When he pushed the door open, the smell struck me like a blow. The stench was so putrid, so all-consuming, that I had to turn away. “What is that?” I choked out, covering my mouth and nose with my hand.
Filip’s voice was strangled. “Don’t come in here.”
I heard the warning, but my body acted of its own volition. Stepping into the doorway of the tiny bedchamber, my eyes found the source of the smell.
Lying on top of a four-poster bed, bathed in rust-colored blood, was the decomposing body of a female. Almost a dozen arrows jutted out of her body—silver yew—and on the bed’s cheerful patchwork quilt sat a bloodied axe.
And her head.
Chapter 32
Filip cursed loudly as I turned away and retched.
Through watering eyes and choked breaths, I asked, “Do you think that’s her? Basia?”
“I don’t know who else it could be,” he said, sounding like he was struggling to keep his voice even.
Bracing myself, I turned and faced the room again. It wasn’t any less grotesque the second time.
Filip inspected the corpse, his face a shade paler than usual. “I’d say she’s been dead for at least a week now. Maybe even two.”
With some effort, I nodded. I didn’t ask him how he knew that, I was too focused on not heaving my lunch all over the dusty floorboards.
I watched from a safe distance as he examined the body methodically. “It looks like someone nullified her with silver yew. She must have been very powerful for them to use this much. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was already dead by the time they decapitated her.”
A lump formed in my throat at the sight of her body, butchered and bristling with death’s needles, like a pin cushion of flesh. There was no doubt in my mind that the silver yew arrows would have killed her. To sever her head from her body was an act of unnecessary cruelty.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Apparently donewith his examination of the body, he turned his gaze to me.
“She’s not the murderer.” I said weakly.
“Exactly. Which means the true murderer likely killed her too. But why?”
There was silence as we both contemplated this revelation.
Maybe it was fueled by cold-blooded hatred? It could have been an act of revenge. Or maybe she knew something and the murderer wanted to keep her quiet? Or…
“Basia had something the murderer wanted,” I said, thinking of the mess in the other room. Someone had obviously ransacked the cottage—I didn’t know why we hadn’t realized it sooner. “And I think they killed her once they found it.”
“You’re probably right,” he agreed solemnly. “Which means we’re wasting our time searching for anything here.”
He turned away from the body. “We should head back to the campsite; the hunt will be finishing up soon.”
“And the body?”
“What about it?”
“We can’t leave her like this,” I said, remembering the fox’s corpse. I couldn’t let her body decay and become fodder for the maggots.
He folded his arms, readying for an argument. “What do you propose we do with it?”
“We burn it, obviously.” I wasn’t sure why I cared about what happened to her remains. Perhaps I felt sorry for her for meeting such a gruesome demise.
We stood and argued about what to do, both becoming heated. I was adamant that she should have the appropriate Rites, and Filip was equally stubborn in his belief that we didn’t have the time. When I made it clear that I would not take a single step into the forest as a dishonorable heathen, he finally gave in.
He wrapped up her body and head in the quilt and lifted it outside with ease, while I moved the cauldron, sitting it down bythe wood pile.
He whittled two sticks together to make sparks in the outdoor fire pit. At first, they were tiny, tentative flickers but soon they grew into hungry flames that devoured the logs, dried twigs and leaves. They spread quickly and demanded more.
