He felt a familiar stirring at the sight of them, those phantom lights seeming to float through the darkness on their own. A stirring he had not felt in a long time. One he had hoped to never feel again. No merchants, these, for none would be foolish enough to travel this snow-blasted wilderness underneath the gaze of a full moon. No desperate traveler who’d lost his way either, not with so many. That left only one real option—soldiers. And there was only one reason so many soldiers would leave civilization behind to come to this place.
They had finally come. He had known this day would arrive, sooner or later, had known that truth just as he knew the feel of the knife in his hands, the touch of its blade against his throat. He had known that a man could never truly leave his past behind, that it stalked him always, a beast with claws readied, teeth bared. He had known. And yet, he had hoped. But then, the darkness was not a place for hope.
He spared one more glance for those approaching figures, still too distant to make out, then started down the opposite side of the hill. He paused only long enough to retrieve his own bow and quiver from where he’d left them propped against a tree, then set off at a jog, back toward the village of Brighton, toward the place that, for the last fifteen years, had served as his home.
He left the corpse of the elk to lie where it was. It felt wrong to do it, went against his father’s teachings from long ago, for the animal had given its life to provide food that might sustain him and, as such, should have been treated with respect. Dignity. That, instead of being left to rot on a hilltop, any evidence that it had ever existed at all soon to be covered by the thickly-falling snow. Still, he told himself that the gods—if they were even still alive, and the experiences of his life had engendered within him some doubt of that—would understand. After all, if he was right—and he knew he was—the dead beast would have company soon enough.
CHAPTER TWO
Do not ask me what type of man he is,
For I am not sure if he is a man at all.
Certainly, he is more than a man.
Certainly, he is less than one.
—Maeve “The Marvelous” in interview with Exiled Historian to the Crown, Petran Quinn
The common house of the village was filled with the smell of smoke, old and new, and a great, gray cloud parted around him as he stepped inside. An inconvenience, the smoke, one that made his eyes begin to itch and tear up almost immediately, but like so many of life’s inconveniences, it was also necessary. This far north, on the very edge of the Known Lands, there were no seasons, not truly. There was only cold and colder, and even the warmest of days was far below freezing, cold enough that the unprepared could succumb to exposure within an hour of stepping outside.
Not that such a thing happened often. Those hundred or so people who lived in the village of Brighton had long since learned to be prepared, had buried enough dead to know the importance of it. Freezing temperatures, blizzards, Fey raiding parties from the Black Wood, the villagers had weathered them all, survived them all to come out the other side. A little more battered each time, a little more scarred, and with losses to grieve, but alive. Their lives were, mostly, lives of preparation. Preparing for the inevitable winter storms, preparing for Fey raids or the sickness—chills and fevers—that the cold sometimes brought. They were prepared for nearly everything.
And yet, they were not prepared for what was coming.
He closed the door behind him, forcing it shut against the freezing wind that seemed to cut through a man as quick as a blade. By the time the thing was accomplished, there was a pile of snow within the common room, blown in during those few seconds it had taken him.
He turned and walked to stand in front of the thick, oak table at the center of the room, one hewn from two large trees. No more than two, for such a thing was not done, caused jealousy between the spirits of the trees and put a curse on those who used the product of it. Or so the old ways taught. And here, in this forgotten village, in this frozen wilderness, men and women still listened to the old ways.
“Cutter.”
He looked away from his boots, sodden with snow and specked with the dead man’s blood, bringing his gaze up to the six people seated behind the long table. All old—or, at least, as old as such a place as Brighton saw—and all of them watching him. Three men and three women, as was custom. Five had been the village elders since he had first come to Brighton what felt like a lifetime ago…or no, that wasn’t right. He shared little in common with that man who had traveled to this wilderness so long ago, the only thing, perhaps, the desire they both held, a wish to be left alone. And the loneliness, of course, that came to men with such wishes.
The sixth elder was younger than the rest, his mostly-gray hair still peppered here and there with bits of black. He studied Cutter with a sneer he did not try to hide. Cutter rarely saw the elders—or anyone—as he had built his house some distance from the rest of the village, but this one seemed to always be sneering or scowling. “You summoned me,” he said, staring at the woman who had spoken, the eldest—and therefore the leader—of the six who served as the village council.
“It is customary,” said the sneering man, “to kneel when you approach the Elders.”
He shifted his gaze to the
