“They are. None escaped as far as I can tell.”
She frowned. “And that’s good?”
He gave her a hard look and then bent to clean his sword on the man’s coat before sheathing the blade.
“Come on.” He led her quickly back to camp.
When they got there, he took one look at the mess of it and grabbed her blanket off the ground.
“There are too many bodies to dispose of. They’ll draw scavengers or those familiars. It will be easier to move our camp. There’s too much blood to get rid of it all.”
Too much blood, yes. There was. Lots of blood. So much blood.
He set the torch into the ground and it lit the whole scene in gruesome detail. The big man sprawled on his back, his gut torn open and blood still seeping out. His eyes were open. His mouth too.
“A mile or two should do it. Roll this.” The captain turned around, shoving the blanket at her. It hit her chest and fell to her feet. “Rowan?”
She couldn’t stop staring at the man. Once a man had come through their village. He hadn’t been right in his head. He’d roamed the streets yelling about witches and flying creatures but hadn’t known his own name. He had no shoes and there’d been dirt crusted in the folds of his skin. The clothes had been rotting from his body. This man looked like that, like it had been a long time since he’d been wholly human. Then, they’d called for the priest in Sulen to take the man to a charity house. She’d stabbed this one. She thought he’d been trying to escape. He’d seemed as frightened as she was.
“I killed him.”
Casrian stood up slowly.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. It was the gentlest voice she’d ever heard from him. She thought, distractedly, that it would be nice if he always talked to her like that. “You’re all right. Can you give me the knife?”
She looked down, startled, to find the knife still in her hand. It was covered in blood down to the hilt, starting to dry. Her hands were bloody too. Her arm. Her shirt. She dropped the knife, but apparently the captain didn’t really want it because he ignored it where it fell and stepped closer to her.
She tried to back up, but her foot caught on something and she lost her balance. Casrian caught her, his arms closing around her. She struggled, but he pulled her closer, right up against his broad chest, and she felt all of those muscles of his lock around her, holding her up.
“I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
It was the best and most ridiculous thing anyone had ever told her. The best because he cared enough to comfort her. The worst because she knew he was lying. They weren’t safe. They clearly weren’t safe. They weren’t any safer out here than the man she’d just killed.
“He wanted the horse. I think… I think he just wanted to get out of the woods.”
The men the trees had told her about had horses. It wasn’t them. A shudder passed through her. His men were still out there. They were following the right trail.
The captain sighed, arms tightening around her. “He wasn’t in his right mind. None of them were. Did he hurt you?”
She gave a brittle laugh that turned into a sob. The captain looked down at her, the flickering torch doing strange things to his face, making him seem not quite human. His rough thumbs swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “Did he hurt you?”
“My throat.” She shook her head. “I’m all right.”
He tilted her head back and then cursed under his breath. His fingertips were a light brush on her neck. She shuddered and he released her, straightening.
“No permanent damage,” he said, though his voice sounded tight. “We need to get out of here before the bodies drawanything we don’t want to deal with. Can you fold up the blankets and gather your things while I saddle the horses?”
She nodded. They wouldn’t be able to go far, but she wanted to get away from this place. Just run and run and run until this was far behind her.
The smell of blood and unwashed bodies and damp earth and swamp choked her with every breath. She mounted Copper and moved off. She shouldn’t have glanced back. The image of the guttering torch and the body sprawled on the blood-stained ground followed her into the dark.
25
She could feel Casrian watching her as he built a fire. The clouds had cleared while they looked for a place to camp. There was a quarter moon in the sky. Through the gaps in the trees overhead, she could see stars. Even with the moonlight, it had been hard going, the horses clearly unhappy with the move, but they managed. She’d had to ask the trees for help again, but she didn’t think Casrian noticed. They were settled now. Ash trees stood like sentinels around them. The stream was only a little farther away than it had been.
She shivered.
Casrian threw another log onto the flames and sat down near her.
