‘I should stay by the wall. These forest clans are cunning as a trapped rat.’
‘Then shouldn’t you be on the ramparts?’ Alia mocked.
‘On a night like this?’ the woyak murmured, allowing Alia to lead him away. ‘Only fools would brave this cold.’
Almost at once the hunters moved, silent shadows cutting through the night, and Iwa was with them, scrabbling up the earthen slope. She had no time to think about whatever game Alia was playing, or even to rest once she got to the top. Now she realised why the woyak hadn’t stood guard on the top of the wall. A line of stakes had been driven deep into the earth to form a crude palisade, but the woyaks’ handiwork was patchy, with long stretches left bare. Above Iwa the skulls of animals glowed, tongues of fire licking round the sockets of their charred eyes. So the old woyak trusted to the barrier rather than go up into the wind and see for himself. There was a tingling sensation as she crossed the barrier, and a sharp intake of breath as she slipped through a gap in the wood and scrambled down the other side.
She walked as if in a dream. The death of Godek and the others had shocked her more than she realised. I should have stayed with Yaroslav in the cave. I could have warned him of the woyaks when they came, they’d never have the wit to catch us, not out in the forest, and he’d be safe now. The clan is dead and I was a fool to ever think that I could change anything. Only Yaroslav mattered now. The thought of him bound helpless before Wislaw and the krol made her skin crawl, as she pushed through the bracken and realised that she could no longer see the path ahead. Who made these tracks? Part of her no longer believed that Karnobog had given them to the clan or that they were sacred. Nothing but empty bones. It was all a lie, Karnobog was never anything more than a childish game; a trick the elders played to bind the rest of us to the clan. I was an idiot to think that I could ever have been one of them. Karnobog’s nothing, nothing, just a worthless promise. She shivered. He never gave us any sacred knowledge, or paths to follow the herds. How many feet have trod these ways, cut their path through the trees? Were they like the men who painted in the caves, or are they older still? Did they kneel before false gods? Perhaps the old god had never lived inside the bones at all.
Then she stopped and looked about her. Like all the clan, she had a mental map of the forest, built up ever since she was old enough to walk. Now everything seemed different. Where were the familiar landmarks, the childhood places that should have been so clear? It was as if the whole forest was blurred. The well-known sights were no longer there, as if they too had fled the trees.
Everything had happened too fast: Bethrayal, Miskyia and the woyaks’ attack. Until now Iwa had been caught up in things, tossed and turned like river flotsam with no chance to realise what she’d been through. Only now, in the stillness of the trees and the loneliness of the forest, did the weight of events fall upon her. I should be happy by the fire with the clan around me: all those people who should never have died, Godek, Gedymin and who knows how many others? She could picture them now with the firelight playing across their faces as they laughed and drank their fill, their bellies stuffed with the fruits of the hunt. If only I never had anything to do with demons or magic. I should have stayed a child and done nothing more than hide from Katchka when the others went berry-picking. There was a strange scent in the air and Iwa realised that she was shivering, though it was not from cold.
Chapter Nineteen
Iwa couldn’t tell exactly when she crossed into the hidden place. There was no change in the scenery, no tingle of energy or crackle of power, but somehow she knew that she had stumbled into it. All was still, yet she couldn’t help but feel that she was being followed. There was an odd pricking sensation at the back of her head, and once or twice she almost caught the image of a man blurred at the edges of her vision but, when she next looked, there was nothing.
Somehow she sensed that Wislaw was using the doll: she could almost feel its power, although very weak as it haunted the edges of her world. Then, gradually, the feeling subsided. Perhaps he does not have the strength to follow me here, she hoped, as she picked her way past a hawthorn thicket. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. There was a rustle in the bushes, the snap of a twig, but then nothing. Maybe it was just her imagination. The wind played through the branches, there was the chatter of leaves swept along the paths, the gossip of bracken on the breeze. Then there was the crack of a stone dislodged by a careless footfall. Instantaneously she ducked, her body tense, ready to run for the safety of the trees. Maybe one of the hunters had followed her, or a woyak had strayed into these ill-trodden paths.
But somehow she doubted that. Not even a hunter could find this place, let alone a clumsy woyak. Quietly humming a tune to the gods for protection, Iwa made her way down the path. Let’s hope that not all the elders’ talk of gods and demons was a lie. Behind her a creature followed, nothing more than a shadow amongst the trees.
Still, she had to keep calm. The sensation that something was following her was
