Three

Hans held the handles of the green-dyed sack in swollen red fingers. He watched Wenzel with dark, exhausted eyes. Frostbite had set in on his nose, ears, and lips. The right side of his face blistered where Heike had hit him with the bed warmer. He wore the clothes he had been wearing when the villagers had chased him from his castle, though his golden crown was gone. In his free hand he held one of his father’s long carving knives.

“Let’s go, Grub,” he said. “You’re helping me get back to the village.”

“Helping you?” Wenzel replied. “You can get there yourself. Follow the road. But I can’t promise you’ll be welcomed when you arrive.” The villagers still remembered what Hans had done to them; they would leave him outside for Death and the wargs.

“That’s what you’re for.” Hans flicked the knife toward the horse and the road. “We’re going to say that you nearly died trying to get the village gifts, and I saved you and brought you back. They’ll see that I’ve repented, and they’ll welcome me.”

“Why do you want to return? There’s nothing there for you. Go somewhere else.” Wenzel extended an arm to the misty foothills. “Go anywhere.”

Hans bared his teeth. “Greymist Fair is my home.”

“You would return to a home that doesn’t want you?”

“It’s the only one I have.”

Hans’s grip didn’t look especially tight on the knife, and if he had frostbite, he was probably close to hypothermia as well. Wenzel suspected he would be faster and stronger than Hans even with the wound in his back, so he wasn’t particularly worried about getting hurt, but there was something to be said for desperation.

And you aren’t going to leave him out here to die, he thought to himself. He’d never liked Hans—downright hated him, especially after his brief stint as king—but he didn’t think he could live with himself if he knew he had left someone to die. He’d always felt bad for Hans; Hans had never escaped his cruel father the way Wenzel had. But that wasn’t an excuse for the things he’d done since.

“Bring the sack,” Wenzel said. “If you can’t lift it, leave it there and I’ll get it.”

Hans must have lifted and dragged it to get it where he stood, but he released the rope handle and stepped back, holding the knife aloft. The sack weighed a good amount, though it never seemed heavy enough for all the food and toys they pulled from it. Careful of his back, Wenzel hefted the sack over his shoulder and carried it to the horse, where he secured it on the saddle.

“Out of the way,” Hans said. “I’ve been walking through this damned forest all night. I want to ride. And then you can’t run off with the gifts and leave me.” He shoved his boot into a stirrup and tried to lift himself up, but his desperate bout of energy seemed to have fled. With a sigh, Wenzel dropped down, grabbed Hans’s foot, and boosted him into the saddle. Hans glared at Wenzel and settled himself. The horse flicked its ears back in annoyance.

“Don’t ride off without me,” Wenzel said. “You need me to corroborate your story. You try telling them I died out here but you managed to save the gifts, they’ll know you’re lying.”

Hans peered down his nose. “Give me your coat, Grub. It looks warm.”

“You survived in the forest all night in your own clothes, you’ll last a while longer.”

Hans jabbed Wenzel’s shoulder with the knife. “Hey!” Wenzel jumped away from the horse. Maybe he’d been wrong about being faster.

“Coat,” Hans sneered.

Wenzel unfastened his coat and tossed it up to Hans, resettling Heike’s boots on his chest. He’d expected the cold to cut through the thin shirt, but he felt just as warm as he had before. Hans slid the coat on, all the while looking down at Wenzel with annoyance. “Why’re you wearing boots around your neck?”

“Extra pair in case some ass with a knife takes mine,” Wenzel said.

Hans’s lip curled.

They took the road in silence. Heike had said fear of Death brought the wargs, so the only way Hans could have survived a night in the forest was if he wasn’t afraid of Death. What had fueled him, then? Anger? The desire to return to a village that had thrown him to the trees? Wenzel glanced up at Hans and saw in profile that empty expression that Hans wore so often, as if he were vacant on the inside, a house with no human occupants. Hans’s hands were hidden inside Wenzel’s coat now, but Wenzel no longer expected him to be clumsy or slow. That knife could come flashing out again in an instant.

“I don’t understand,” Hans said when they reached the Idle River Bridge, “why they all like you so much. You aren’t even from Greymist Fair.”

Wenzel made sure he was a little more than arm’s length from the horse before he said, “Perhaps it’s because I don’t try to enslave them to carry out my every whim.”

Hans didn’t seem to hear him. “There’s nothing special about you. You’re not particularly good at anything, you don’t have money, you’re not funny or attractive—”

“I think that’s subjective—”

“—and you’re not from here. You don’t even belong. So why do they like you more than me? Why have they always liked you more than me?”

Wenzel rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, Hans. Because I’m kind to people? Because I don’t berate them, or use them? How do you not understand this? Are you that unobservant?”

“Is Fritz still in the village?” Hans asked. “Did they kick him out, too?”

“Fine, ignore me. Don’t try to grow as a person.”

“Answer me, Grub.”

“Shut up.”

The knife flashed. Wenzel jerked out of the way just in time, but his cheek stung, and when he put his glove to it, his fingertips came away splotched with blood.

“Will you stop that?” Wenzel snapped. “There are real problems in the village right now because of you, and I’m trying to fix them. I don’t have time for your pettiness!”

“Oh, real problems? I’m sure there are.” Hans’s lip curled. “Not enough garlands for every fence row? No one found a good Yule log?”

“No. Death attacked the village with his wargs.”

Quickly, Wenzel went back to his list of things that made him happy. Fresh milk with the cream gathered on top. The inn’s front walk right after he swept it. The smell of cut wood.

“Death attacked?” Hans said, looking down in surprise. “And you coming out here was to help? How do you know anyone there is still alive?”

Wenzel shivered. He didn’t know; he hadn’t thought about that. It was well past midday and might be dark by the time they reached the village. Something could have happened in that time. He might return to a village of wargs.

“I believe they’re all okay,” he said aloud, to reassure himself.

Hans scoffed. “Believe all you want; the wargs are vicious. They’ll tear everyone apart. That’s what they did to Katrina. You remember that, don’t you? That’s what they did to Hilda, too. They tear them apart to kill them. And later their corpses become wargs.”

“Shut up, Hans.”

Hans smiled. “Making you nervous? If the wargs can come into the village now, I doubt anything will stop them from jumping through the windows. They’ll go for the children first, probably. The smallest and weakest. Or maybe they’ll gang up on the biggest and strongest first, so they can have their way with the others.”

Wenzel felt his pulse in his ears. Shadows appeared on the edge of his vision. The horse’s ears flicked back and forth, its eyes rolling. “Hans, you need to stop—”

Hans was smiling down at him now, the empty smile of an animal toying with its prey. “They’ll get to Heike, too, all alone in her little cottage on the hill. What part do you think they’ll tear open first? Her chest or her face?”

Heike will be okay, Wenzel thought. Heike will be okay, Heike will be okay, Heike will be okay.

But what if she wasn’t?

A shadow darted across the road. The horse screamed and reared back and sideways, throwing Wenzel off his feet. He landed on his back with a bolt of pain. The horse’s hooves tossed snow over him as it took off—not down the road, but into the forest—with Hans and the sack of gifts on its back.