Page 26 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

Kajetán only laughs again, his eyes holding the firelight. “Repent for what, Woodsman? For serving the Prinkepatrios the way He demands to be served? Better to die swiftly under a knife than watch your fingers and toes rot away with the cold, or feel your belly eating itself until there’s nothing left but bone.”

Gáspár’s grip tightens on his ax, throat bobbing. “You are still a killer in the eyes of the Prinkepatrios. Repent to me, or you will look like the most pious Woodsman in all of Régország when I am finished with you.”

“You must be mad,” I burst out. “He’s not sorry at all.”

There’s no contrition on Kajetán’s bright, ruddy face or in the glassy sweep of his gaze. He looks between Gáspár and me, sneering, shoulders tremulous with silent laughter. I remember the way he ordered me bound, the way he wrestled me to the floor and put his knee in my back so he could tie me, how I felt his hot breath against my ear. I remember how his villagers cringed away from me like I was something that would eat them in their sleep, all the while their monster was wearing a white suba and living in the headman’s tent. I remember the way Dorottya spoke of the king’s sack of Yehuli vipers.

There are monsters, and then there are wolf-girls, and then there are wolf-girls with Yehuli blood. Now I understand: even bound and toothless, I am more odious to them than any Patritian killer.

I unsheathe my knife and lunge at Kajetán, hurling him against the wall of the tent. He stumbles but catches himself, then thrusts an elbow into my chest. Before my knife can hit its mark, all my breath floods out of me.

“Évike!” Gáspár shouts, but his voice is distant, like something I’m hearing from underwater.

Kajetán grabs me by the shoulders with such force that my knife flies from my grasp. He twists my arm and I shriek, my vision going starry with pain. There’s a whirl of fabric, flashes of skin, and then I am pinned to Kajetán’s chest, my own blade held against my throat.

“You ought to keep your wolf-girl chained and muzzled,” Kajetán says, panting. “She’ll be the ruin of you both. How long will the fire burn when her body is added to the pyre? What is the worth of one feral wolf-girl, a heathen of the highest order, to the Prinkepatrios?”

He presses his finger to the wound on my throat, opening it again under his thumbnail. I choke on another scream, tears burning across my gaze. When Kajetán takes his hand away, it’s florid with the mingling of new blood and old.

“Let her go,” Gáspár says. He lowers his ax, letting the blade of it thud into the dirt.

I can almost hear the cleave of Kajetán’s smile, like metal rasping over metal. “What is the worth of one feral wolf-girl to you, Sir Woodsman? Surely the men of your order would drink a toast to her death.”

“Please.” Gáspár raises his hand, weaponless. “I can bring gold to your village, food—”

“No, no,” Kajetán says, shaking his head. “There is nothing you can offer me that is of greater value to the Prinkepatrios than a wolf-girl’s death.”

And then his fingers close around my throat, forcing me down, my body bent at the waist. The blade draws to the corner of my mouth, right over my tongue, and I realize with a start what he means to do: pick off little pieces of me to burn one at a time, stretching my sacrifice for as long as it will go.

I close my eyes, but I don’t feel the bite of the blade. There is only the crush of bone, the wet sound of flesh giving way. When I open my eyes, I can see rivulets of blood in the dirt, and Kajetán’s fingers have loosed from my throat.

The inertia sends me toppling to the ground, and I land on my knees, gasping. There’s blood in my mouth, but my tongue is intact. Kajetán’s body lands beside me like a great felled oak, Gáspár’s ax wedged in his chest.

I watch as his body gives its last spasms, limbs jerking and then going still. His head lolls to the side, eyes open and terribly blank, like two pale shards of glazed pottery. His beard is flecked with blood, black maggoty clumps of it, what he coughed up as he died.

Hands shaking, I push myself to my feet. Though the wound on my throat is leaking, I can hardly feel it now. Everything is blunted, numb as a whetstone.

“Gáspár,” I start, but then I can’t think of what to say. His face is drawn, his chest heaving. Kajetán’s blood is a wine stain across his dolman, dyeing the leather something darker than black. I can only watch as he drops to his knees and lays a hand over Kajetán’s forehead, brushing his eyelids shut.

In the end, the villagers make Gáspár their hero. They stitch together their own story when they see blood splashed against the calfskin wall of the tent, Gáspár’s ax in Kajetán’s chest, and the doll and the berries on the ground. Eszti’s mother, a young woman with a snarly dark braid hanging to her waist, holds her daughter’s stick-and-mud toy to her chest and weeps. The other villagers gather around Kajetán’s stiffening body.

“We must bury him,” Dorottya proclaims. “And we must elect a new headman.”

Naïvely I assume the villagers will vote for her. But then I remember that, bereft of magic, these Patritian women are only meant to carry children on their hip and darn their husbands’ tunics. The villagers huddle together, speaking in hushed tones. When they finally break apart, it’s a man named Antal who has been chosen.

His first order of business as headman is to dispose of Kajetán’s corpse.

“No ceremony,” Antal proclaims. “No grave.”

Outside, the coil-furred dog whines hungrily.

The villagers push through the flap of the tent, but before I emerge, there’s a cry so loud that it twists in my belly like a knife. Gáspár hurries forward, shoving through the crowd, and halts in front of the hearth.

The fire has gone out. Perhaps it died with Kajetán, smoldering to its ashen end as he lay bleeding on the floor of his tent. There’s only blackened stone and the stick sculpture of the Prinkepatrios’s three-pronged spear. All around me, the villagers are falling to their knees, sobbing and whispering prayers. Under the white sickle of the moon, their faces look pale as bone.

I wait, but Godfather Life does not deem the villagers worthy of his mercy. The hearth stays silent, cold.

“We must have fire!” someone wails. “We’ll freeze without it!”