If they knew he watched, they gave no sign of knowing. They only danced.
He neither saw nor heard nor smelled any trace of the wolves.
He watched the servants for a long time, until the predawn light made gray of tree trunks and the servants faded into the light of the coming day and vanished from his sight except where light played along the branches of the shelter, corresponding in no way to the sun, which had not yet risen above the treetops. He heard a giggle at his ear, felt fingers tweak his earlobe and a breath of wind tickle his cheek. Laughing, he went to saddle he horses.
Despite the encounter with the wolves, Anne led them deeper into woodland and lightly settled territory. The next day at about midday they came to a crossroads. It was a lonely place at the base of a rugged hill made forbidding by an outcropping of stone halfway up the steep slope. Someone had cut back the trees to make a clearing, but one huge old trunk had been left.
“We’ll turn east here,” said Anne.
“Not south?” Liath glanced at her mother, surprised.
“East,” repeated Anne.
They reached the actual crossing of paths, and as he came up beside the huge old stump, Sanglant saw that carvings decorated the wood: stag-headed men, women with the heads of vultures, a wolf. Oak leaves, all dried up and crinkly now, littered the base, and someone had piled a cairn of stones on top Those stones had red stains on them, blood long since dried.
“Sacrifice,” said Anne harshly. “And worse things.” She dismounted and walked over to the stump. Without expression, she took apart the cairn stone by stone. At its base, half sunk into the rotting center of the trunk, lay an amulet, somewhat decayed. She swept it off the stump with a branch. “This is the work of the Enemy.”
Sanglant watched her with interest, waiting to see what would happen. Perhaps it was true that the Enemy prodded weak-willed souls to work harm in the world in this fashion. But he had see men resort to stranger rites before battle, and of them, as many who prayed to the gods of their grandmothers were as likely to live as those who prayed to God. Nevertheless, it was true that such displays displeased the Lord and Lady, and they had to be eradicated.
Anne turned to where Liath sat on her horse. “Burn it.”
Liath paled. She did not move or reply
“The gift of fire is in your nature. Burn this place, where the minions of the Enemy have set their hands.”