no more meaning to his erection than that he was a young man with a female pressed against him. He couldn’t help it any more than he could help his morning wood, and in a strange way, I was comforted by that tree branch trying to lodge itself between my buttocks. It was a reminder that we were alive and of the trust and affection between us.

I reached forward and shoved a stick deeper into the flames, then tried to let my eyelids feel the weight of exhaustion. My lids lowered but did not close, held open by the ghostly moonlight and mist, the looming, breathing stones, and our slim protection against them, a flickering fire that would die as soon as we slept. I dreaded the thought of sleeping through the night without a fire, our bodies lying helpless in this otherworld of mist and haunted stones. Fire, the symbol of the sun, felt like our only shield against this darkness.

Terix snored into my hair. His erection softened.

He would laugh in the morning when he heard that I was the one who stayed awake all night, fretting about spirits.

I hovered on the edge of sleep for I knew not how long, occasionally stirring from my doze to feed sticks into the flames. At some point, though, sleep caught me, and then I woke with a start to find the fire out. I had the sense that some noise had disturbed me, and I listened hard, my ears straining past Terix’s snoring and the shift and sigh of a donkey.

Far off, a horn sounded.

I tensed.

Again, the horn, as of hunters, and with it now the baying of hounds.

My heart thundered, my body going weak and cold with fear, while my mind struggled to clear away the mud of sleep. No one would hunt at night, in the fog. Was I dreaming?

The baying grew louder, and with it now I heard the thudding of hooves against turf.

I shrugged out from under Terix’s arm and scrambled to my feet, then around the altar to what seemed the main opening to the stone circle. My eyes wide as if they could see through the moonlit mist, I peered out from behind a stone toward the sounds, still not believing.

Hunters. At night. Who? Why?

I slapped my face and felt the sting in my cheek. Awake.

Behind me, Bone growled, then woofed in warning. Terix’s snoring stopped with a snort.

The horn sounded again, and out of the mist came a white hound, loping toward me.

“Terix!” I screamed, turning around and stumbling to him. My legs felt as if they’d turned to water; it was every nightmare of being unable to move as death approached.

He was on his feet and reaching for his sword. “What is it?”

“A hunt!”

“What?”

Bone rushed past us and engaged the white hound. Snarls and the horrible quick barking of two dogs fighting nearly drowned out the hooves and horn and with them now the rumble of male laughter.

“Run!” Terix said, and grabbed my hand.

We dashed through the stones and down the ditch, leaving the donkeys and all our belongings behind. “Are they real?” I gasped as we pulled ourselves up the other side. “How can they be real?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know!” He jerked my arm, forcing me to keep up with his longer strides.

“But who can they— Oh Juno, protect us!” I said, as I realized.

“What?”

“The Wild Hunt.”

“Jupiter’s balls!”

Audofleda, Clovis’s sister, had told us about the Wild Hunt, when Woden and his spectral warriors rode to the hunt with their hounds. To hear them was to be warned of war and catastrophe; to see them was to be swept up and pulled into the underworld. They galloped in the air just above the ground, following roads that either were there or once had been.

We were both flagging, our burst of energy spent. “If there’s a road to the stones, we’re surely far from it now,” I said.

Terix nodded, and we dropped to the ground, hoping to hide ourselves against it.

“Why are they here, in Britannia?” Terix whispered.

“Maybe we’re in Saxon territory. The Saxons are from Germania, aren’t they, like the Franks?”

At the stone circle, shouts went up, the voices carrying in odd echoes through the mist. I couldn’t understand what they were saying but guessed they’d discovered our camp and donkeys. I still couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe it was real. It felt real, but . . . But I didn’t believe in gods.

Maybe the kraken had been real, too.

I whimpered. If such things truly existed, then we were nothing against them. I felt the darkness expanding around me, concealing worlds of gods, demons, and the dead.

Something was coming toward us, panting in great, gasping breaths. I clutched Terix’s shoulder, and we sprang to our feet and ran. We were no challenge to it, though; the heaving breaths drew closer, until I could feel the hot, wet breath on my legs.

It gave a soft woof.

“Bone!” I put my hand out and felt the wet slobber of his tongue.

The hunting horn was sounding again. The hounds bayed. The hooves thundered. Men gave the eager cry of the chase.

A white hound came out of the mist and lunged at Terix, and he went down. I screamed. Bone leapt onto the hound, knocking it away from Terix. I leaned down to help him up, but his eyes were on something behind me. “Run, Nimia!”

I turned to look and saw an immense form moving through the mist. A mounted warrior—or something worse. Its shape was wrong.

“Get up, get up!” I urged, pulling at Terix’s arm.

“I can’t. Run, Nimia!”

I ran, hoping to draw the thing away from Terix. I ran with every fiber of strength I possessed, and yet it was only a moment before I sensed the hooves behind me, heard the laughter, and felt an arm scoop me up and throw me belly-down across a horse’s withers. I struggled, preferring the slashing hooves of the horse to whatever held me, and the thing gripped the back of my gown and jerked me upright, turning me so I sat across its thighs. I clung to its chain-mailed chest to keep my balance.

And looked up.

A hideous visage of misshapen silver gleamed down at me, with immense hollows for eyes. From its broad skull sprouted enormous antlers. I gaped at the monster that held me, frozen in terror and disbelief. I remembered the white stag in my vision. Was it Woden?

He turned the horse back toward the stone circle, and I heard Terix holler and voices laugh. I struggled anew, desperate to get away and get back to Terix, but he clamped his massive arm around me, pinning me to him.

I was going with him, to the underworld.