Brys didn’t comment on her absence when she returned. He’d been busy setting up their tent on the lee side of a thinly forested hill. Nearby his blanketed horse was eating the last of their oats. The snow was lighter there, most of it caught on the hill’s windward face.
There wasn’t much deadwood among the small twisted trees, but Odosse picked up enough to build a tiny fire, and chopped a few low-lying branches to round out the blaze. She worked fast, to make up for the time she’d spent praying, and started beans boiling once the fire was strong enough. Then she took a splint from their fire and went back to light Wistan’s candle, cupping the fragile flame to shield it from the wind until it took.
She didn’t believe the candle would last all night, as would have been proper. The wind would snuff it, or melting snow would drown it, or a wandering scavenger would knock it over while digging Wistan out. But she had to give him the symbol. She had to do that much.
By the time Brys came over it was full dark. He still had his bow strung, and laid his sheathed sword across his lap as he waited for the beans to finish cooking.
“Don’t like the feel of this night,” he muttered.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I thought I saw something moving across the hills earlier today. Following us. It was gone when I looked again, but … maybe I’m imagining things.” Brys shrugged. He didn’t sound convinced, and he kept a hand on the weapon’s hilt, his eyes roving through the darkness beyond their fire.
“Oh.” Odosse looked down at her son’s round face, gilded by the ruddy light, and held him close against her breast. She took a deep breath. This was her son. If he was to be a great man—if he was to be anything more than a baker girl’s bastard—he needed her courage. She’d done what she could for Wistan. It was time for the living to move on. Without guilt, if she could. And if not, then with strength enough to master it.
“Brys,” she said, “I’ve decided. It wasn’t Wistan who died last night. It was Aubry.”
He glanced at her and nodded. “What changed your mind?”
Odosse shrugged. She didn’t have the words to capture what had shifted in her heart. She only knew that, as she’d bent to light the stub of candle that was to help Wistan find his way across the Last Bridge, something had jarred loose in her soul.
If she let the world know that Wistan had died, then whoever had tried to kill him in that chapel would have won. Whoever had murdered his parents, and slaughtered her village, would win. The thought sparked anger in her, but defiance wasn’t what had changed her mind.
It was love. And guilt, and grief, tangled together in a knot she couldn’t begin to unravel.
It was her fault he’d died. She couldn’t be as heartless as Brys was. Maybe Wistan would have lived if she could; then she might not have balked at giving up an imagined child for his sake. But love could be a weakness as readily as a strength. The sellsword was right about that. Love had given her the strength to carry Wistan this far, and it had made her too weak to pay the price for his life in the end.
Odosse didn’t know whether it was strength or weakness that moved her now. But she knew it was love: for Aubry, and the life he might have; for Wistan, and the one he had lost. She hoped that she might raise her son into a man who would do honor to Wistan’s memory. She had to try, at least. They both owed him that.
“I don’t know,” she told him.
Brys raised an eyebrow, but what he might have said next she would never know. He held up his hand for silence and took a half step toward the shadows, and in that moment the night exploded around them.
It happened too quickly for Odosse to follow. One instant she was sitting by the fire, cradling her son in peace; the next they were beset by creatures out of some hellish story, and Aubry was screaming and Brys swearing as he yanked out his sword, and she was too panicked to move.
Their attackers were like nothing she had ever seen or imagined. There were two, she thought, but in the shadows and confusion she wasn’t even sure of that. They had the look of things that had once been human but were twisted into monstrosity, as the souls of sinners were said to be in Narsenghal. They seemed taller than men, and faster. Their hairless flesh was the grayish white of old marble and just as hard; their mouths were hideous fissures lined with clasping, gory-gummed teeth far too long to be real.
Brys was right between them, sword drawn and ready, before Odosse understood what had happened. He had no shield; instead he pulled a burning branch from the fire, flames leaping in a smoky web between the charred fork of its limbs, and swept that at one of the beasts to force it back as he dealt with the other. She caught the swirl of his cloak as he spun, and snow fountaining around his feet, and she saw the monstrous thing he’d attacked shriek and flinch away from him with a long tattered slash laid open across its chest. She hadn’t seen the sword move.
The inside of the creature’s body was withered and fibrous; all its organs were wrapped up in thick strands like a sickly pink cocoon. There wasn’t any blood. It all seemed to be happening very fast and yet very slow, as if she were recalling frozen moments from an otherwise blurry dream.
“Run!” Brys shouted as he pressed his attack.
Run where? Odosse wanted to shout back, but her throat was clenched so tight that she could hardly breathe, much less force any sound through. Aubry was wailing loud enough for both of them.
Both milky-eyed monsters raised their heads at the baby’s cry. One hissed through its mangled mouth, and they loped toward her, their heads bobbing in a forward-tilted, oddly birdlike gait. They darted wide around Brys, one to each side, and although he swept at the wounded one with fire and steel, it dodged away, inhumanly quick. His sword whistled through the air; the fiery branch scattered cinders in a sizzling arc over the snow.
The beasts reached out for Aubry as they came, and by the flickering firelight Odosse saw their bony fingers clutching at the air, curved talons scoring bloodless grooves in their palms as they clenched gaunt fists around nothing.
She stumbled to her feet and backed away, putting the fire between them and herself. Her mouth was dry with fear and her heart fluttered frantically in her chest, a little bird trying desperately to escape. She didn’t have a weapon; she didn’t even have a knife.
The monsters split up around the fire, one coming at her from either side. They moved slowly, warily, clawed hands raised and twitching. Every time she turned toward one of them, it would dart its head forward like a striking snake’s, hissing to make her leap into the other’s claws.
Brys came up behind the one on her right, moving with extraordinary quiet for such a big man—or maybe it was only because of Aubry’s screams that she couldn’t hear him. He had thrown the burning branch aside; she hadn’t noticed when. As the monster thrust its head at Odosse in another rattling hiss, Brys lunged. His sword took it cleanly through the back, punching straight through the heart. She saw the tip come out of its chest, the steel bright and gleaming without a drop of blood to dull its shine.
They were already dead. Of course. How could steel kill something already dead?
The wounded one shrieked and writhed on Brys’ sword. Its voice was a thin shrill whine, almost too high-pitched for hearing, that cut at her ears like a vibrating knife. Brys locked both hands around his sword’s hilt, twisting it grimly to widen the hole.
The other monster, seeing its companion wounded, sprang for Odosse. She stooped and snatched up the kettle from the fire with her bare hand and swung it clumsily at the creature’s head. The hot metal seared her palm but she didn’t care, couldn’t care; the pain was far away, as if it were happening to someone else. Beans and broth sprayed across the ground like a drunkard’s vomit. She felt Aubry flinch against her breast. Then the kettle slammed into the monster’s face and she heard bone crack under the metal and the angry hiss of scorched flesh, and let go. There was a red line swelling across her palm. Some of the skin was gone.
The monster she’d hit was staggerin
g, screaming. One of its eyes was a melted ruin, crushed beyond recognition; the other was fixed on her, wild with hatred and hunger. Half its mouth had been smashed by the kettle, and its jagged teeth were torn through the flesh of its cheek like a hillside of storm-broken stumps. But there was enough left to kill her.
Odosse kept backing away. She was near the limit of the firelight now and was rapidly losing her vision; she’d sat so long by the flames that she’d lost her eyes for the dark. The monster chasing her didn’t seem hindered. Its good eye stayed locked on the baby in her arm, while the melted one ran down its face in jellied rivulets.
It leapt. And Odosse, still retreating, slipped on a rock under the snow and fell.
The air left her in a rush as she hit the ground. She kicked furiously and blindly at the monster, screaming words without sense, trying to shield Aubry with her own body. Its breath had no scent but cold when it snarled in response.
Claws tore through her thick woolen cloak as if it were flimsy as onionskin. Something more frigid than the wind sliced along Odosse’s back, and her flesh froze down to the marrow of her bones where that touch passed. She expected to feel blood, warm and wet, but there was only an endless chill.
Then its body hit hers flat, striking the breath from her lungs. The next instant it was gone.
Odosse looked up slowly. Her left eye was swelling shut; she couldn’t recall why. Aubry was still in her arms, wailing loud enough to shake the moon, and she sent a swift prayer of thanks to the Bright Lady that her son was not hurt, that he could still scream with such force in his lungs.
The monster was sprawled on the snowy ground barely a step away. It was headless but still writhing, scratching madly at the earth while Brys stood over it with a boot on its back and hacked off its limbs one by one. He was bleeding badly from a wound on his calf; the top of his boot flapped wetly in three torn stripes.
She sat up. Her shoulder throbbed, and her palm hurt, but nothing else was registering yet. Her back felt cold and oddly stiff, as though she’d spent a long day hauling firewood. Her cloak were spattered with blood where the creature had ripped through the wool. Odosse reached back and touched the numb spot. Her hand came away sticky with blood. There wasn’t as much as she’d feared. But it was cold, as her back had been when she’d touched it, and the doubtful light made it glisten like black snowmelt on her hand.
The other monster was lying on the far side of the fire, a great hole rent in its chest. Its head had rolled into the crook of an outstretched arm. Dead, it looked more human than not.
She was so cold. Odosse gathered up her torn cloak and wrapped it closer around herself and Aubry. She moved away from the corpse Brys was dismembering, edging nearer to the fire with a wary glance at the creature that lay inert beside it.
“What happened?” she asked. Her voice was a hoarse croak. “What were they?”
“Ghaole,” Brys replied. He came back to the fire, wiping off his sword, though there was still no blood on the blade. His face was very white and his jaw was knotted with pain. “Tools of the Thorns. Corpses of men they killed and brought back with false life. We have to go. We need to travel while we still can.”
“But you’re hurt.”
A rough rasping sound escaped him. It took Odosse a moment to realize that he was laughing: at her, at himself, she couldn’t tell. “I am. And it’ll get worse. I was trying to avoid that; the touch of the ghaole carries ice-fever. But I had to kick that one off you, and it grabbed me when I did … so I hope you’re ready to take care of the horse along with your baby, in case I can’t.”
“It scratched me too,” she told him.
“Then I hope you’ll last longer than I will, or we’re all dead,” he said.
BRYS LOST CONSCIOUSNESS BEFORE DAWN.
He’d tied himself to the saddle, looping the ropes around himself where he could and telling Odosse how to tie them where he couldn’t. She bound the tent awkwardly on top. There was nowhere else to put it, and they could hardly leave their only shelter behind, so she tied the tangle of wet canvas and loose poles over the man and tried to convince herself that it had some value as a shield against the wind.
Then she took the nameless horse’s reins and led it into the night. Not south, not anymore. Odosse couldn’t see the road through the snow, and reaching Karchel’s Tower was a fool’s dream now. There was no way they could make Seawatch before one or both of them fell to the ghaole ice-fever.
She turned them east instead. East and north and east again, back into Bayarn Wood, on a course angled through the trees that should take them to Bulls’ March.
Odosse had never seen the castle herself. She’d never been so deep inside Oakharn. And she was not blind to Brys’ suspicions; it was possible, even likely, that the young lord of Bulls’ March had known about the attack that killed her village and Wistan’s parents. He could be working in concert with the Thorns. If that was so, every step taken toward his castle brought them closer to danger. She knew that.
But she also knew that Blessed Andalya was at Bulls’ March, waiting for old Lord Ossaric to die, and that the Blessed’s prayers were the only thing that might keep the ice-fever from stilling their hearts. Their hope of survival lay in that castle. And it was nearer, by far, than Karchel’s Tower.
One road held certain death. The other held only the chance. It wasn’t a hard choice.
For hours she talked to Brys about inconsequential things. It wasn’t a conversation, really; she just wanted the reassurance of a human voice in the dark, and the knowledge that he was still awake, still with her, despite the ice-fever. Odosse talked about her life in Willowfield, circling around the great buried pain of her grief without touching it. When she had exhausted the limits of her own experience, she retold the stories of Sir Auberand and the Winter Queen. Sad stories, but brave ones, all of them.
Somewhere between midnight and dawn Brys stopped answering. Odosse slowed enough to put her hand on his wrist, underneath the fluttering mess of the tent she’d strapped over the man. His skin felt like ice; the heartbeat was sluggish and weak.
But it was there, so she walked on, ignoring the numbness that spread from the small of her back. And she kept telling her stories, whether to herself or Aubry or the horse she didn’t know. The tales became a litany in the night, a way for her to measure her steps and draw some hope from legend when she had forgotten what it looked like in life.
The first hint of dawn found them beneath the eaves of Bayarn Wood. She could see the dying glimmer of the River Kings’ Road ahead. By daybreak they were well into the trees, and the horse’s hooves were loud on the road’s ancient, snow-dusted stone.
Still they saw no other living soul, and Odosse was so weary that her sight blurred between steps. She couldn’t feel her legs, only a suffocating chill from her chest down. Every step was a greater effort than the last.
Finally she could no longer force herself onward. Her legs were trembling uncontrollably. She couldn’t feel them, but she could look down and see her feet shaking as she tried to drag each one forward. Her right ankle twisted beneath her and she stumbled to one knee, and once she was down she could not get back up.
“I’m sorry,” Odosse mumbled to no one in particular. The words were thick on her tongue.
She pulled Aubry awkwardly into her lap, curling her body around him to give him what warmth she still could. Her son was quiet, having exhausted his cries earlier in the night. He gazed up at her with wide solemn eyes and batted at her nose with a pudgy fist. Odosse found herself crying, absurdly, warm tears trickling down her numb cheeks. She couldn’t seem to move her hands to wipe the tears away.
The horse nosed at her shoulder and blew out a cloud of white mist. Odosse couldn’t reach up to pat it, either, and after a moment the animal ambled away, continuing down the road with Brys on its back and tent poles dangling off its flanks. She heard the stone clicking under its hooves and watched its bundled silhouette recede between the trees. Then it was gone,
and she was alone with her son in the wood, just as she’d been when Willowfield died.
Time passed. Hours, perhaps, or moments; Odosse had no way of knowing. A fox crept from the underbrush and looked at her and vanished again, a flash of vibrant russet in a world of brown and white. The numbness spread through her body until she couldn’t feel anything and couldn’t even turn her head back to the road. Her eyes were at once dry and sheeted with tears she couldn’t blink away. Aubry’s face became a pink blur. Somehow that hurt worst of all, that she should die without being able to see him.
And then, unexpectedly, the creak of harness reached her ears, and with it the clop of hooves and the chuffing of horses ridden hard on a cold morning. Male voices spoke a rough unfamiliar tongue over her head. Gloved hands came down to lift her up; she saw them, couldn’t feel them. Someone took Aubry away, and Odosse couldn’t force a protest through her numbed lips. She heard her son crying again.
A face came into her view. She couldn’t make out details; her eyes wouldn’t focus. She could only see a cloak of white fur, pale hair, a vivid dark scar on a cheek.
“Who are you?” the blur demanded. “What befell you on the road, and why are you here?”
But Odosse couldn’t answer. She couldn’t say anything at all.
18
Albric emerged from his tent to find a blanket of glistening whiteness laid over the world. It shone like a bridal mantle, newly made and unstained by sin. The air cut him with cold as he breathed, and yet that seemed a small blessing as well: each breath seemed to bring a measure of purity, and of penance.
It was fitting that his last morning should be so frostily pristine. It was a gift, really: a last note of grace from a goddess he had dishonored. He did not expect to see that winter sun set.
Albric ate lightly, savoring each bite of his last breakfast. He heated water for bitterpine tea and washed his face, reveling in those small rituals as well. Finally he allowed himself a sunrise prayer, spoken privately but no less fervently for that, for the first and last time on this journey.
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