Текст книги "A vow of blood and tears"

Автор книги: Cate Corvin

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

Chapter 33 Cirri

It was a silence like none I’d ever heard before. A silence that pressed into my eardrums, screaming with its own lack of existence.

Only because there should have been sounds; there should have been laughter, whispers, shouts, anything. Anything at all. Even just footsteps or breathing. The houses stared with windows like empty eyes.

I now understood, with a vague sense of clarity below the dread and horror, that I had been intensely sheltered my entire life. No Veladari lived without fear of the Forians, but not until this very moment had I truly realized what it meant to grow up inside strong city walls.

I had seen corpses, but not like this. I had seen destruction, but not like this.

As Bane, Visca, and Miro left to join those vampires already collecting bodies, looking for warg-sign, searching for survivors, I slid from my horse on numb legs. Snow crunched underfoot, and for a long moment I just stood there and looked at it all.

It was like one of Edda’s paintings. Easier to think of it that way, the gray sky against white snow, the dark houses and red blood splattering a canvas. Easier to sever myself from the reality of the people strewn across the square in pieces, the people strung on wire and raised as a monument to death in the middle of the village.

My eyes went unwillingly to the front of the church, to the paintings defacing the wooden walls. The wide open wolf’s mouth, holding the rune of Wargyr.

So they’d had time to play. Time to not only rip and claw through everyone, but time to eat them, to take their blood and paint with it, to hang them up and offer them humiliation in death.

My gaze slid down, to a woman slumped against the wall. She reminded me of Antonetta, sitting there with her head tipped onto her shoulder, eyes already becoming milky, but Antonetta had been… clean compared to this.

The clean strokes of a knife compared to the ragged bites taken from this woman’s thighs, her grayish-white skin scored with a thousand slashes. I found myself wondering, still numb, if she had already been dead when the wargs first began to eat.

Please, Lady, let her have been dead already.

My feet carried me forward without any thought. I stepped over an arm, the tendons dangling from the shoulder like ragged ribbons. Over a body, the head twisted around so the man’s face was pushed ignominiously into the ground. The snow was more red than white.

If not for the cold, the smell would have been unbearable. Even so, I had to swallow my gorge multiple times, my mouth watering as I walked. I clutched my cloak tighter, as though it could shield me from the sight of it all.

I should do something to help. Something useful… anything. But I stopped in front of a small body, arm still outstretched to a mother who wasn’t there.

Absurdly, all I could think of was the story the older maids in the Cathedral used to tell us when we were children, about the boy who didn’t cry wolf.

He went walking through the woods, and thought he saw pointy ears, but he said nothing. It was only the cones on the trees. He collected his berries, and thought he saw a bushy tail, but he said nothing. It was only a sleeping squirrel. He walked home with his basket, and thought he saw yellow eyes, but he said nothing. It was only the reflection of the moon in the water. When the boy got home, the guard asked, “Did you see any wolves?” The boy said no, he saw nothing. But the wolf followed him home in the shadows, and ate everyone in the village all up. 

The stories we had thought were only stories, no more than fairy tales.

I looked at that little hand, pudgy with baby fat, dirt under the nails, and in my mind I heard the maid clapping her hands as she said, “Ate them all up!”

My stomach revolted. I ran past the church, feet slipping in the reddened snow, unseeing and unhearing. Past the iron horseshoes that had been torn down and bent out of shape. All the way to the edge of the trees, where I dropped to my knees and was violently sick.

It took some time. My stomach muscles ached, and my throat was raw as I spit sourness into the grass and snow that was still mercifully white and untouched by the carnage.

From a distance, I heard Bane roaring orders, Visca’s shouts to work faster, work harder. I closed my eyes, feeling dizzy and disconnected from everything.

I spat once more and scraped fresh snow over my mess, as though it would make a difference. Who cared about my vomit when the entire village behind me would never be scrubbed clean?

But it was something to do. My hands ached red from the cold as I scooped another mound to hide it.

Ate them all up. The maid’s sing-song voice played in my mind over and over, her big, toothy smile as she clapped her hands so vivid I could almost see it.

By the Light, I had been so sheltered. So terribly naïve.

All those stories had been true.

The next scoop of snow went in my mouth in a desperate effort to rinse the bitter taste away. I spat it out, staring at the clean, dark lines of the trees in front of me, wishing I could rinse away those images as easily.

All of them. Every single person in Tristone, eaten all up.

I scrubbed at my cheeks and got up slowly. I had to do something. Anything.

But I froze instead, listening intently. There it was again—I hadn’t heard it so clearly while I was heaving my guts out. A low groan, a sound of pain, caught on the wind and whispering through the trees.

My feet remained planted firmly where I was. The wargs were gone, but it was pure madness to walk into that forest alone. Bane would be furious. I would feel stupid later when I took my well-deserved chastisement.

I glanced over my shoulder at the town, trying to keep my eyes above ground-level, but none of the legions were in sight, nor Bane and Visca. I waved one arm, hoping that someone would see, but no one came.

The groan came again, lower, desperate. A soft whisper. “Is someone there? Help. Help me.”

It was the desperation in his voice that called me forth, the weakening of it. I knew perfectly well I should’ve turned around and searched for someone, but my body moved with a mind of its own despite the screaming in the back of my mind.

The wargs were gone. None would dare to remain with a fiend around. But whoever was calling for help, they might not have time for me to find a knight, not if they were spilling their life’s blood in the snow as they begged.

Even as I walked further into the trees, I told myself that I wouldn’t go out of sight of the village. It was a compromise. I had to do something—maybe I couldn’t scream for aid, but I could find who was calling.

And he was there, sitting down like Antonetta, like the woman by the church, with his legs sprawled out before him and his back against a tree.

He still wore clothes, unlike most of the bodies. Woolens slashed through, so much blood it was impossible to say what color they had been before. A hunting knife lay on his lap, clutched in one loose hand.

His face… the man’s eyes were gone. Claws had raked across his face, taking his sight with one blow. My stomach turned again, but there was nothing left to come up.

But he was alive, and that was all that mattered. The wargs had missed one.

The man lifted his head as I approached, the sound of my feet crunching in the snow the only sound I made on my arrival. “Is someone there?”

Those sockets, black with dried blood, faced me, but even as I signed, I’m here, I knew it was useless. He couldn’t see. I couldn’t speak.

He sucked in a breath, and I took another cautious step. “If someone’s there, say it now,” he growled. The blood that had dried on his cheeks cracked, flaking away.

Let me help you, I said desperately. The only survivor—he had to make it. I stepped to his feet and crouched down, touching his leg with one hand.

He moved faster than I expected, heaving himself forward and slashing with the knife. I had one hand still raised, meaning to touch his hand next—but the blade cut through my palm, blood spilling down my wrist. The pain was dull at first, becoming a white-hot shock within seconds.

“Say something, damn you,” he half-shrieked as I fell back.

I pressed my hand into the snow, hoping to staunch the flow, and stared at his mutilated face, sick and desperate. He was bleeding, he would die soon, I needed someone, anyone, to get here…

I stood up shakily, knowing I could do nothing. I hadn’t been thinking clearly. If I tried to grab his hand, to show him human touch, he’d stab me before he understood I was a person, too. I needed Bane now.

My retreating steps were so loud against the silence and the man’s harsh, raspy breathing. He clutched the knife with white-knuckled hands, head twisted in my general direction.

“I hear you there,” he snarled, heaving himself up against the tree with one hand, brandishing the knife in the other. “I hear you moving about. I killed one of you already, and I’ll take another. You won’t have me, you hear? You won’t have me, you bastard dog!”

No, no, no. I didn’t move, not daring to make so much as a rustle. I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t go.

His breath was bubbling, head wobbling to keep it straight. The same four words poured out of him in raspy, panting snarls.  “You won’t have me. You won’t have me.”

Please, Lady, ancestors, anyone, send Bane. 

But there was only me, frozen and terrified, and the man, choking on his own breath, ranting all the while.

He coughed blood, heaving for breath, and put the knife to his throat. I stepped forward in shock, meaning to stop him—but he dragged the blade across his own neck with a savagery I could barely fathom.

“Won’t have me,” he choked, blood steaming in the cold air as it sluiced over the blade, soaking into his shirt. He’d cut an artery, his heart pumping his lifeblood into the air with every beat.

I lunged at him, tearing the knife from his shivering, weakening hand, tossing it aside as I pressed my cloak to the gash in his throat. It soaked through instantly, the man’s ruined sockets glaring at me as I tried to save his life, applying pressure so hard my arms ached.

I was too late. I was the wrong one. I could do nothing to help.

Time passed meaninglessly. At some point I became aware that my hands were sticky and cold. The man had stopped breathing a long time ago.

No one had survived. If anyone else had found him, he would still be alive. What a sick joke. It was nauseating.

Why had I wanted to come at all? I couldn’t even save one life.

If it was anyone but me, I told him, you would have lived. 

I dropped the sodden edge of my cloak, giving his cold, still face one last look. Then I prised the knife from his hands, now frozen over with a frosted scarlet crust.

The cut he’d given me ached, but Wyn would fix it later. It meant less than nothing now. I stood up, leaving streaks of red across the white, and stared further into the forest as I collected my deadened thoughts.

At first my eyes didn’t see it. It was nothing but a lump of gray on a fallen log, a random but enormous knot on the branch. After a moment of puzzling over it, my mind finally forced the puzzle into shape: it was a body on the log, halfway draped over.

I didn’t pay the loudness of my steps any mind as I moved towards it. No one was left alive to hear them now.

The warg had died in the midst of a leap; it was its back leg that was hooked over the log, giving it that strange shape. The rest of the creature was sprawled in the snow on the other side. Whoever had killed it had done so with brutal efficiency. Several spears had been driven through its guts, one piercing its mouth and emerging through its spine. It was enormous, as tall as Bane and barrel-chested, but strangely spindly in the limbs, its arms and legs long and thin.

Strange how we called them wolves. It was an insult to wolves themselves. The warg’s snout was distended to an obscene length, and its wide-open jaws showed me the rows of teeth going all the way down its gullet.

So very, very many teeth. Hundreds, all the way down to its stomach. Stained red, bits of flesh caught between them.

Ate them all up! 

The round eye was frosted over, but I could see the pitch-black color, the pale pinprick of pupil frozen like a tiny moon in the center.

From a mental distance I knew I was shivering uncontrollably, both fear of the dead thing in front of me and the horror of the dead man behind me combining into total shock.

I needed to go back to the village. I needed to find Bane.

But I couldn’t turn my back on the dead warg, because… what if it was only pretending? What if it got up?

Go back to the village, I told myself, but every time I tried to force myself to move, my body stayed locked right where it was. There was a voice screaming that question in the back of my mind, loud and shrill: what if it gets up? 

I had never felt a fear like this in my life. Not even when Bane first nuzzled his fangs to my throat. Every muscle was frozen, a prey’s response to knowing a predator was before it, even if it was dead.

I couldn’t make a sound, not even a footstep. To make a sound was to die. It was a completely atavistic response, and one I was powerless against.

So I stood like a statue, watching the dead warg for any sign of movement. For the faintest rise of its chest or the blink of that pale-pupiled eye. The spears meant nothing. How could mere spears bring down a thing like this, all twisted out of shape and made of hunger?

The sound of crunching snow behind me made me flinch, clutching the knife tighter in my sweaty palm. If I could’ve made a sound I would’ve whimpered, too terrified to scream, too afraid to take my eyes from the warg.

“Cirri.” Bane’s voice, thick with combined relief and anger.

And it was only because it was him that my iron-hard muscles finally unlocked, nearly sending me to my knees again. I dropped the knife, my hands shaking.

“Why?” His arms wrapped around, warm and safe. I could finally blink, frozen tears cracking on my cheeks. “Why go into the forest?”

I heard a man call, I told him, teeth chattering. He called for help. He was alive, but for me. I killed him, Bane. It was because of me. Because I couldn’t say anything.

He looked down at the warg, still holding me tight, and I felt his chest rise as he sucked in a breath. His nostrils flexed, forked tongue flicking out to taste the air.

“Never mind that,” he said gruffly, and released me long enough to scoop the dagger from the snow. He handed it to me, and took my bloodied hand, examining the scabbed slash wound.

“I tasted your blood on the wind.” Bane tucked my trembling hand against my chest. “Come now. You can tell me while Wyn heals this.”

You didn’t tell me what they looked like, I said. I thought they were like wolves. 

He gave the dead warg—now that Bane was here, I could accept that it was truly dead, and not lying in wait—a long look. “No, they aren’t much like wolves at all, but that’s what Wargyr’s gift is. Something twisted and wrong. Something made with suffering.”

I nodded. That made perfect sense. This was not a wolf, but suffering given shape.

“It’s not the kind of thing you can describe.” His voice was gruff as he led me away, and even with him at my side, it was difficult to turn my back on it. “Not easily. It’s the kind of thing you must see, and feel, to understand. I’d hoped to keep you blissfully ignorant about that, at least.”

I don’t think ignorance is a gift I can afford anymore, I said bitterly. Did anyone live? Anyone at all?

“No,” he said softly.

We passed the dead man by the tree, and Bane paused to respectfully close his eyes.

As he did so, I kept an eye on the path we’d walked. Made absolutely sure that the warg’s leg hadn’t moved an inch from the log.

My ignorance had been remedied in a terrible way. My steps in the snow stopped sounding like crunching, and started to sound like clapping hands.

Ate them all up!

Never, ever again would I walk into the forest on my own.

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Chapter 34 Bane

Istayed between my wife and the tree of limbs as we passed through the village, one arm around her shoulder to stop her quaking shivers, but she didn’t stop trembling. She kept her hand cradled to her chest, the hunting knife clutched in the other, her expression a strange rictus of terror, pain, and shock.

It had been a mistake to bring her, and yet she was right. There was no room for ignorance for one living in the Rift—not while Hakkon lived. I had been the fool to think I could keep her safely coddled away in Ravenscry, wrapped warmly in the bliss of innocence, while still expecting—hoping—that she would come to care for the people on her own.

She had to see it to care. To see the cost of making a mistake, as I had.

Caging her in safety and ignorance would only separate her from the people, and as much as I hated to see her own fear, it was better to see it now. Better to see it as an observer, rather than a victim.

When I went hunting, she would rule in my place. She would have to be the one to overrule and order strong men into doing things they hated, for their own sake. She would have to tell the Gilams of the Rift to open the mines, to cut down the trees, to build their defenses, even as they insisted they feared the ghosts more than the wolf in the wood.

So. Now she had seen it. Now she understood the price of failing to enforce our rule.

And now I wanted her far away from it all. Enough was enough.

I took her hands and led her through the cracked gap in the wall, out into the frosty field where the legions had set up camp. Wyn’s tent was near the road, where the horses had been tethered. None of them were grazing; they stamped and tossed their heads, the whites of their eyes showing when the breeze carried the scent of blood to their noses.

“Come along now,” I growled softly, unable to summon any more anger. I had left her alone; did I not know my own wife? Of course she had gone to look.

Wyn’s tent was bright red canvas, as all bloodwitch tents in the war had been. They were the first thing one looked for when seeking a healer, too often the last thing one saw.

I pulled back the door flap and herded Cirri inside. It was much warmer, heated by a brazier of coals, a cauldron of water already set to boil. Wyn was grimly unpacking a box of bandages, but she moved almost lethargically: she already knew there would be no need.

“Brought me another body to examine, did you?” she asked acerbically, but she cut herself off when she looked up. “Ah, you’re not Miro. What’s happened here?”

Cirri stared at her, purple slices of shock-flesh under her eyes, and I put a hand on her shoulder, gently forcing her to sit in one of the camp-chairs.

“There was a survivor in the forest.” I stroked the top of her head, and Cirri looked down at the knife she still clutched. “It didn’t end well.”

He couldn’t see me, she said. He could only hear me. He thought I was one of them. 

“Missing his eyes,” I said softly to Wyn as she knelt in front of my wife, taking her cut hand. “He couldn’t see her… trying to speak. Cut his own throat.”

My advisor’s pale eyes flicked to Cirri’s face, understanding. “Sheer bad luck, that’s all. It’s a clean enough cut, no compounds that I see…” She took the knife, tilting the blade to examine it in the light, and puffed out her cheeks. “There’s not even wolfsbane on it. Ancestors, Bane, you’d think some of them want to be massacred.”

I shook my head, not entirely disagreeing, but with the tree of limbs being pulled apart behind the walls, the distant cracks as the legions chopped down the poles, I couldn’t summon the heat of outrage.

Wyn returned the knife to Cirri, and fetched an opaque white bottle and cloth. She knelt again, and the tent flap was pulled open, spilling cold light over them.

“We’ve got another one for you to look at.” Miro’s cheeks were flushed with cold, his breath steaming. “What happened here?”

“None of your business,” Wyn said briskly, shoving the bottle and cloth into my hands and dusting hers off. “Show me.”

“Are there anomalies?” I asked quietly.

Wyn paused at the flap of the door, brows furrowing. “None that I’ve seen yet. It’s unusual. Let me have a look. I’m still sorting my thoughts on this.”

My stomach dropped, but as Wyn ducked out, I took a breath and turned to the task at hand. She would tell me when she had a theory, and rushing her accomplished nothing but ensuring she’d be in a towering mood when she returned.

I sat in front of my wife, sinking slowly onto my knees, and uncorked the bottle, soaking the cloth with the sharp-smelling liquid within. Cirri let me take her hand, wincing a little when I pressed it to the cut.

“I know we seem callous, but this has been a decade of fighting against deeply-ingrained beliefs. The Rift-kin aren’t stupid. Far from it, actually. But they have strong ties to Foria. It’s easier to hate and fear an enemy so unlike you it seems like another species altogether, rather than the enemy composed of the people you know just across the mountain border.”

I soaked a new corner of cloth, replacing it over the wound. It was already beginning to knit itself closed.

“It’s not that they don’t understand the danger. It’s just… centuries of Fae tyranny left a thick scar and deep fears, and meanwhile, they married the Forian shepherds and farmers across the border. All of those wargs… they were once those same people. I think they believe, in a strange way, that maybe family ties will break the spell.”

Cirri shook her head, slipping her hand from the cloth. The wound was a knotted red scar now. Nothing could break the spell of those… things.

“No. Once you commit to the ritual, there’s no going back. But to me, things are simple. The wargs are the enemy. To the Rift-kin, they’re cousins, fathers-in-law, old friends, all of them taken in by a cult. I believe there was a time Hakkon told his people to leave them alone, but once we allied with your people, that truce ended.”

How could they not see what they are? Cirri’s eyes were red-rimmed. There’s nothing human left in them. 

I took her hand again, applying another layer. “Sometimes we see what we want to see. We want to see that our old friends are salvageable, even twisted beyond recognition. We want to see that little spark of hope where there is only darkness.”

She waited patiently until I removed the cloth to examine the mark, now less of an angry red and more a healthy pink of new skin.

Why did the Forians use wargs at all? Do they not turn on their own people? She chewed her lower lip nervously. That thing in the woods. It was… hunger. That’s all it was. 

“Why does a man use any weapon?” I asked, my voice low. “Because he thinks it will help him win. And for a time, the wargs were helping King Radomil win. He would send in his troops, use cannons to take down defenses, and then the wargs would spill in through the cracks. Then we came above and joined you, and he saw the writing on the wall. By the time we pushed the last of the wargs out of Veladar, King Radomil saw that he had no control at all over them or their priests. When we forged the peace treaty between our people, he declared them outlaws, and Hakkon stole troops from under his nose and brought them into his fold. These wargs…” I gestured to the walls of the tent, what lay beyond. “They operate without the king’s blessing. I’m sure he knows, of course. But I think Radomil finds it far preferable that they prey on us, rather than the Forians.”

They would do this to their own people? Cirri looked nauseous.

“The worshippers of Wargyr don’t see themselves as Forians first. They see themselves as wargs first. If they couldn’t hunt us, they would certainly hunt the Forians. So long as we’re here to provide a distraction, Radomil won’t lift a finger to drive them out. Short-sighted on his part,” I said with a snort of contempt. “Hakkon will turn on him one day.”

Why us, though? Cirri frowned at me, flexing her hand. Would it not be easier to hunt on their own territory? Their own king has denied them; do they not want revenge?

“I have only educated guesses. King Radomil wanted the Rift and the Rivers, foremost; perhaps Hakkon hopes to take them and earn a pardon. I’ve also heard that the Rift was where the first worship of Wargyr began, and they believe it is their rightful territory. Or perhaps there is some small shred of loyalty to the country that offered them work as soldiers. If there’s truth to any of my theories, I haven’t proved it yet.”

I touched her hand, flattening it. The wound was now a silvered scar. “Your hand is healed, my lady. A scar to remind you that the forest is no place to walk alone.”

She shuddered. Believe me, I’ve taken the lesson to heart. I never want to see one again.

“I’m sorry to say that you will.” I kissed her palm. “I only hope I can keep you far from it.”

Cirri shook her head, still frowning at the fresh mark. Bane.

“Yes?”

She closed her eyes, knuckles whitening around the hilt of the knife for a moment. It was my fault. That he died. I couldn’t stay, but I couldn’t go for help. He thought I was one of them. 

“As Wyn said, it was pure bad luck.” I rested a hand on her leg, feeling the stone-hard muscles, still trembling a little, beneath my palm.

Cirri opened her eyes again, tears glimmering there. Was there anything else I could have done? Or am I a liability? I can’t speak, I’m no warrior, I’m useless. I couldn’t save him, and if that warg was alive, I wouldn’t have been able to save myself. What if someone is relying on me? Am I to simply lead them to death? How can I be the Lady of anything if I can’t even call out to save one life? 

“Stop.” I took her hands, forcing her into silence. “Don’t call yourself useless. You’re not a liability. Bad luck happens to us all. Ancestors only know how many men I’ve lost to it. I just lost… an entire village. Because of my misjudgement.”

I closed my eyes, wishing I’d pushed against them harder, crushed their beliefs underfoot. This misfortune wasn’t bad luck, simply bad leadership.

But I was used to swallowing down guilt, compartmentalizing the terrible things I’d done.

“We get nowhere when we wallow in ill fortune and blame,” I finally said. “We learn for next time. This was my mistake, and I take responsibility for it. Now all I can do is make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Cirri’s lips were pressed flat, her eyes still puffy with unshed tears, but she nodded slowly.

I didn’t get a chance to dig deeper, to uproot her feelings of inadequacy and burn them down. The tent flap opened, sending Wyn, Visca, and Miro in on a swirl of cold air.

Visca dropped into one of the other camp chairs with a soft groan, her arms full with a bundled cloak. Wyn immediately went to stir the cauldron, brows creased as she thought, and Miro looked surprisingly refreshed despite the chill and the grisly work.

“Got something here,” Visca said, patting the bundle in her lap. It moved, something inside making a tiny squeak.

Cirri was blinking tears away furiously, her face turned to the side, but even she looked at the bundle with curiosity.

“Found it in the back of a barn. The rest were… y’know. But this one got lucky.” She peeled back the cloak, revealing a tiny, furry face, with big black eyes and a black nose against icy gray and white fur. “They were breeding Forian dogs. Quite literally.”

“A laika,” I said, frowning at the pup. “Used to be common around here decades ago.”

“Right.” Visca scratched the top of its head. “I wish I could say this felt like the main reason they chose Tristone, but I don’t think that’s it. But Hakkon clearly took exception. I think I’ll give it to the houndmaster in the keep, we could use another hunting dog.”

Miro’s mouth twisted. “Keep a Forian dog as a pet?”

“Might as well. Can’t bring myself to throw the poor lad back out in the snow, much as I dislike having anything of Forian make around. Look, he’s got a round little belly.”

My commander pulled the rest of the pup out, tickling what was indeed a very round belly. She handed it to Cirri, who cradled the little animal, stroking its back.

“What happened?” she asked, squinting at my wife’s hand.

Cirri’s face tightened, and I kept it simple. “Found a man in the woods. He killed himself. There was a warg body left.”

Visca clicked her teeth. “Out in the woods, eh? Against orders?”

I’m never going there again, Cirri signed sharply, clutching the pup tighter, and I translated for her.

“That’s my girl. The sooner you leave things alone, the sooner you live to a ripe old age and die peacefully in your sleep.” Visca stood up, dusting off her legs. “Right, back to it, then. Come on, Miro. They’re not going to bury themselves.”

Miro gave the pup a last look and followed her out, and Wyn exhaled, dropping the ladle in the cauldron.

“Well, now that we’re free of inquisitive ears—” She scowled at the tent flap, and I knew she meant Miro, not her wife. “Yes, I found anomalies.”

I exhaled slowly, fighting the churn of anger and sadness in my gut. “Where?”

“The barn was the ritual site. Visca’s going to set fire to it whole. Sloughed skin, nails and teeth… better to torch the lot.”

“How many?” I kept a hand on Cirri’s back as she tensed, though she still petted the pup in a mechanical way.

Wyn sat on the camp chair, smoothing her hair back, picking at a thread in her sleeve. “At least seven.”

“Gods.” I closed my eyes. Seven newborn wargs, born of a ritual of pain and suffering.

My people’s pain and suffering.

“They ate that poor thing’s littermates.” Wyn scowled at the pup. “Ate everyone else. This wasn’t random madness, it was a well-planned feast.”

Cirri handed me the pup so quickly I hadn’t even realized she’d already stood up before it was in my hands. She dashed outside, and I heard her being sick on the other side of the canvas wall.

“A moment, please.” I handed the sole survivor to Wyn and went after my wife.

She was wiping her mouth, half-crouched in the snow, her face sickly white. I’m sorry, she signed, and I held her up, took her in my arms.

“Fuck, no, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I brought you.” I stroked her from crown to spine, slow and soothing. “I’m sorry you had to see this.”