Chapter 5
Six years later
Rowan slipped through the shadows, stalking her prey.
The trees were old in this part of the woods.
Tall, with widespread canopies that blocked out the sun, they were only beginning to lose their leaves with the cooling temperatures.
Blood-red splashes of color drifted down around her whenever the wind blew.
There were no saplings to block her path, only the trunks rising up like columns to the roof of shivering leaves, a carpet of red beneath her feet.
The dry leaves made a sound like whispering.
Child…child…Where have you been? You are needed…
She ignored the itch at the back of her mind that came whenever she stepped into the forest. She didn’t want to listen to anything the trees might tell her. Not here. Not in these woods.
She wouldn’t even be out here if not for the deer she spotted when she’d gone out to check her traps. It leapt away when the arrow hit its flank, injured but still quick. Following it, she’d gone much deeper into the woods than she’d planned.
It had always been dangerous to wander too deeply into the Black Woods. Every year, a few people wandered in and never came out. There were places she refused to go, ones where the shadows had substance and the trees had eyes, but over the last year, things had gotten much worse.
When they’d first come to Toam, the trees had been friendly. Then they’d gone quiet. Now, when they spoke, it was all about foul water seeping up through the soil, about rot and swarming insects and strangling vines. She’d started to avoid the woods like everyone else.
There were still safe paths through the woods, like the one she followed now, but every time she came in here, the safe spots were smaller and the rot larger. One by one, the trees were dying and she didn’t know why. They wanted help, but she had none to give them. She could barely help herself.
A glossy reflection on a leaf caught her eye, and she bent to examine it.
It was difficult to follow a blood trail when everything was red, but it was blood, a drop or two.
Several feet away, there was a tuft of hair caught on the rough bark of a tree trunk.
She quickened her pace, following the trail.
She’d have to turn back soon whether she found the doe or not, but they needed the meat.
With the floods on the plains, it had been a bad year for crops.
Their little garden had barely seen them through the summer.
The orchard to the north had been swallowed by the woods two years ago and she’d only been able to find a bucket’s worth of shriveled apples, most of them wormy.
The berries were gone. They had a few bunches of carrots in the cellar, a couple dozen potatoes, some dried rabbit she’d traded Pali for a cold remedy, and the squirrel her mother was cooking tonight.
At this rate, they would never make it through the winter.
And her mother had been ill for months. That lingering cough she’d picked up in the spring had never completely gone away. She’d grown too thin.
Her steps silent, she adjusted the set of her bow on her back and continued deeper into the woods. She kept the river to her right, between her and the mountains to the west. She didn’t want to be out here once the sun set behind those peaks.
There was a creek ahead. Though she wouldn’t stop for water, she angled in that direction to see if there were any tracks in the muddy ground. Following along its banks, she did find some, but they hadn’t been made by her doe.
She studied the deep impressions with a frown.
Horses. At least six of them.
There was no sign of a cart, so they weren’t traders. And brigands avoided the woods unless they were being chased.
Brigands avoided these woods even when they were being chased.
Whoever they were, they couldn’t possibly be up to anything good.
Unfortunately, her doe seemed to have crossed at the same place. The flecks of blood, still wet, blended now with the disturbed leaves from the horses and the occasional pile of shit. Stupid doe to follow this trail. Had she no sense of self-preservation?
Ignoring the hoofprints for the moment, she followed the blood, which grew increasingly easy to see. She still didn’t see the animal. The ground was hillier so near the river. If it had bedded down here…
Rowan stopped, staring at the blood puddled on the ground beneath her feet.
Had the arrow shifted and nicked an artery?
She looked around her. Still no sign of the deer.
The blood trail widened from that spot, leading deeper into the woods, but it looked more like something had been dragged away from this spot.
Kneeling, she touched two fingers to the blood. Still wet. After a moment’s hesitation, she licked it, grimacing as the taste of iron hit her tongue.
She had to know.
She expected the blood to show her the deer. She hoped it had dragged itself off and was dying just out of sight. But it wasn’t the deer she saw.
It was a man.
A dead man, or nearly so.
He wasn’t far away. The blood tugged at her, pulling her toward the river.
He’d dragged himself there for some unknown reason.
His pain and fear rushed up the link of the tracking spell, and she spat out the blood.
Grabbing for the leather skin at her hip, she poured the last of her water into her mouth and spat again.
Fuck.
Shaking, she stood and looked around her, noticing for the first time how still the woods had become. It seemed suddenly darker though she knew it was not yet close to sunset.
There was a watchful anticipation to the air that chilled her blood.
She should turn back. She wanted to turn back. Her legs trembled with the need to run.
No one would even blame her. Something or someone had injured that man and it could just as easily happen to her. If she got hurt out here, no one would come for her.
The man was a fool to come out here anyway, and fools deserved what they got.
But through the panic, she could hear her mother’s voice. Kind. Gentle. And so brave that Rowan sometimes hated her for it. There was someone who needed help, and she was the only one who could give it. A man would die if she walked away now.
Damn it.
She walked to the creek, refilled her leather skin, and dropped a charm into the water to purify it. She’d need a lot of clean water for a wound leaking so much blood.
Tracking him was easy. The blood was dark and tacky and stuck to the leaves that were churned up as if he’d dragged himself, injured, through the forest. There were more hoofprints, too, the further she walked.
Why hadn’t the other men helped him? Unless they were the ones who’d hurt him in the first place.
But then, why not finish the job? He was still alive.
The blood told her that. But she didn’t hear anyone else about. Hopefully they were long gone.
Stretching out her senses, she flinched at each small sound. A crow cawing in the distance. The crunch of the leaves beneath her feet. Goosebumps rose on her arms. The woods, eerily silent on the best of days, seemed to hold its breath.
She passed through a spot where the trees grew closer together and half scurried, half slid down an embankment to the river.
She saw the horse first. Beautiful and placid, it nibbled daintily at the grass near the river’s edge.
It was still saddled with fine leather bags and a bedroll strapped to its back.
There was a dark smear of blood on its flank, but it didn’t appear injured.
For now, she ignored the horse and followed the blood trail until she spotted the man, half hidden by a fallen log.
Sprawled flat on his back, she would have thought him dead if not for the slow rasp of his breath.
There was no one else here. No footsteps in the mud around him other than from the horse.
It was like he’d tried to escape into the water, but his will had given out at the last minute.
He was young, she saw, as she moved cautiously forward.
Clean-shaven, with a streak of mud across his face.
His hair was honey blond and cut short in a city style.
Just long enough for a lock of it to curl at his temple.
There was a discarded sword in the dirt near his hand, and she kicked it out of his reach before she bent to examine the wound on his chest.
His jacket was sodden with blood. Dried leaves were embedded in the sticky mess.
She pulled the jacket open, ripping through the tatters of his shirt.
She threw her bag on the ground next to her and rummaged through it for the bandages she always kept inside.
There was a spare shirt in there too which she found first and used to put pressure on the wound which still wept blood.
This couldn’t have happened all that long ago for him to still be bleeding. A few hours at most. Any longer and he would already be dead. Her gaze flicked up to his face. He stared back at her, his expression a grimace of pain. Blue eyes already bright with fever.
For two solid beats of her heart, she just stared, and then it felt like her heart stopped beating completely. The whole world shifted, and she stumbled back, nearly breaking her bow when she fell on her ass.
He tried to catch her hand. “Please…”
No.
Hell no.
The last time she’d seen this man had been on the worst day of her life. He’d stared at her then too, but with condemnation in his eyes, judging her a witch when she’d been little more than a child. He’d branded her mother. He’d blinded her mother. And he’d destroyed her life forever.
Shaking her head, she climbed slowly to her feet.
This one she wasn’t saving.