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Aethren and Isha were almost out of the Wyccmarshes when hope came to them in a bright, unexpected blaze. The sign was so small that Aethren almost missed it – a circle of stones, sheltered in the cleft of a large boulder. They skidded off the long stone tendril the two of them had been walking on, splashed through knee-deep mud, and almost flung themself down by the remains of the campfire. It was old, half-covered in mud and debris, but the boulder had prevented the storms from washing it away entirely.
“Aethren,” Isha said softly as he joined them. Then, louder, excited: “Aethren! It’s a fire!”
“I can see that,” Aethren said, but they were smiling. The relief was so strong they had to sit down and put their head in their hands. They squeezed their eyes shut, counted to ten, then opened them again. The campfire was still there.
“It’s hers, right? It has to be. Nobody else would be out here. How old is it? Can you tell?”
“I – I don’t know.” Dreamily, Aethren reached out and touched the nearest stone. Rostfar must have built the fire up on a bed of stones and flat slabs of rock because the ground was too wet. Had she sat here, cold and alone, drawn towards Deothwicc by her grief? Had the familiar crackle of flames brought her comfort in this wild and unforgiving place? Aethren hoped so.
“Can you tell where she went?” Isha asked.
Aethren roused themself, blinking, and looked around. A month of snow, winds and storms had obliterated whatever tracks might have been here. Their only sign that they were on the right path was this little lonely campfire, sheltered by chance.
“If she came this far, she was definitely heading for Deothwicc – I can’t think where else she’d have been going otherwise. We’re on the right path, Isha.” Aethren shielded their eyes and gazed north. The changes to the landscape told them that they were almost out of the Wyccmarshes now. Another day of travelling, and they would likely be able to see Deothwicc. The thought made their stomach churn with equal parts anticipation and dread. Were they equipped to handle whatever awaited them there? Had Rostfar been?
“Then let’s keep moving,” Isha said. His face was alight from within, and he paced back and forth with a slight spring to his step. The deep hurt was still in his eyes, but hope had found a place there, too.
“Yeah,” they said stiffly. “Good idea.” They had hardly gotten to their feet, however, when Isha let out a soft cry of joy or surprise. He leapt into the mud and started off at a stumbling run, towards . . . something. Something that shone from the thin fog with a warm, fire-like light. “Wait!” Aethren bolted after Isha. Part of them wanted to believe, but it was too convenient. Too inviting.
The light vanished. Aethren sighed in relief. Isha staggered to a halt and stared around, his expression oddly blank.
“Where’s she gone?” His voice was quiet, musing.
Aethren splashed up to his side and grabbed his arm. “For Nys’ sake, Isha – if we see weird lights in the marshes, we do not follow them. That’s child’s play.”
“But I . . .” Isha frowned at Aethren’s hand on his arm. “What are you doing?”
“Me? What are you doing?” Aethren tried to pull Isha back towards the remains of Rostfar’s camp, but he twisted free with surprising strength. No, Aethren reminded themself sternly, not surprising. Isha might have been small in stature and unskilled in survival, but he had spent most of his life working a forge.
Aethren cautiously stepped in front of him, hands up in a silent ward. “Isha, look at me.”
Isha didn’t. His eyes were fixed on some point over Aethren’s shoulder. They moved nearer – and Isha struck. His elbow caught Aethren in the chest as he bolted forwards.
“Don’t!” Aethren tried to shout, but the fog swallowed their voice. More lights appeared and with every step Isha took, the fog coiled tighter around him. “We’re not lost! We don’t need your help, we don’t . . .” their voice died in their throat.
Isha was gone. And so were the lights.
“Isha!” Aethren took a few cautious steps in the direction Isha had gone, then stopped. This was not the hungry, slinking fog that had accompanied the wolf in Eahalr, but it made their skin prickle nonetheless.
“Aethren?”
Aethren turned. A small, slight figure emerged from the fog, and Aethren felt a surge of relief. They started towards it at a brisk half-run, but stopped the second it was close enough to see properly.
Whatever – whoever – it was, it wasn’t Isha. A strange black fog twisted around the creature, making them more shadow than human. Hands wreathed in rippling fog lifted towards Aethren, fingers splayed as if in supplication.
“Listen to me, Aethren,” it said in a quick, low voice.
Aethren turned and fled. They couldn’t be sure where they were going, only that they had to get away from this place. The mists were suffocating, the marshes cunning; staying there would result in falling into the hands of the hrafmaer, and their kindness was lethal.
Aethren’s foot slipped. They didn’t even have time to draw breath before the marsh wrapped its arms around them, pulling them into its silty depths.
Pressure clamped around their midriff. Aethren writhed, but they couldn’t see what had them. Water rushed past their head, their ears, blinding them – and then their head broke the surface. Hands hauled them onto stable ground.
A face emerged from the gloom. It was broad, high cheekbones, a strong nose. A scar stood out on one grey-skinned cheek.
“Who—?” Aethren gasped. Every breath took immense effort. “No. No, I said – I’m not lost.”
“It’ll be okay,” said the hrafmaer. “Please stop fighting me. You need to—” Her head snapped up and around.
Aethren staggered back to their feet and stumbled away from the woman, bowed so low they were almost on all fours. Get out of the Wyccmarshes. Reach Deothwicc. Find Rostfar. Aethren was so close now; so near to achieving the first good thing since they’d failed to save Arketh at Whiterift. If only their shaking limbs would cooperate, if only the air didn’t feel like so much ash in their lungs, if only they could be better – then they might still put things right.
A rope closed around Aethren’s throat. Aethren’s fingers clawed the base of their neck, but there was nothing there – nothing, and yet something continued to drag them back through the slime and mud like a fish on a line. They twisted, thrashed, rasped, and all to no avail.
“It is time to return home, hrafaïn,” said a cold, lilting voice, and a hand pressed itself over Aethren’s mouth.
Their world dissolved into darkness.
⁂
Caught between dreaming and surface-sleep, Rostfar thought the bark of the Speaking Tree was swallowing her up. Her mind flitted through a hare, and from there leapt into the skin of a running fox. She spiralled upwards into the wings of a raven, and then down again, through the earth into the bones of something older than life itself. The Tree’s voice bled into Rostfar’s head, urging her to heal, heal – but heal what? Rostfar couldn’t hear the last words. They trickled through her ears like water.
Can you see me? asked the Speaking Tree.
“See what?” Rostfar asked.
And the trance broke.
Something had changed – she could taste it on the tip of her tongue, feel it in the sweat that filmed her skin. Groggy and shivery, Rostfar forced herself to sit up. She didn’t remember falling asleep, and that struck her as odd. It was the first time since coming to Deothwicc that Rostfar had felt safe enough to drift off alone.
“Yrsa?” Rostfar called out into the leafy shadows. Nobody answered, and Rostfar felt foolish. Yrsa had gone with a group to find Grae, who had been gone from Deothwicc for almost four days now. At Yrsa’s insistence, Rostfar had remained here to let her battered ribcage heal.
With her cloak wrapped tight around her, Rostfar shuffled around the Speaking Tree and followed the small trickle of water that ran from its roots until she came to a stream. Despite the unnatural warmth of the ground, the water was cool and clear. Rostfar splashed it over her face before cupping her hands to drink, soothed by the cold that pooled into her stomach.
A reflection in the water caught her eye. She spun around, her hand at her knife, and a wolven shape split away from the darkness of the trees. It was only as the wolf came nearer that Rostfar recognised them.
“Rostfar,” Grae said, like he was surprised to see her.
Rostfar didn’t know whether to run to Grae or call out. A nameless fear stirred in the pit of her stomach.
“Everyone’s been worried about you.” Rostfar spoke to Grae the same way she might have spoken to someone else’s child, then cleared her throat in embarrassment. “Yrsa was worried, that is. And Myr, and . . .” she stopped talking, aware that Grae wasn’t listening. His head was turned towards the Speaking Tree, body oddly lax, eyes unfocused. “Grae?”
“I don’t see how it’s any of your business,” Grae snapped, and Rostfar relaxed. That was more like the Grae she knew.
“Yrsa’s out looking for you. Did you see her or—?”
“No.” Grae took a stiff step away from Rostfar and then skittered back towards her. She didn’t like how he was moving – it wasn’t wolf like. More like a hare.
As he turned, the moonlight broke through the trees and struck a wound on his shoulder. Rostfar’s heart squeezed.
“Grae!” She reached out for him on instinct and then froze, fingers a bare hair’s breadth from the wound. She was so close she could feel the heat radiating off him. Grae’s ears were flat against his skull, eyes towards the ground. He didn’t move away, but he didn’t move nearer either. Rostfar swallowed uneasily. “Was this the – the unwolf?”
“She – it, it bit me. I got away.” There was a sliver of something brittle in Grae’s voice.
Rostfar sat back on her heels and dug around in her cloak pockets until she found a piece of cloth. She held it out to Grae, daring to shift a little closer.
“Should I clean it?”
Grae regarded her with that same blank, distant expression for a few more heartbeats, until something clicked behind his eyes. He turned his head away, leaving his shoulder open to her. Rostfar dipped the cloth in the stream and then gently cleaned away the half-dried blood. Grae’s body was so tense that it felt like cleaning rock instead of flesh.
At least he wasn’t trying to kill her anymore, Rostfar thought with a wry smile.
“There’s nothing amusing about this,” Grae snarled. Rostfar drew her hand back, cradling it in her lap as she willed her heart to calm again. For all his temper and sharp edges, there was a streak of vulnerability in Grae that made Rostfar think of Kristan.
“No,” Rostfar agreed. “It’s just – us, like this. You remind me of someone back in Erdansten, someone who’d never stand me helping him.”
Grae looked like he might have been about to soften, but he turned his head away.
“I wouldn’t, not if there was anyone else around,” Grae said. “But I can’t clean it myself.”
Somewhat cowed by Grae’s tone, Rostfar twisted the wet cloth around her fingers. Grae walked away and then hesitated at the edge of the trees.
“I’m going to the Wyccmarshes.” Grae shifted his weight, his tail held high at a strange angle that Rostfar recognised as awkwardness. She frowned at him.
“Not with those storms coming in you’re not,” Rostfar replied without thinking, and then cringed inwardly. She might have spoken to Kristan or Arketh like that, but not to a wolf. It was just . . . easy, sometimes, to see Grae and Yrsa as children. Even if she shouldn’t have. “It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” she added in a small voice and twisted the cloth around her fingers again, watching the water run over her knuckles.
Grae sounded a bit sheepish when he said, “Well obviously not with the storms. After.” And Rostfar had to bite the inside of her cheek. Definitely like a child. “I thought . . . you’d want to come, too?”
Rostfar’s head jerked up. She wrinkled her nose and tried to read Grae’s body language for some trick or cruel joke. But no, she reminded herself – that was not the way of the wolves.
“I could smell the marshes on the unwolf,” Grae continued, sidling nearer to her again and lowering his voice. Rostfar didn’t think she had heard a wolf whisper before, so secretive. “It must be hiding there.”
Grae’s words plucked at the half-healed scab over Rostfar’s heart, one that all the screaming and hunting and wolf company in the world wouldn’t heal. She reached under her cloak and repeatedly ran her fingers over the soft leather bag of telling-stones, finding some comfort in the sensation. Cold sweat prickled uncomfortably on her brow.
“That’s . . . not a good idea,” Rostfar forced herself to say.
“It’s all hunting, one way or another.”
The skin of her wrist tingled with the phantom sensation of Yrsa’s teeth, stopping her from running into the mist. She bit the inside of her cheek and shook her head.
“One wolf against both of us. She’s sick, starving.” Grae touched his nose to her shoulder, although the action had none of the warmth that came with Yrsa’s gentle nuzzles. “And once she’s gone, you can go home. You won’t have to deal with us wolves anymore.”
I don’t want to go home, Rostfar thought wildly. Then she caught herself. Of course she wanted to go home: back to Mati’s strong arms and Isha’s clever, calloused hands and Arketh waking them up with burnt bread—
And Arketh.
But that wasn’t possible, because Arketh was dead.
Rostfar clenched her teeth.
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll go hunting.”
