The Last Huntsman: A Snow White Retelling

by Page Morgan

  Ever sunk down to her knees, then shifted to the side and sat on a padding of hay. Her arms were tight around her chest. Shivers wracked her petite frame. I picked up the quilt on the floor and snapped it out before draping it around her shoulders. Her fingers drew it closer.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, but she still looked away. All I could see was the back of her neck, the small lobe of her ear.

  “People who have magic are outcasts.” Ever lowered her chin. “They’re freaks of nature and nothing more.”

  I crouched beside her. Until now, I’d never seen a person perform magic. It existed, of that I’d always been aware. But Ever was right; magic was kept out of the public eye. It was cloistered away, most likely as her mother had been. I had definitely never seen a woman who resembled Ever in the emperor’s presence.

  “To the wrong people, your magic could be a commodity.” I lifted Ever’s chin so she would look me in the eye. “To the right people, it’s immaterial. You’re not a freak.” I let go of her. “Trust me, I’m more of a freak than you’ll ever be.”

  She brushed the statement off with the tiniest of smiles, clearly not believing me. But it was true. She hadn’t slain people on orders from her emperor. She hadn’t gone home after taking a life and pretended she’d done nothing out of the ordinary. I was the freak. I was the monster.

  “I still have questions about all this.” I gestured toward the mirror. “But I think I should tell you about me.”

  “Why you’re running from Frederic,” she said. I nodded.

  Before, when I’d been about to move in on a target, I had always cleared my mind. The same way Ever just magically cleared the mirror. I’d wipe everything away, everything that mattered to me. I would become the huntsman, emotionless and unafraid. He was someone completely different from the Tobin Ivanov my mother, sister, and brother knew.

  I did this again as Ever stared at me, waiting.

  “I accompanied Princess Mara in her royal caravan to Pendrak on direct orders from Frederic.” I avoided Ever’s eyes. “Before departing Yort, the emperor spoke to me privately. I learned of his plan to instigate an attack on Klaven.”

  A hoarse whisper coming from just outside the barn cut me off and took both of us to our feet.

  “Everett? Everett!” The person was trying to be quiet and failing miserably.

  “It’s Bram.” Ever started for the open barn door. I held her back as the clink of armor joined Bram’s shouts.

  “You boy, what are you doing out here?” a warrior bellowed.

  Ever grasped my arm and adhered herself to my side.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Bram answered.

  “Idiot,” I murmured through clenched teeth. He’d led the warriors straight to us.

  “Who?” the warrior asked. “Is someone hiding in that barn over there?”

  There was nothing Ever or I could do but listen and pray that Bram was intelligent enough to backtrack, to lead the warriors away.

  “No, I don’t think so,” he answered. “I mean, I’m just looking for the tavern boy…he sometimes sleeps in the barn’s loft.”

  Ever’s hand squeezed around the stitches on my arm, but a surge of purpose and urgency drowned the pain.

  “The hay,” I mouthed to her. She shook her head. She knew it wouldn’t work twice.

  “What tavern boy?” the warrior asked.

  “Let me go meet them,” Ever whispered as Bram gave up her name without a moment’s hesitation.

  I held on to her as she tried to go for the ladder. “That’s insane.”

  “He’s going to be up here any moment anyway. If we huddle here, it will only look like we’re trying to hide,” she explained. “Bram has said he’s looking for a tavern boy, not a girl.”

  The sun hadn’t yet risen. The warrior might not be able to pick up on Ever’s femininity in such low light. But still…it was risky. And Ever’s secret was much bigger than anything I’d anticipated.

  “We were just in the tavern. The owner didn’t mention anyone else,” a second warrior said. His voice awakened a memory inside me. There wasn’t time to consider it though.

  “I’ll go,” I said to Ever, my whisper barely a sound at all. “I’ll pretend I’m the tavern boy.”

  Ben would go along with it, and Bram might turn out to be smarter than he had acted so far. But Ever ground her heels into the floor, holding onto me as I started for the ladder.

  “What if these warriors recognize you?” she whispered. “Besides, you’re marked with the crest of Morvansk. You’re nothing but a target out there.”

  As if she wouldn’t be as well. But the voice of the second warrior had been familiar.

  “I’ll be close to you the whole time,” I said, knowing I could do it. I’d trailed people before. I’d been within an arm’s length of them and still remained invisible.

  Ever was at the ladder in a flash, her cap tight around her ears, her kerchief obscuring the slim lines of her neck. I fell to my stomach and crawled toward the open loft door. There were six daggers in all inside my sleeves and boots and at my waist, and I could throw them with deadly precision. Then, there was the pitchfork behind me and a slew of other farming instruments that could be used as weaponry, should I need them.

  I peered out over the edge of the loft door. The two warriors were armored and had helms on, but the shorter, stockier warrior was definitely familiar. It bothered me that I couldn’t place him as he continued to question Bram, who had come to the barn, in the middle of a raid on Rooks Hollow, to check on Ever. He must have thought he was in love with her. I clenched my fists and suppressed a groan.

  “What’s going on?” Ever’s low, male voice sounded. She’d inflected a convincing yawn into her question. “Bram, is that you?”

  “Here now, tavern boy, show me your hands,” the first warrior ordered Ever as she came into view. She raised her hands into the air.

  “For the devil’s sake, Everett,” Bram said. “I can’t believe you slept through all this.” He wasn’t a convincing actor, but at least he was trying.

  “Neither can I,” the familiar-sounding warrior tagged on. He spun his tall, metal spear in the air, caught it, and thrust it toward Ever’s throat.

  I used the noise of his armor to cover the sound of the springs releasing both blades up my sleeves. They were in my hands and ready for flight when the identity of the warrior hit home.

  It was my old enemy from Yort: Grigory Karev.

  19

  Ever

  I saw the warrior’s eyes through the gaps in his helm. They stayed level with mine. The arrowhead spear was so close, I could smell the blood that coated it.

  “You’re a heavy sleeper,” the warrior said, baiting me. He twisted the spear an inch closer.

  “What of it?” I replied. “Who are you? Bram, what’s happening?”

  I hoped I sounded more convincing than Bram had.

  “They’re warriors from Morvansk,” he answered. “Just do what they ask, all right?”

  “Yes, Everett, just do as we ask,” the warrior mocked. The other warrior stood idly by, searching the rest of the meadow. The dark was wearing thin, daylight creeping closer.

  “Where’s Ben?” I asked. I couldn’t be sure if my father had claimed no child, boy or girl. Best to play it safe. With that thought, I wondered if the huntsman—Tobin—was watching me from the loft right then.

  “Inside the tavern,” Bram answered.

  The warrior with the bloodied spear urged me forward with another thrust of the arrowhead.

  “Go on,” he said. “You too. Into the tavern.”

  Bram and I walked in silence through the tall grasses, the two warriors holding us at the tips of their spears.

  “How much longer, do you think?” the first warrior asked.

  “Damned if I know how many sixteen-year-old girls there are in this dunghole,” the second one answered.

  Sixteen-year-old girls? It really was me they were searching for. I tr
ipped over the raised threshold of the kitchen door. Bram tried to catch me, but I shrugged him off. He couldn’t treat me like a girl. Not right then.

  “Where’s the old man?” the cocky warrior asked. My father wasn’t on the floor, as the mirror had shown earlier, though a smear of blood and shattered glass were. The warrior took off in search of the barroom and the upper floor while Bram and I remained guarded by the second, less animated warrior. He returned a minute later, empty-handed.

  “Could have been taken down to the stocks,” the unenthused warrior suggested.

  This didn’t please the cocky warrior at all. “And he could have taken off, too. You should have stayed here to guard him.”

  “He was lifeless on the floor, Karev!”

  The one named Karev raised his spear and smashed it into the mugs and bowls along the shelving. A rain of glass shards fell over us as Karev attacked the next shelf, and then the next, before swiping the oil lamp from the center of the kitchen table. His last target was the window, which took three solid blows to shatter. When at last he stopped, his heavy panting was the only sound in the kitchen. I didn’t know whether to be more afraid of the blanket of glass shards covering the floor, or the clearly unhinged warrior with a spear to my breastbone. One fear was far more reasonable than the other, and yet the glass shards were all I could see. All I could look at.

  “Who is the old man? Your father? Your uncle?” Karev asked me.

  “Father,” I said. If he asked others in the village, they’d all answer unanimously.

  Karev removed his metal helm, his sweaty, dirt-streaked skin flushed violent red.

  “If your father left here on his own accord, Everett,” he said, pointing a mesh covered finger at me. “He’s earned himself a spear in the gut.”

  The heel of my boot ground a chunk of glass into the floor, and a shiver fingered its way up and down my spine. Karev watched my jaw clench, and waited, probably hoping I’d counter with a threat or vow of revenge, something to give him a reason to use his spear on me instead of another row of mugs. But I stayed silent.

  “I’ll go look for the old man,” Karev muttered, clearly disappointed. “Keep the two whelps under control,” he told the other warrior.

  Whelps. As if Karev wasn’t just a year or two older than us. The other warrior grunted a string of profanities under his breath as Karev left through the tavern’s front door.

  Bram found a broom next to the larder and brought it out to sweep up the glass shards. The bristles picked up the fragments and sent them back and forth across the floor. The grating, screeching sound was more than my ears could bear. I covered them with my hands.

  The remaining warrior stepped out the back door, unconcerned if Bram or I decided to bolt in his absence.

  “What’s happening out there?” I whispered to Bram. He was still sweeping at the glimmering pile of glass.

  “It’s the girls. The warriors are dragging them out into the street, up to a carriage,” he answered. “They go in, one at a time, and then a few seconds later they’re pulled out again.”

  A curious sensation of relief mingled with disbelief. That couldn’t be it. No violence? Then where had the blood on the tip of Karev’s spear come from?

  “Has anyone been killed?” I asked. Bram set a dustpan beside the mound of glass and swept in the shards. I swallowed hard, but stopped; it felt as if the jagged fragments of glass were scraping down the inside of my throat.

  “I don’t know, Everett. It’s madness out there. I came here to the tavern, saw Ben on the floor, then I thought they’d found—” He checked the open back door. In the pause, we heard the sound of urine splattering the grass outside.

  Bram had worried the warriors had found out I was girl. That I’d been dragged to this carriage he spoke of. He’d been concerned for me. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Fall in!” came a deep-throated shout from the main road. “Fall in!”

  The warrior stumbled back inside the kitchen. “Stay here,” he said to us, but it was a heartless command. He was out the front door and joining the stampede of warriors flowing up the main road.

  “They’re leaving?” I asked. Just like that?

  The barroom was destroyed, with chairs overturned, tables out of place, bottles of spirits smashed and many more missing. A glass pane in the front window had shattered, and I peered through the ragged opening. Steely gray metal blended with white linen, nightcaps, and tear-streaked cheeks. Mothers held their daughters closely, the men at the points of spears like Karev’s.

  I couldn’t see a carriage anywhere, but the warriors were slowly retreating, bleeding out of Rooks Hollow and up the road toward the next town of Havenfeld.

  “We should find Ben,” Bram said from just over my shoulder.

  “I’ll find him,” I replied. “Go home, Bram.”

  I moved away from the window, not sure where I should start looking. Maybe he would come back on his own, now that the Mors were leaving. I stopped to right a chair; Bram took it from my hand, shoving it hard against a table.

  “Home?” he said. “That’s some thanks I get.”

  The sound of feet treading on broken glass came from the kitchen. I hurried toward it.

  “Father?”

  The huntsman—no, Tobin—met me behind the bar. “Are you hurt?”

  He grasped my shoulders and inspected me closely, searching for any kind of damage. Tobin saw Bram and released me. “You have no idea how much danger you put Ever in tonight.”

  Bram snorted. “Ever?” His glare found me next. “Is that what he calls you?”

  It struck me that both of these boys knew what I was, and that both of them were working to keep my secret. The thought made me soften toward Bram a little. But all I needed to do was remember the feel of his hand tightening around my wrist in the alley to harden back up again.

  “You shouldn’t have come looking for me, Bram,” I said. He was near purple with anger.

  “Tell me why you’re disguising yourself like this.”

  “I’ll never tell you, so stop asking.” I slipped behind Tobin and went into the kitchen. The sight of the glass on the floor made my chest tight again.

  “But you’ve told him? This stranger?”

  Tobin stood in the doorway, a wall between Bram’s spiraling anger and me. Bram would never understand. He’d been pushing so hard for answers, believing, for whatever reason, that he was entitled to know the deepest parts of me. How could he not sense that it was all unrequited? I certainly didn’t want to know the deepest parts of him.

  I looked up from the trap of glass on the floor and into Tobin’s rigid face, his dark, brooding eyes fixed on Bram’s next move. Black stubble, untouched by a razor since the morning before, covered the strong structure of his chin and cheekbones. No, I didn’t want to know Bram’s secrets. I wanted to know Tobin’s.

  “Please, Bram,” I said, suddenly exhausted, and shivering again. “Go home. Whatever you think is between us, isn’t.”

  I didn’t want to humiliate him in front of Tobin, but I was tired of his advances. I was tired of being confused by him, of being made to feel like I was at fault for something.

  A hush fell over the tavern. I couldn’t look at Bram. How could he be menacing and yet so vulnerable at the same time? He broke the silence by sending a chair crashing into the side of the table. The front door slammed behind him.

  “I know he only meant to help me,” I said, facing the open back door and the meadow.

  Tobin scoffed. “It doesn’t change the fact that he led those warriors straight to you.”

  “One of them had blood on the tip of his spear.” I thought of my father again. Did Frederic know what he looked like? Had he taken him?

  “Which warrior?” Tobin asked.

  “The shorter one,” I answered. “His name was Karev. Why?”

  Tobin exhaled through flared nostrils and ran his hand through his dark curls. “I know him.”

  “You were a warrior?”<
br />
  Tobin’s lips changed from a grimace into a mirthless smile. “No. I’ve known Grigory Karev for longer than I’ve had an M on my shoulder.”

  By the tone of his voice, it was clear they weren’t friends.

  “Then what were you?”

  He stared at me, blinked, and then looked away.

  “I promised I’d tell you, and I will. But I think first, we should find your father. Make sure he’s well.”

  I couldn’t help but feel he was avoiding his end of our confessionary bargain. But he was right. I needed to find my father.

  We were halfway up the main road toward the stocks on the town square when we saw him stumbling toward us, a cloth to his temple, his skin streaked with dirt and dried blood.

  “Everett!” For once he wasn’t shouting my name out of anger or disappointment.

  He pulled me into his arms and crushed me to his chest. It was the first embrace he’d ever given me. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood stiffly, arms pinned.

  “Everett,” he whispered. He then seemed to come to his senses and pulled me away from him. “I wasn’t sure what had become of you. We’ve found four men dead, as well as young Petrev.”

  “Trina’s brother?” My voice cracked. He was only thirteen. He’d probably just been trying to protect his sister when she’d been dragged from their home.

  I thought of the blood on Karev’s arrowhead. Of what Frederic had been doing in Rooks Hollow. He’d been looking for me. This was all because of me. I stumbled back, feeling sick. Not the same queasy feeling I’d gotten when the ale mugs, plates, and bowls had shattered to the kitchen floor, but worse. It was a slow, revolting swell of blame.

  “It’s over,” my father said, still breathing heavily. “They’ve gone on toward Havenfeld. We should be safe, at least for a time.”

  I knew my father, though. In his eyes, we would never be truly safe.

  “The tavern is wrecked,” Tobin said. “I’ll go back and start cleaning up.”

  He retreated toward Volk’s. He’d be leaving now. I was sure of it as I watched him go, his long legs moving in stealthy strides. Tobin had missed his opportunity for revenge against his emperor. He’d missed it to protect me, to hide me. Guilt hit me from all sides. Even as it did, though, a selfish urge persisted.