Chapter 5
Five
And so it went for a score of days. Garek arrived in the dead of night, ushered to the tavern door by a rush of wind.
At Tomasz’s invitation, he entered and they drank gorza together, or ate from the hunter’s pot hung over the fire.
Some nights, he took Tomasz in his hand or mouth, or lay with him before the fire.
Other nights, they played cards or spoke of the world.
Garek had seen much of it, and Tomasz very little. But he had read, and spent a decade listening to the travels of others, and the conversation flowed, spurred on by his curiosity and Garek’s knowledge.
He knew of the mountains to the south and claimed to have met the witch in the woods and her familiar. He had sampled gorza from Alexandrinburg to the east and seen the maze-like streets of Lutetia far to the west.
The visits were always too brief, and well before sunrise, he donned his riding coat, cowl, and scarf, kissing Tomasz deeply before covering his mouth and stepping out into the cold.
For Tomasz, the days slipped by in a haze of anticipation, broken apart only by the odd visits from Oj Pavel and his grandson, and then, only Josef.
It happened on the tenth day. Tomasz watched from the shadows within the tavern, confused by the lone figure standing on the road.
Josef lingered at the edge of the walk with his eyes raised to the trees. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, shuffling the black locks, and hurried down the front walk, stopping well before the door.
Rubble still clogged the threshold, encased in inches of ice that Tomasz had not been able to break through. Still, Josef stood closer, and Tomasz tracked the shocks of gray streaking his hair. Deep lines bracketed his mouth, splaying from the corners of his eyes.
He clapped a hand over his mouth to cover a gasp, startled by Josef’s age. He was older than Tomasz by eight years, but the man who stood on his front walk had aged ten or more in the span of a few weeks.
Josef chewed the end of a bit of straw, spinning a clay jar in his hand. Shaking his head, he withdrew a meager amount and scattered it across the front walk. Scurrying back to the road, he crossed himself, spat twice, and walked away.
That night, Garek entered uninvited. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet, tearing Tomasz away from his focus on … the pot hung over the fire? No. He was behind the bar, reaching for a bottle of gorza.
“Tomasz?” The rumble of his voice snapped Tomasz back into himself. He flinched, knocking over the bottle. “Please, gods.” Garek rushed deeper into the room. He ripped off his cowl and searched the tavern, silver eyes shot wide. “Please be here.”
“I’m here.”
Garek whipped around, slapping a hand over his heart. He gaped at Tomasz, lips trembling before any words came out. “I thought you were gone.”
“We’ve talked about this.” He laughed and righted the bottle. “Where would I go?”
Garek swallowed, and in a moment had Tomasz in his arms, kissing him deeply and holding too tight.
That night, they merely lay together, stripped to their trousers and wrapped in Garek’s coat.
He toyed with Tomasz’s hair and whispered stories of the north.
Of a blue bottle sea that sparkled with starlight whenever he rode upon it.
Of gentle breezes at the tail end of the winter wind, and large ships with their sails unfurled.
“I would like to see that some day.”
“Maybe you will,” Garek answered without any strength behind the words.
“Perhaps I will come with you tonight.” Tomasz craned his neck, taking in the strong lines of Garek’s profile. His brows sat heavy over his eyes, lips pressed in a line as he watched the flames dance. “Walk right out that door and ride with you to wherever it is you go.”
Garek only kissed his hair. “Would that you could, Tomasz.”
He left hours earlier than usual, his face set in a grim frown. “I have an extra errand to run tonight. Promise me, Tomasz, you will not leave the tavern.”
“For the twentieth time,” he laughed. “Where would I go?”
Garek answered him with a kiss, and with a howl of the wind, he was gone.
“Careful, Czerwony,” a rasping voice called out. “The timber is not stable.”
Soft feet padded across the floor. Behind the bar, Tomasz raised his head, stilling at the sight of a large red wolf searching the tavern. A shadow fell across the room, and he followed the line of it to Fenra the Wolfwoman filling the door.
Her fur had grayed at the temples and around her muzzle-like mouth, and white hairs circled her eyes like a pair of spectacles.
Her posture, normally so tall and sturdy, was stooped as though her powerful body had finally collapsed under the weight of her role as the Village Guardian at the edge of the wood.
“Any sign?”
The wolf chuffed and gave one sad howl before leaping over the rubble clogging the door. It leaned against Fenra’s side, nuzzling the wolfwoman’s thigh as she studied the ruins of the overhang. An ear twitched, and she cocked her head before crossing herself and laying a hand on the ice.
“Rest easy, old friend. I am sorry we did not come by sooner.” Fenra swept the heel of her palm under an eye. “It is only, we thought you were already gone.”
They put their backs to the door, walking side by side to the road. The wolf snagged the sleeve of Fenra’s coat and tugged, a tight whimper caught in its throat.
“We will tell him when he rides through,” Fenra answered whatever question the wolf had asked. Theirs had always been a strange bond, but a solid one. “Garek will not be happy to hear it.”
At his name, Tomasz ran from behind the bar, skidding to a halt at the threshold and calling out, “Fenra!”
The wind carried his voice up and away, and Tomasz watched, helpless and trapped, as his last visitor and her wolf vanished into the trees.
“No.” A chair crashed to the floor. “Gods and all, please. No.” And another.
The legs of a third scraped over wood before colliding with the wall, and the table followed, tipping over with a mighty boom.
The floor shook. Dust fell from the wooden beams into empty cups strewn across the bar.
Tomasz gripped the edge and rose on numb legs, stupefied by Garek’s rampage through the tavern.
“Take me, curse me, ride me until I’m nothing but dust, but please don’t take him. Not before I can—”
“What are you doing?”
Garek whirled on his heels and froze. “You’re here.”
“Where else would I be?”
He almost missed it—the flicker in Garek’s eyes. The dimming of silver as they darted to the hunk of ice, wood, and thatch in the door. But he did not, and for the first time in however many nights they’d had, Tomasz gave the rubble at his threshold the attention it deserved.
He had wanted to look, and in the wanting, like so much else in his life, he knew it was safer to ignore the temptation.
Better to keep his focus on the tavern and his guests, and never seek the attention he willingly accepted when it was offered.
And so, for however many nights since the storm collapsed the overhang and clogged his door, Tomasz had not looked.
But he looked now.
“What is that?” His arm trembled as he pointed.
Garek gently gripped his wrist. “Do not look, Tomasz.”
“How long has that been there?”
“Look away, please. Look away and we can buy some time before I—”
“Oh gods.” Tomasz ripped his eyes from the rubble and ice crushing the rib cage and spine of a—
He jerked free and darted away from Garek. His back hit the bar. He stumbled through empty air, tripped over a chair, and fell through the table. His fraught attention bounced between Garek and the remains of a body stretched across the threshold. Bile churned in his belly and surged up his throat.
“What is—who is that?” he cried.
“You know who that is, Tomasz.”
“How long has he—it.” He swallowed bitter spit. “How long has it been there?”
“For as long as I have visited,” Garek answered. “A score of years and more.”
“No.” Tomasz shook his head. Faster and faster until the room blurred and the splintered wood beneath his palms vanished. Until he was nothing but a distant thought. A fading memory.
“Stay with me, Tomasz.” Garek’s large hands clapped down on his shoulders and Tomasz solidified into being.
“Stay here. As long as you are within the threshold, we can continue to meet. I will find someone to set a ward. Fenra, or her wolf. The witch in the woods. I will ride through the dawn and deny my curse to find someone who can—”
“What curse?” Tomasz was numb from his toes to chest. So numb, he doubted he had limbs at all. He studied Garek’s face. Every twitch of muscle and the meaning in the silence filling the air between them. “You have mentioned a curse before. What are you?”
“A traveler.”
“That is not all, is it?” He narrowed his eyes, playing through their nights together, and the odd ways the man phrased things. “It is your curse not to be caught. Isn’t that what you said?”
Garek dropped his head. Dark hair fell over his brow, hiding those bright eyes from Tomasz.
“You arrived the night of the hunt,” he continued. “After Oj Pavel reminded me to salt the threshold. I’d already placed a bowl of milk, and run ash over the frame, and you—you did not enter until I asked for your help.”
“I could not.”
“But the next night, you walked right in and—”
“You invited me.” Garek raised his head, and Tomasz jolted at the sight.
His pupils had shrunk to tiny pricks, swallowed by molten silver bleeding beyond the bounds of his iris.
“The wind blew me to your doorstep in search of a quarry, and you invited me in. Night after night, you poured me gorza and let me touch–let me touch you.” He reached for Tomasz’s face, hissing when he flinched and turned away. “Tomasz.”
The crack of heartbreak in Garek’s voice was as loud as the broken branches that had fallen on the overhang. The branches that had crushed—
“No.” Tomasz jumped to his feet. Panic drove him away, across the tavern.
But he did not look, could not look at the ruins of the body beneath the ice and beam.
The weather-worn bones that none had cleared away.
At the body that was his, but how could it be his when he was here?
He could touch and be touched. He could find release and solace in the arms of a traveler who came night after night. “This cannot—I cannot be—”
“Stay, Tomasz.” Garek rose with a spin, riding coat snapping with the movement. His eyes burned like a thousand will-o’-wisps. “Do not leave, do not run. Gods, I beg of you, do not run.”
“And if I do?”
“No one salted your threshold.” Garek approached slowly, hands held out with his palms pressing the air, as though Tomasz were a mad beast coiled to strike. “There are no wards, and the winds pushed me to your door.”
“What are you saying?” Tomasz’s heel caught a bone—his bone. Oh, gods, his bones, his body. How long had they lain there? How long had he been unable to see?—and he tripped. Garek jolted closer, and Tomasz threw out an arm. “Stay back!”
He stopped abruptly, hands still raised. “Do not step through that door, Tomasz.”
“Why?” he begged. “What happens if I do?”
Garek’s eyes burned brighter in response. A wind kicked up around him, tearing the edges of his coat and whipping hair across his face.
“What are you?”
“I am death on fleet heels,” he answered, grim as the bones at Tomasz’s feet. “And I am cursed to ride for quarry.”
His voice echoed off the walls, wrapping around Tomasz like a shawl, and he knew. Gods above, he knew and the horror of it, of this night, of his body forgotten at the threshold, spurned him into action.
Garek’s eyes, so bright and alarming, widened ever more as he realized what Tomasz was about to do.
“No!” he bellowed.
And Tomasz ran.