He couldn’t help but give them one last glance. But then there was that Vioslav. The young man was always eager to prove himself. He had the makings of a woyak. A little too hasty perhaps, but he’d always managed to keep his head in battle and not just against hapless forest nomads either.
Well then, it’s time he proved his worth. We’ll need battle captains in our Kroldom. Wordlessly, he pointed to the young woyak and knew that his command had been understood. ‘Just be back before nightfall.’
Iwa was prodded forward, but walking with her hands bound proved difficult. Her feet slipped over the wet grass so that Grunmir had to catch her. By now they were almost at the camp. Grunmir had kept the woyaks busy; a rough ditch ran round the perimeter, the earth piled up behind to form a rampart before which the ground had been cleared.
‘Soon your hunters won’t find it so easy to raid our camp.’ Grunmir clapped her shoulder as he led her through the blackened waste. ‘We’ll have the wall finished soon.’ He pointed to where the woyaks had constructed a wooden palisade on top of the earthwork, ‘and then there’ll be no way in for your hunters, little Rusalka.’
How many trees will these woyaks cut down before they’re done? she wondered. Would there be any left once they’re finished? Or will they turn this place into one of their endless steppes like in the traders’ stories?
‘They’re not my hunters,’ she said, as she stumbled onto the wooden bridge that reached across the ditch. It was nothing more than a few tree trunks sawn in half and hastily nailed in place. On either side the woyaks had hung ropes so that they could raise the bridge to cover the gap in the rampart that served for a gateway.
But it wasn’t that which caught her eye. A line of wooden stakes had been set at regular intervals all along the top of the rampart. From the top of each the charred skull of an animal hung, runes marked in blood upon their foreheads.
There was something terrible about the sight. Sometimes the hunters would offer up animal skulls to the lords of the forest by hanging them from the branches of a tree, but this was different. As she passed under the stakes there was a crackle of magic and a chill in her stomach. She turned to Grunmir, but if the old woyak felt anything, he didn’t show it. Perhaps only those who have something of the craft notice these things. The thought sent a shiver down her spine. What if she really was a witch and, once magic was in your blood, there was no escape?
Nobody ever gets the better of the craft. She remembered how Katchka would talk. A few may benefit in the short term, but, in the end, magic always turns against the caster: and a bad end awaits those who wield it.
She was trying to warn me because of my mother, she realised and, despite her fatigue, she felt a stab of anger. Katchka should have told me about my mother, but instead she washed her memory away, like some guilty secret to be muttered in the dark. The whole clan must have known about her: except for me. Even a fool like Jarel knows more about her than I probably ever will.
But there were more immediate things to worry about. Inside the earthworks the camp was much as she remembered it. The ruined tents had been cleared; dark patches blotched on the earth where they once stood. Only a pile of ruined pots and a few broken arrows marked the signs of struggle.
There was a chill in the air that brought with it the scent of something evil. With a rough shove, she was pushed deeper into the camp, a sense of unease crawling over her. ‘You move slowly, little Rusalka,’ Grunmir prodded her forward, ‘though maybe you are right not to hurry. Your fate is unlikely to be a fair one, unless you tell me what I want to know.’
She didn’t bother to answer as she was led further in. The breeze picked up and only then did she catch the scent. It was the stench of carrion. As they walked past one of the ships, she stopped dead in her tracks, the sight before her so unexpected that even the butt of Grunmir’s spear couldn’t move her forward. At one end of the camp the bodies of animals lay heaped up against a rock, their bones poking through the wet remnants of their pelts. There were the carcasses of elk and deer, even a few bears and some beaver. There was even a bison amongst the carnage.
The woyaks bring nothing but death and sacrilege. She crossed herself with the ancient sign the clan used to ward off evil. Nothing could be worse than to show such disrespect to Matka Ziemia. No hunter would ever dream of killing anything more than he needed, or to leave good meat to rot, and not even a prod from Grunmir could force her to move. Even the air seemed sticky with the scent of blood.
‘You see we too can hunt, little Rusalka,’ Grunmir said as he pushed her forward. Iwa didn’t have to be prodded again. Anything was better than having to look at that pile of corpses, even the stench in the prison ship wasn’t so bad. Most of the animals were scrawny things, the runts of the pack, old and easy to catch. No true hunter would have bothered with such prey except under the direst circumstances. But, as she passed, she realised that there was something else about the creatures: each had been decapitated, their heads crudely severed from the bodies as if in great haste. Somewhere nearby a dog barked and a shower of flies flew up
