‘Then it was a fool’s errand. Jarel told me that you were dead, dragged away by a bear. He even showed me the remnants of your basket, drenched in blood. I always hoped that you had lived… unless you come to me now as a spirit, or some figment of my imagination.’
‘I almost wish that I was, at least then these bonds wouldn’t hurt so much.’
‘You’ll get used to it after a while.’
‘How long will they keep us here?’
‘Am I a fortune-teller? I only hope that when the end does come it will be painless and quick.’
‘If the woyaks wanted us dead they’d have killed us long ago. That’s something at least.’
‘Maybe,’ Yaroslav said. ‘Who knows why they do anything? There’s no way to understand this krol. Sometimes he makes sense, but then his words drift into madness. You’ve got to get away from here. These woyaks, they’ve brought a sickness into this place and no one is safe.’ There was a long silence as, behind the tarpaulin, Yaroslav gasped, his words pained and halting. ‘When they captured me I thought that this Krol Gawel was nothing more than a bandit who’d ended up on the wrong side in some war, but there’s much more to him than that.’
There was another pained breath and a quiver of anguish as his voice resumed. ‘There is evil at work here, over and above mere banditry. Get out of here, leave me behind if you have to, but you must escape: promise me that.’
‘We can get away together,’ she said, though her voice was not much more than a mumble.
‘And above all don’t trust the priest.’
‘The one who worships before the alter of Piórun? I saw him slay a rabbit at the foot of that statue of theirs.’
‘They call him Wislaw. He wears the scars of Piórun the thunderer, but I have seen other marks upon him, more ancient and evil. Not in all my travels have I seen anything like them; those runes don’t belong to the Polish gods or any of the northern deities. He had me tortured. I don’t know what hold he has over Krol Gawel but, if that Grunmir hadn’t intervened, Wislaw would have killed me.’
‘I wouldn’t be too quick to trust that Grunmir: one woyak is much like another.’ Keeping one eye on Eber, she tried to twist free. Yaroslav’s voice had given her hope. If only she could get free and deal with the woyak whilst he slept.
‘He may be rough,’ Yaroslav gasped, ‘but he is an honourable man, after his own way. He sees much and says little; even Krol Gawel respects him, and that priest fears him.’
‘Do they come here often?’ she said, as she struggled against her bonds.
‘Who knows when the krol will summon us? At first they thought I was a spy. Jarel told me you’d been killed near the river and I’d gone to look for your body. That’s when they caught me.’ He slumped, too tired for more questions. He was just glad that she was alive and, in his state, that was enough.
So she has come here in time to see me die. A deep sadness came over him. Better that she had run off into the forest than be brought back here. Perhaps they would kill her when they were done with her. And he couldn’t help a tiny cry at the thought.
You should not have wasted your craft on me, little one. If only he hadn’t gone to look for her. It wouldn’t be the first time that a girl had been dragged off into the trees by some bear and her body never found. If the hunters couldn’t find the body then there must have been some good reason.
But he couldn’t have left her. The image of her body lying broken and unburned was too much for him. He’d been so proud of her after she’d rescued him from death in the cave. Perhaps she did have the healing skills, despite all of Katchka’s complaints. Maybe she would find her clan place after all.
And to have all his newfound hopes dashed so quickly had broken his heart. So he’d wandered the forest in a daze, which was when the woyaks had come across him. He should have heard them long before, it didn’t take a hunter’s skill to be able to hear them coming through the forest. Not that they were as foolish as he’d been led to believe. To those born for the hunt and who knew the wilds as well as the calluses of their knuckles then, yes, they must have seemed as foolish as foundling deer.
But there was more to these woyaks than the hunters suspected. They were men used to war and ambush. How else could they have crept up on the camp so easily? True, once the pits were dug to stop animals going in or out, the clan hadn’t posted any guards, and they’d been tired after the long march and the unexpected cold, but it still wouldn’t have been that easy to creep up on the camp unnoticed. And already the woyaks had begun to learn the ways of the forest, their steps no longer so faltering.
‘These woyaks see spies everywhere; Grunmir even accused me of being one,’ he heard his daughter say and, even now, he couldn’t help but be glad of the voice, no matter how much he wished that she’d stayed hidden in the safety of the trees. Better that he should have faced the ancestor world still thinking that she was there waiting for him than he should have found her here.
What
