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Aethren and Isha left Erdansten during the small window of darkness just after midnight. They travelled by foot and arrived at Eahalr on the evening of the next day, just as a stiff wind began to whistle across the grassy planes. Isha spoke little during the journey, which surprised Aethren. They had expected him to complain about the march or, worse, try to make small talk. Aside from requesting a few more breaks for water than Aethren would have liked, he bore the brisk pace with a bowed head and tense shoulders.
“Do you think Eahalr is a good idea after what happened to you here?” Isha asked as the hemlock trees came into view. He had stopped walking, forcing Aethren to turn and look back at him.
Aethren inhaled sharply through their nose. No, they didn’t think it was a good idea. Unfortunately, it was also the best idea they had. The Wyccmarshes stretched all the way across Ys from west to east, and most of that land was impenetrable. Eahalr’s position at the Harra foothills meant firm ground to walk on – or at least, firmer than the sucking, hungry depths of the Wyccmarshes proper.
“If there’s any sign of trouble, we’ll just have to move on,” Aethren said, and felt proud of themself for their confidence. They picked up the pace and led the way through the old grove of drowned trees and into Eahalr. Isha rubbed his face, but followed without further complaint.
He hadn’t been thrilled when Aethren explained their planned route, and the discomfort still lingered in the way he looked at them. Was he regretting his decision to trust them, Aethren wondered, or was he doubting their ability to get them both safely through the marsh? They weren’t sure which idea rankled them the most.
A bitter, icy rain began to fall just as Isha and Aethren entered the stone hut. Aethren sank down against the back wall and wished they could have a fire. There was no way they would find any dry wood here.
“Got any tinder?” Isha sounded out of breath. Aethren looked over to snap at him and stopped short. From a long bundle strapped to the side of his travelling pack, Isha was unwrapping a selection of dry wood. Aethren had to force themself not to be impressed.
“Shavings will do. Toss me one.” They caught the stick Isha threw and fought against their numb fingers to delicately shave small curls of wood from its base. Isha must have noticed the look on their face though because he let out a laugh, then froze as if surprised by his own sound.
“I . . . figured it would be hard to find dry wood.” Isha shrugged. Aethren grudgingly let slip a small half-smile.
“Not bad, for a southerner,” Aethren said.
“You forget, I’m a northerner first,” Isha retorted. “More a northerner than you ast nh’aka, anyway.”
“What does that mean? Is that – did you just insult me?” Aethren peered at Isha, surprised.
“Do you mean southerner as an insult?” Isha asked.
“Point taken,” Aethren grumbled, and returned their attention to the fire. Once it was lit, Aethren laid their damp gloves on the rocky floor to dry and nestled down into their blankets.
Beyond the mouth of the hut, the driving winds were like sheets billowing straight across the entrance. It was impossible to see anything; this was a wind that could strip the flesh from your bones and drive frost straight through your core.
“You still really don’t like me, do you?” Isha blurted. Aethren frowned at him.
“It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s more like . . . you love Rost, right? And she loves you. But you’ve not exactly taken any blows for her.”
Isha turned away quickly and withdrew a small loaf of fatcake from his pack. Made with seal or whale blubber and birch-flour, fatcake was a staple food during the long, cold months of the Howling and the Quiet. They shouldn’t have been eating it this close to the Bloom, but there was little choice now the crops and roe harvest were ruined. Aethren’s stomach clenched as Isha handed them two slices with some dried whale meat.
“Rostfar can defend herself,” Isha finally answered.
“That’s not what I meant,” Aethren said. When Isha just looked genuinely perplexed, Aethren flung up their hands. “Stars and skyfire! Look, Faren treated Rostfar like crap, threw all her secrets in the mud, and acted like she wasn’t your family.”
Isha looked as if he was about to be sick. He slowly lowered his meal into his lap and stared at Aethren with an expression impossible to read. “What are you saying?”
“I think you’re like an entry rug, okay? And I don’t like that.” Aethren bit the inside of their cheek with a small, frank shrug. “You let people use you to scrape the shit off their shoes, and if it’s just yourself, then . . . fine. But it’s hurting other people too and I just don’t think you should let that happen.”
The knob in Isha’s throat bobbed visibly. When he started to speak again, it was with a soft and distant tone. “After Mam died – I was eight winters, or there about – Pa came to get me. The tribe weren’t thrilled, but he insisted I should come live with him. Meet my half-brother. I suppose Mam must have liked him, or maybe she just didn’t know. Maybe he never let her see – he certainly fooled my Anash’ki and the other seniors—” Isha’s voice broke and he sagged against the wall behind him. “He wasn’t what I thought. What anyone thought. And Faren, this brother I was so excited to meet, was sharp as shingle. I guess he thought if Pa was going to hit him, he’d at least make sure Pa cut himself, too. But it didn’t work like that.”
All the anger flooded out of Aethren, leaving them cold. They hugged their knees up to their chest, unable to think of anything to say. But Isha wasn’t done.
“So, I thought I’d go the other way – be softer, be kinder.” Disgust curled Isha’s top lip. Aethren suspected that the disgust was directed inwards at himself just as much as it was at his pa. “If you think that makes me a . . . rug, as you say, then fine. At least I’m not a prickly bastard.”
“Isha—”
“Don’t.” Isha pushed his blankets off and started to rise.
“Wait. Listen—” Aethren grabbed Isha’s hand before he could stand up, then released him at once. They took a deep breath. “I’m not going to pretend I understand what you went through, because I don’t. But . . . you can’t say you’re a good person just because you’re not like your brother or your pa. There’s more to it than that.”
Isha was silent. Aethren worried he might bolt out of the hut and not come back; his body was humming with tension like a trapped bird.
“Do you know why I shave my hair?” he asked instead. Aethren blinked at him.
“. . . No?”
“It’s what we K’anakhi do when we’re away from home. Because we believe home is a people, and after Pa and Faren failed me, I assumed I’d never have a people again.” Isha touched the newly-grown stubble on his dark head with his fingertips. It had gotten longer over the last few weeks, and now resembled a soft, fluffy down of half-formed curls. “I was wrong, and I never knew it ‘til I lost most of them. Maybe it’s too late, but perhaps if I grow it again – well, it’s for them. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”
Aethren gulped. They had assumed Isha was letting himself go in his grief. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . it’s not my place.”
“No, no.” Isha waved a noncommittal hand. “You’re right. As Mati said, I fucked up. And I’ve got to fix it. I know that.” He rubbed his eyes as if checking for tears. “I’ll take first watch.”
“No. You look like shit,” Aethren said. “I’ll do it.”
Isha offered a tentatively grateful smile. “Wake me at Caerost’s rise?”
Aethren nodded. They made sure Isha was tucked away at the back of the hut, asleep, and then settled by the door. Neither they nor Kristan had ever thought about keeping watch when staying in Eahalr. Eery as it was, the town had always felt safe to Aethren.
But that was before. Things were different now.
The next day was much the same as the last, except their march was slowed to a slog by the wet ground. The two of them had breakfast and lunch the on the move, not wanting to lose the daylight while it lingered. Their rest was brief and uneasy that night, and neither had much energy for conversation as they went into the third day of their journey.
Aethren had never minded silence before, but it felt . . . different, somehow, with Isha. Guilt squeezed their heart with icy fingers whenever they looked at him, and their thoughts kept wandering back to their conversation in Eahalr. This arrangement would be easier if Aethren could remain neutral; if they could cut away their emotions like dead flesh under a healer’s knife. They needed to be clear, logical, level-headed. Stronger.
Ahead, Isha had stumbled into another horde of bloodflies. He slapped at the little terrors as they landed on him, and Aethren seized the opportunity to break the silence.
“You’ll need this,” Aethren said, unhooking a cork-stoppered pouch from their belt. Isha stopped swatting at the flies and turned around as if he had forgotten Aethren was there. He frowned, hesitating with his hand in mid-reach.
“What is it?”
“Uh . . .” Aethren popped the cork with their thumb and took a tentative sniff. “Mint balm and lavender, maybe? Probably some other stuff. You’d have to ask Kristan.”
“Maybe I will, when we—” but Isha couldn’t finish his sentence. He shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“What?”
“‘When’ hardly feels appropriate, not with where we’re going.”
Aethren stared at the cork as they rolled it between finger and thumb. Their breath caught in their throat.
“We’ll be fine,” Aethren said after a too-long pause, remembering to add a smile on the end. “Now put this on, unless you want the bloodflies to eat you alive.”
Isha didn’t look reassured, but he lathered on the bloodfly repellent and kept walking. Aethren took a moment longer to collect themself. A tracker, Isha had said. That was why he had come to them for help. But there was nothing to track in this sodden wasteland, and Aethren didn’t know what lay ahead.
“Aethren!” Isha shouted. He had dropped to his knees in front of something that Aethren couldn’t see through the tall grasses. The image of a tiny bug-eaten corpse flashed through Aethren’s mind. “Aethren, you need to look at this!” Isha called back, beckoning impatiently.
It took all Aethren’s mental capacity to remember how to walk forwards.
There was no small child’s corpse, but there were dead bodies. A ptarmigan hen and her unfledged chicks lay in a row, their bodies ravaged and splayed out like gory party ribbons. Aethren pressed their sleeve against their nose to muffle the stench of blood, but it pushed its way down their throat regardless.
“We need to leave,” they muttered, yanking the back of Isha’s coat to make him stand up. “These are pretty fresh.”
Isha didn’t seem to have heard. He was too busy shoving the corpses aside.
“Isha, what are you—” the words lodged in Aethren’s throat. They exhaled shakily. “Oh, Nys.”
Beneath the carcasses was a cloak. A child’s cloak. Aethren recognised it at once.
“We have to move,” Aethren said again, gentler this time. Isha shuddered.
“But that’s—”
“I know.” Aethren had to fight to keep their breaths even. That cloak had been theirs once, and then Marken had given it to Mati, who’d altered it for Arketh.
A movement at the corner of Aethren’s eye made them jump. They spun around and saw the ptarmigan’s mate was still alive, if only barely. It wandered aimlessly from side to side, one wing half torn off.
With a grim sinking sensation in their gut, Aethren drew an arrow and gave the bird a merciful death. It was all they could do.
In the hushed horror that followed, Isha voiced what Aethren had been too afraid to say. “We were meant to find this.”
Aethren tightened their grip around their bow, unable to bring themself to let go. “Whatever did it knows we’re out here. And it—” they glanced at the cloak, their next words coming out strangled. “It knows who we are.”
“What sort of animal could know that?” Isha asked, but Aethren saw the answer strike him a beat later. Neither needed to say anything – the same thought hung suspended between them, crisp as frozen rain.
Wolves.
Aethren stepped back and surveyed the scene again. The ground was too waterlogged to hold prints, but they could pick out a path of broken grass stems where the wolf had dragged the cloak and carcasses. A shiver walked Aethren’s spine. This whole this was too deliberate; too carefully placed. The wolf had to know the path Aethren and Isha were taking, and that meant it was close. Perhaps it was watching them now.
Instinct told Aethren to find somewhere to stop and make a shelter for the night. Fear told them to keep on moving. And out in the Wyccmarshes, it was all too easy to let fear win.
“We’ll stop when we reach that knoll and camp there for a few hours, then move with Sylvrast’s light.” Aethren pointed to a cluster of rocks that rose out of the marshland. “At least we’ll be able to see anything coming before it gets us.”
Isha gripped Arketh’s cloak and allowed Aethren to pull him to his feet. He stumbled at their side in a daze all the way to the knoll, and sat listlessly by the fire as soon as camp was set. Aethren had to get the last of their supplies out of his pack themself.
“You need to eat, Isha,” Aethren said as they huddled over the tiny, smokeless fire. Isha was tearing his ration of dried whale into shreds, his eyes fixed listlessly on the flames. The uneaten bits of meat fell onto Arketh’s bloodied and filth-encrusted cloak, which now lay across his lap.
“How are you so calm?” Isha’s head snapped up, and in that moment, he could have been Faren’s twin. His eyes shone and the firelight cast his lean features in deep shadow. “You lecture me about caring and doing the right thing, but you’re so calm! Either your soul’s hard as stone or you don’t give a fuck about what this—” He shook the tattered cloak at them, sending bits of dirt and food flying, “means.”
Aethren held their breath as if that might keep down their own anger, digging their nails into their palms. “What do you think it means, Isha?” They asked when they dared draw a shallow breath.
“That she’s—” Isha choked. “. . . dead.”
“No.” Aethren’s voice was quiet, strained for lack of air, but it carried conviction all the same. “I don’t believe that. I can’t. Rostfar believed she was alive.”
“A month ago,” Isha snapped. Aethren didn’t like how his voice carried through the night, but they hadn’t the heart to tell him to be quiet. “Maybe it was true then, and maybe Rost could’ve made it out here alone, but Ket – she’s so young, Aethren, and so small and it’s so cold out here, and I don’t – there’s no way—”
“Think about it,” Aethren said, surprised at the gentleness of their own voice. Isha stared up at them, lips slightly parted, eyes wide. “Even if they’d – they’d eaten . . . well, whatever they might’ve done to her, there’d be remains. But those wolves left dead birds as a warning instead. I don’t think there’s a body or any remains for them to leave – and that means there’s hope.”
“I know what you’re doing, and I’m grateful – but there’s no use.” He tried to smile, but the corners of his mouth were trembling too hard. “I’m sorry I shouted.”
“You’re giving up?” Aethren had to ask. Isha opened his mouth as if to argue – then all the energy seemed to rush out of him like water from a punctured water-skin. He deflated into his cloak as if he wanted it to swallow him.
“Good night, Aethren,” he said in a soft, hollow voice, and lay down on his sleeping roll with his back to them.
“Isha?” Aethren asked tentatively. There was no reply, save for the soft, almost-imperceptible sound of a stifled sob. Deciding they’d done enough damage, Aethren dragged themself a short distance away and settled in for a long and lonely watch.
