All through the first night and for most of the first day, she had heard men in the woods behind her, whistles blowing and trumpets blaring. At one point she thought she might have heard dogs baying far away. She had paused only once—to fill her waterskin and let Penny drink before they left the stream—and had pushed on solidly hour after hour, until they were both trembling with exhaustion and, finally, had to stop.
She had slept brokenly that night, constantly waking to listen, trying to gauge whether the guards were any closer. But the sounds continued to fade.
By the afternoon of the second day, there were occasional noises that she couldn’t quite decipher. Perhaps trumpets, perhaps birds. But mostly just the noise of the woods, alive with the activities of a myriad of small creatures around her.
The third day was free of any human noise. Birds sang, magpies chattered and screeched, and Penelope’s hooves thudded along the rough animal tracks they followed. Otherwise, it was silent. No cook clattered and banged pans in the kitchen, no maids cleaned and gossiped while the stable hands whistled, no guards chortled at rough jokes and flirted with the staff.
She was completely, utterly alone.
Then she had started to get hungry. Hungrier than she had ever dreamed possible. By the end of the second day, her stomach ached constantly and she was starting to feel lightheaded.
But now, on the third day, she’d stopped wanting food. And it worried her. For the first time, she was starting to suspect that she was genuinely in trouble.
Penelope seemed happy enough eating the autumn grasses of the small glades they’d passed through. And, thank the gods, they’d found another stream yesterday—although that water was now gone. But there hadn’t been any food for her.
Around mid-afternoon, she had found a huge bush weighed down with vivid red berries and been highly tempted. Birds danced between the branches, feasting, and she had almost convinced herself to try a handful. But then thoughts of dying in agony all alone in the woods filled her head, and she’d lost her nerve.
How many hours had she spent learning the history of Brythoria? Or the legends of how the Apollyon people had descended from the angel-become-goddess Muriel? Or how to play the harp? What use was the harp to anyone when they needed to eat?
Why couldn’t she have spent time in the woods learning about which berries were poisonous and which safe? Or how to set traps. How to hunt. How to make clothes. Where she was, or even what direction the nearest town was in. There were a million and one helpful things for a person to know, and she didn’t know any of them.
Everything she’d been taught was useless. “Fuckinguseless,” she added aloud.
She would have been sent to her room for swearing—even now, having left her childhood behind years ago. But out here, there was no one to punish her.
She gave a rough snort against her knees. No one cared whether she starved to death, but at least she could curse as much as she wanted. Not that she felt like it; what she really felt like was curling up in a ball and wallowing in how sorry she felt for herself.
But she wouldn’t.
She wouldn’t curl up in a ball of misery. And she wouldn’t cry. After Cerdic, she had decided that crying didn’t change anything. He didn’t deserve that honor, to have her weeping after him. None of them did. She could feel miserable and lost and alone, but she wouldn’t cry.
She had tried to keep the sun so that it always set to her right shoulder, in the hopes that she wouldn’t get turned around and start heading back to the house. So far, it seemed to be working. But she still had no idea where she was. The woods were just one endless array of almost bare autumn trees, muddy paths, and cold winds.
She could be five miles from a village, or fifty. Maybe every day she traveled she went further from any kind of settlement? She had no way of knowing.
Now the sun was setting once more and the wind was picking up, tugging disconsolately at the damp leaves on the ground around her. In the dim light, she could see that the spiders were out, their massive webs winding between the leaves and branches. A bird hopped through the undergrowth beside her, shuffling and fussing as it hunted for its dinner.
She had tied Penelope’s halter to a tree branch before sitting down to rest so the mare wouldn’t wander off into the night, and soon it would be time for her to try to sleep. But first she wanted to see if there was anyone nearby, or if there were any villages she could aim for. It was her habit, now, to climb the tallest tree she could find each night and try to look for lights.
She waited until the sun was completely set and then stood, turning to face the tree. She had chosen it for its massive height and its wide-spreading branches. She tried to remember the route she’d decided on in the last rays of daylight and slowly lifted herself, carefully feeling her way and checking her handholds. It was painfully slow and nerve-wracking; if she fell and hurt herself, there would be no one to help her. By the time she was high enough to look out over the forest, she was breathing hard with exertion and anxiety.
The woods spread out in front of her, black and brooding under the milky sheen of the cosmos. The moon was not yet up, and the streaks of high silver-white clouds were too fine to block the light of the multitudes of stars that lit the world around her with a pale glow. It was beautiful and haunting, like a dream.
Something in the corner of her vision snagged her attention, and she carefully turned on the branch.
She saw it again and shuffled further along the branch to get a better view.
Her breath caught. It was the flickering orange glow of a fire. A small campsite—tiny, but vivid against the reds and oranges of the last remaining autumn leaves—a couple of miles from where she was, maybe closer.
Could they be hunters? It didn’t make sense for travelers to be so deep in the woods. Claudius and his men? No, she didn’t think so. She would have heard them during the day, wouldn’t she? And there would be more fires, or at least a much bigger one for the whole squad, surely?
Lucilla climbed slowly down the tree, carefully testing each foothold until she was safely back down on the ground.
What should she do? Should she run? Or should she investigate?
She leaned on the tree, muttering to herself while she tried to decide. The sensible thing was almost certainly to run. But what good would that do her? Would it simply prolong the inevitable until she died in the woods, as unloved and unnoticed as she’d been her entire life?
Or she could sneak up on the campfire and have a look. Maybe they would have some food—to steal, if not to share or buy.
