There were skeletons too, most shrouded in moss. Though not always.
“Why is this here?” Iseult asked eventually. “Why did no one bury or burn their dead?”
“Because there weren’t enough survivors left to do so.” Aeduan dipped right, drawing Iseult south. Closer to the Amonra. Huge, smooth river boulders disrupted the soft soil here and saplings groped for the sky at odd angles.
The forest was eerily quiet, as if even the animals knew this place was damned. As if they knew pirates approached by boat.
So Iseult kept her voice low. “Why so much fighting? Is the land valuable?”
“There is nothing of value here.” Aeduan also spoke softly. “Yet men have always believed that they know better than those who came before. That they will be the ones to claim the Contested Lands.”
He hopped a stony rise and reached back, offering Iseult his hand. She took it, glad for the help even if her sore knuckles protested. His fingers were warm against hers.
“At the Monastery,” he went on, releasing her, “they taught us that when the Paladins betrayed each other, they fought their final battle here. Their deaths cursed the soil, so no man can ever claim the Contested Lands. I think it all a lie, though.”
“Why?”
He took a moment to answer, his hand flexing, as if she’d squeezed too tight.
“Because,” he said eventually, the slightest frown marring his brow, “it is always easier to blame gods or legends than it is to face our own mistakes. This land is no more cursed than any other. It is simply steeped in too much blood.”
With that statement, Aeduan resumed his forward hike, and Iseult followed. For another mile, they encountered no signs of human life. Only ancient, forgotten blood. Until Aeduan abruptly froze midstride.
“Red Sails,” he murmured, crouching. Sniffing. “The ones who hunted you. We must circle north.” He made it only three steps, though, before he paused a second time. Now his eyes shone crimson from rim to rim.
He abruptly turned to Iseult, his coat flicking like a cat’s tail. “Wait here,” he commanded. “I need to check something.”
Iseult had no chance to speak before he had disappeared back into the forest. Her nose wiggled, but she made no attempt to follow. The Bloodwitch had guided her true so far, and only stasis would serve her well.
Or so she told herself as the heartbeats shivered past—and as the earth began to shake. Just a soft jolt. Almost imperceptible, save for how it sent Iseult’s ankles rolling. Sent moths zipping up around her.
Then the earth trembled again, and this time, more than mere moths spun free. A giant swarm of starlings abandoned their branches and swooped above the trees.
A third quake shivered through the land. A great kick of the earth that sent Iseult tumbling to the ground. She immediately shoved back upright, pulse beating faster, but the ground still moved. Branches shook; leaves fell; squirrels and martins and thrushes now raced past.
A shadow swooped over the forest. Massive. Winged. And throbbing with bright silver Threads. Only once had Iseult seen Threads like those.
On sea foxes.
There are worse things in the Contested Lands than Bloodwitches.
Iseult had assumed Aeduan meant worse humans than Bloodwitches—men like the Red Sails. Yet as the shadow streaked closer, silver Threads sparkling along its heart, she realized Aeduan hadn’t meant humans at all.
He’d meant mountain bats, those massive serpentine creatures of myth. Those ancient scavengers of the battlefield.
Iseult scrabbled to her feet and ran.
* * *
There was only one reason Aeduan stalked toward the armies ahead—and he was certain there were armies.
He had smelled broken knuckles and torn-off fingernails, a stink that stood out against all the others. A sign the leader of the Red Sails lurked somewhere nearby. Yet it was the scent lingering beneath that wretchedness that hounded Aeduan. That propelled him ahead, the Threadwitch completely forgotten.
Rosewater and wool-wrapped lullabies. A child.
Cold spread through Aeduan’s gut. Into his lungs, into his fists, it boomed in his eardrums. Only twice in the past decade had this feeling—this memory—been summoned fully to the surface. Twice, Aeduan had looked it directly in the eye and said, “Yes. Today, you can come out.”
Both times, people had died at Aeduan’s hands. Both times, he’d felt an inescapable need to even a life-debt for somebody else.
Today would mark number three.
Run, my child, run.
He moved with extreme care through the terrain, sandy and soft with the river so close. His muscles—his witchery—screamed to ignite. With speed. With power. But blood lived in the air here, saturating the floodplain like the stink on a mosquito-infested pond. Aeduan forced his feet to creep onward with agonizing slowness.
He reached the river and stopped beside a peeling silver birch. The scents Aeduan followed—the child and the Red Sails leader—trailed off to the north, away from the river. Aeduan followed, his witchery coursing through his muscles. Creatures cleared from his path. The earth shook, a distant distraction.
All Aeduan felt was the cold in his fists, the murder in his veins.
Then he was there, at a campsite beside a trickling creek. It was so familiar. So similar to that day fourteen years ago.
Seven men lingered here, most waiting within a well-made tent with golden stripes circling the edges. The sort of tent Aeduan had seen wealthy families take on picnics.
These were the men Aeduan had encountered the day before. The men who had hunted the Threadwitch.