Page 7 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

I cannot help the sound of alarm that slips out from between my lips, nor the accusation that follows it. “I thought Woodsmen decried all acts of magic.”

“It’s not magic,” Imre says, stoking the fire with a birch-striped tree branch. “It’s faith. The only powers we have are what Godfather Life gives us. We ask, and He answers.”

“Does he always answer?”

A shadow darkens the captain’s face.

“He rewards loyalty,” says Imre. “The more devotion you prove, the greater powers He grants you. I don’t think He has ever refused a request from the Érsek.”

I meet his gaze, shivering, wanting to ask who the Érsek is but not sure I can risk another question.

“The Érsek is the highest religious authority in Régország,” Imre says, preempting me, “and the king’s closest confidant. Király és szentség, royalty and divinity. Think of them like twin pillars that hold up the kingdom.”

I would rather not think of them at all. There’s no place for wolf-girls in such a kingdom. As the captain’s fire burns, I remember all the times I tried to light one of my own. How many hours I spent hunched over Virág’s hearth, desperate to will a weak little flame onto my fingertips. Virág would stand above me, arms folded crossly, repeating the same adages that had never done me any good before.

“In order to perform the skills, you must know the origin of them,” she’d said. “Do you remember the story of how Vilmötten first made fire? Late one night, Isten tossed a star out of the sky. Vilmötten watched it fall down to the Middle-World and sink into the sea. He dove into the water after it, hoping to rescue the star and win Isten’s favor. When he reached the bottom of the ocean, he saw that the star was bright with blue flame, even underwater. He could not hold it and swim at the same time, so he put the star in his mouth and swallowed it. And when Vilmötten returned to the surface, the star was still breathing inside him, and he could summon fire without a flint.”

“I know the story,” I had snapped. “I just can’t do it.”

Virág would sigh and shake her head, or if she were in a particularly bitter mood, order me to scrub her tunic clean as punishment for my failure and my foul mouth. But after a while she gave up watching me crouch futilely over her hearth, and I gave up trying to do magic at all. Fire-making was meant to be the simplest of the three skills. If I couldn’t manage that, how could I ever hope to forge metal or heal wounds?

I had always thought that somehow she was playing me for a fool, like there was some secret she and the rest of the women knew and were all gleefully keeping from me. I knew the stories as well as any of them, but it still wasn’t enough. It was better than thinking that I’d been cursed, or that there was something strange and ruinous in my blood.

I want to reach for the gold coin in my pocket now, but my hands are tied. On the other side of the fire, the captain is laying out his mat. There’s a small knife strapped to his boot, right below the crook of his knee, steel handle glinting in the firelight.

“The area looks clear, kapitány,” Peti says. “I’ll take first watch.”

I wonder if he means watching me, or watching for something in the woods that we could never hope to see before it kills us. Ezer Szem means thousand-eyed. If you stare long enough into the darkness of the forest, eventually something will stare right back.

Exhaustion has begun to eat away at my fear, eroding it like the riverbank after a rainstorm. There’s no way to tell how long we’ve been in the woods, but my body aches as if I’ve been riding for a day or more. Imre and Ferkó pad down beside the fire, resting their heads on their packs.

The captain looks at me expectantly, his single eye unblinking. When I don’t move, his fingers go to his ax, and he draws it with an odd, mortified hesitation, like he can’t quite gauge the weight of it in his hands. Stupid, I think of my own evaluation. He and his blade have both been honed for killing pagan girls like me.

He closes the space between us in three long strides. I imagine the trajectory of his ax—the arc it would have to follow to meet my throat. But perhaps I can better estimate the danger by looking in his eye. It’s angled downward, lashes casting a feathery shadow across his cheekbone.

Without speaking, the captain thrusts the hilt of his ax against my back, right between the blades of my shoulders. Through my wolf cloak and my tunic beneath, I can feel the press of the wood, its muffled meanness. The captain swallows, throat bobbing.

My legs tremble as I lower myself to the ground. I wonder if he recognizes the fettered hatred in the grit of my teeth, or if he only sees my white-faced fear. I wonder if it brings him pleasure, to see me on my knees. I don’t breathe again until the captain returns to his own mat, even if his one black eye is still watching me.

I’m supposed to sleep. But my gaze keeps drawing back to the blade on his boot.

Night falls differently in Ezer Szem. The wind goes silent when the sun goes down. The shadows mottle themselves into shapes that look like claws and teeth. After a few hours, the fire is smoldering, more ash than flame, and I can’t see farther than a few feet in front of me. I can only hear the soft, sleeping exhales of the Woodsmen and the crackle of dead leaves as something moves behind the tree line.

I can’t steal the captain’s knife without waking him. But maybe I can slip away while they’re asleep and vanish into the darkness of the woods. I’ll take my chances with monsters. The Woodsmen are worse.

Jaw clenched, I push myself up onto my elbows, then my knees. I shimmy onto the balls of my feet and stand, wincing as my sore muscles arch and bend. I take two preliminary paces backward, pausing to listen for the sound of someone stirring. Nothing. I turn to face the cold, solid blackness.

I haven’t gone more than fifty paces away from camp when something catches the collar of my cloak. A scream boils in my belly, but I swallow it down. I try to adjust my eyes, to see what awful creature has gotten ahold of me. But all I can hear is heavy human breathing. A hot, mortal hand grazes the skin of my throat.

Out of the darkness, a lantern blazes gauzy and yellow, illuminating a crescent of its face: a stubbled chin and nose red with broken blood vessels. It’s no monster. It’s Peti.

I let out a breath that sounds like shaky laughter. My escape plan is foiled before it’s even begun, and I’m a daft, doomed fool. “What are you going to do with me?”

“What our captain doesn’t have the piety to do,” he says, and draws his ax.

I realize at once that I’ve made a terrible mistake. There’s nothing human about Peti’s face at all. His lips pull back into a snarl, showing all the icicle points of his teeth, and even the whites of his eyes are burning, stitched through with red.

The lantern falls to the ground, the light half-obscured by dead leaves. In the muffled glow I see the flash of Peti’s ax, and I roll out of the way, almost too late. With a furious howl, Peti leaps on top of me, pinning me to the grass. I struggle against his weight, but he’s too strong and my limbs are flailing uselessly as he grits his teeth and pulls a dagger from the shaft of his boot.