Stopping at the edge of a crop of snow-dusted pine trees; the wide Yuresh River stretching out before her, Iryana oriented herself. She tried to remember the area as it looked in the summer, flush with green and teeming with life, and moved to where she thought a large cluster of cudweed usually grew.
Using her waterproof boots, Iryana began pushing the bulk of the snow aside. Every sound seemed too loud: the soft crunch of snow beneath her feet, the deep groaning of the river behind her as the ice fought to break, and the whisper of wind as it rustled the pine needles.
After taking a slow look around, Iryana leaned her bow against a felled tree, with an arrow balanced on top. Easy to grab and nock. Then she fell to her knees to brush the last layer of snow off the ground.
Her heart was beating, her ears straining to hear. She couldn’t tell if the forest was growing quieter or if it was her own paranoia.
Moving faster now, Iryana finally uncovered a patch of woolly, grayish-green leaves.Cudweed. And there was plenty of it. She found herself slowing as she began to harvest what she could.
It was painfully soothing. Her mother had loved to walk among the trees, to hum and watch the squirrels and sables scurry from branch to branch. Even with the threat of the dakii, she had taught them to love the wild nature.
Iryana yanked a cluster out of the ground a little too roughly, and cursed. Why was she thinking about her mother now? She needed to focus.
She felt blind as she quickly used her knife to cut away offshoots of leaves, leaving enough on each plant for it to grow back. Though it was slower, she took the time to tuck each one into her bag.
She wanted to be ready to run.
It was deceptively dangerous being so close to the river, the resonant moaning of the ice drowning out everything but the loudest of sounds. The dakii would be unlikely to hear her, but she would be just as unlikely to hear the forest grow silent or hear them moving toward her in the trees. As Iryana finished harvesting what she could from the plant before her, she tried to discern if she could still make out sounds beyond the river. Had it been too long since she’d heard an animal?
Iryana froze, the skin on her neck and shoulder tingling. She tried to pick out sounds other than the ice, smells beyond the muted earthiness of frozen dirt. Had she heard something? Seen something but not registered it?
She peeked into her bag, assessing how much she’d gathered. It would have to be enough. It felt like she had crossed the line where staying went from risky to idiotic.
Slowly, she grabbed her bow, fitting the arrow against the string so she could draw at a moment’s notice.
Her heart thudded wildly with adrenaline as she slipped back into the forest, her eyes not yet readjusted to the lack of moonlight under the canopy. The further from the river she went, the more sounds she heard. There was rustling, an occasional branch snapping.
There were things moving in the forest.
Normally, such sounds would be a comfort, but Iryana’s instincts screamed danger.
Her eyes were so focused ahead that when her boot ran into something, she almost stumbled. Focused, icy calm settled over her as she looked down and found the stretched-out back leg of a dakya. The creature wasn’t moving, its chest not rising.
Breathe, she reminded herself.
Iryana stepped around the mottled-gray body, noting the single set of horns. The ground around the fallen dakya was splattered with steaming, inky blood, but she saw no signs of what had killed it. Its muzzle and claws were soaked with blood, though. She couldn’t tell in the limited lighting whether it was black or red.
Iryana would have assumed the beast was alone, roaming the territory for threats as the rest of the pack slept, but there were sounds coming from deeper in the forest. Perhaps the dakya had been scouting as a pair. Or perhaps she was hearing whatever or whoever had killed the dakya.
Either option could be a serious problem.
Iryana thought through the layout of the surrounding forest. There was a path closer to the river that would lead her safely away, but she hesitated.
Whatever it was, it was likely injured. And she had the advantage of surprise. She was a bit stiff from the cold, but adrenaline would warm her right up. Hunting the dakii was almost impossible, especially without a metal-forged weapon, but these were as good as the odds got.
Creeping closer, she could tell the sounds were that of a single, larger animal. A human or a lynx could not make such sounds. Perhaps a bear could, but that was far less likely than a dakya.
Had the dakii been fighting? She hadn’t seen such a thing before, but the creatures never ceased to surprise her.
Her fingers tightened around the bow. Was she really going to hunt it?
Yes.
Without giving herself a chance to change her mind, Iryana crept through the trees, strengthening her shield as much as she could without suffocating herself.
So much adrenaline coursed through her body that it felt like she was shaking.
The noise came from a clearing just ahead, and just as Iryana was about to peek around one of the large birches, the woods fell silent.
