Arthur examined the shelter for a groove or any indication of a door. He prodded at the wood around the gap. It opened, leaving a wider hole through which he stepped out into the forest.
Sunlight stabbed into his eyes as leaves shifted overhead.His foot caught on something; he righted himself against the shelter.
Glancing down, Arthur gasped. A massive arrow was lodged at the base of a tree. Long, ragged claw marks dug into the shelter’s sides, all around the splintered wood.
Panic welled in his chest. “Ira?”
No one answered, but the surrounding greenery was flattened. Clumps of limp, blackened flora trailed around their campsite and away.
Arthur buried his face in Freya’s fur, focusing on her weight and warmth. On his own breathing,in for four, hold for four, out for four.
“All right. We can find him. We’ll just follow his trail. Then...”
Then, he didn’t know. Ira might have gone anywhere. Even back to the vale, despite his talk last night.
A small part of Arthur hoped he had. If Ira had returned to the vale, Arthur had no choice but to retrieve him. Of course it would mean restarting their journey, but the vale was safe.
Stop it. They had to replant the tree. For Ira. For Charlotte. Arthur couldn’t give up and go back to the vale, no matter how tempting. No matter how difficult it was tochooseto do something, how much easier it was to go on doing nothing. To tell oneself there was nothing to be done.
Arthur let out a breath, rubbed the rowan cross in his pocket for comfort, and set Freya down. Crawling back into the shelter, he stuffed the fur they’d slept on into Ira’s pack and shouldered it, hefted his own (significantly lighter) knapsack in his arms, and said, in a voice meant to be firm and determined but not quite either, “Come on, Freya.”
They set off, following the trail of dying flowers. A horrible, sibilant sound that reminded Arthur uncomfortably of whispers accompanied them, seeming to come from the trees.
He reached again for the rowan cross. It had become a habit in the last few days, the same way Charlotte so often fiddled with John’s wedding ring.
In the distance, howling.
Arthur stopped in his tracks, heart hammering. Not howling. Baying.Somewhere ahead, a pack of hunting dogs, like the hounds Agnes’s husband used to keep. Arthur had never liked that sound; to him it meant some innocent rabbit or fox was about to be killed for nothing more than a rich man’s leisure.
This was worse. The baying had strange, ragged edges, laid over with screams and the moaning of a great wind.
Arthur swallowed. That sound raised the hair on his neck, made him want to run as fast as he could in the other direction. Ira’s trail of dying greenery led straight toward it.
Freya twisted around Arthur’s legs. He picked up the nearest stick and held it like a sword. Just in case.
“Let’s go,” he said in a strangled voice.
The baying grew louder with every step. Arthur’s legs shook, but he pressed on until Freya’s fur stood on end and his ears rang. His hands itched to cover them, but he didn’t.
Through the trees, by a stream rushing white and loud, a dozen hounds circled. They were sleek and black, the size of cart horses, with gleaming red eyes. Their strange, ghostly forms melted and reformed each time they lunged toward their prey.
It was a stag. A glorious red deer with a golden mane and autumn leaves twined in his antlers, and a scarred eye and a twisted leg. A hunting knife was lodged in his right shoulder.
Arthur’s mouth went dry. He flung himself around the back of a tree, trying to quiet his breathing. Freya hunkered down in the underbrush.
“Easy, boys,” a gruff voice called. Arthur shivered. Like thebaying, the voice had an edge to it. “He got me, sure enough, but I’ll live.”
Arthur set the packs down, gripped his stick, and edged around the tree. The speaker was a man, more or less. The way Ira normally was, both man and not. He was tanned and weatherbeaten, like Seacliff’s fishermen, in fine hunting clothes like old Mr. Livingston used to wear—but they were the color of storm clouds. So was his hair; so were his eyes, which fixed on Ira hard and flinty. When he moved, no matter how little, it was sudden and forceful, the way storms appeared out to sea in autumn.
A bow and quiver were slung over his shoulder, or Arthur thought so, but theyglimmered. One moment there, the next gone. Arthur couldn’t be sure he wasn’t imagining them.
“Been a long time,lord,” the huntsman said, flinging the title at Ira like an insult, in that same howling voice.
His cheek was scratched. Instead of blood, silvery-white fluid dribbled from it, looking like nothing so much as light. Ira gazed at him warily, flanks heaving.
“Felt your power waning, so I have. Once you kept my hunt muzzled, but no longer.”
The huntsman reached over his shoulder, and now it was certain: A great black bow was in his hands, with a massive arrow—like that at the campsite—nocked to the bowstring.
