Chapter Five

Chapter Five

The Little Plain skims out before us, yellow and endless, flecked by streaks of lavender thistle weed and the odd black tree. The sun filters blearily through a gauze of clouds, thin as gulyás broth. The last flies of autumn hover around our heads, humming their nasally swan songs, flitting iridescent wings. There are no other sounds, save for the soft footfalls of our horses and the wind blowing the grass flat against the loamy earth.

There’s something about all the infinite open space that makes my belly feel like a gaping chasm, sheer and scraped empty. I’m used to the close cluster of trees, the choking press of bark and bramble.

“I almost prefer the woods,” I muse aloud as the grass paints ruffled shadows on our horses’ flanks.

Gáspár’s mouth falls open. “How could you say such a thing? You saw what happened to Ferkó and Imre. Your kind really are as hard-hearted as Woodsman stories say.”

I make a silent note to never be flippant around him again. But all my years with Virág have taught me how to ebb righteous anger. Turning my voice low and pliant, I ask, “What were those creatures by the lake? Do the Woodsmen have an inventory of everything they kill in the forest?”

“They were monsters,” he says flatly. “Some Woodsmen call them lidércek. It doesn’t matter. There’s no use giving a name to evil.”

His cold, superior tone rankles me, especially after all the prattling about the blackness of his soul. “Do you call a hawk evil when it snatches up a mouse to eat? Do you call a fire evil when it burns your logs to ash? Do you call the night sky evil when it drinks down the day? Of course not. They are surviving, like the rest of us.”

I’m surprised by the ferocity in my voice, and by how much I sound like Virág.

“I don’t think the hawk is evil,” Gáspár says after a moment. “But I’m not a mouse.”

“And thank Isten you aren’t,” I say. “Mice don’t have the luxury of passing moral judgment on every living thing they come across. Mice just get eaten.”

Gáspár stiffens on his mount. “The Prinkepatrios demands moral fortitude from all of His followers. It’s the best we can do to mold ourselves to His image.”

“And he rewards you with feeble, fire-making magic?” I can’t even light a match myself, of course, but if the price of Woodsman power is being honor-bound to some morose, pitiless god who demands purity and perfection, I’m not sure it’s worth the cost. Our gods ask for very little by comparison: smiling emptily through Virág’s interminable stories, sacrificing wood fowl by the riverside—wretched tasks that I railed against with every breath, though both are preferable to parting with my pinkies or my little toes.

“He rewards us with salvation.” Gáspár’s face is stony, but there’s a hitch in his voice. “Not that you would understand such a thing.”

“I’m glad I don’t,” I reply, skin itching angrily. “I’m glad I don’t live my life at the mercy of a god who takes body parts from ten-year-old boys.”

Gáspár angles his body away from me so that I can only see the unmarred half of his face, and the brief pall of shame that flits across it.

“If we continue this way,” he says slowly, “it will be a very long journey.”

My knuckles are white around my horse’s reins. After a moment I let my muscles relax, shoulders slumping beneath my wolf cloak.

“Fine,” I say. But in my head, I think, Stupid prince.

The night seems hazy and incomplete on the plain, nothing like the dense blackness of the woods. Gáspár’s lantern swings out long shafts of light, knifing a path through the grass. Farther ahead there’s another light, just a filmy orange smudge on the horizon. I glance at Gáspár, a look of uncertainty passing between us. Finally, he gives a small, curt nod, and we continue toward the light, which throbs brighter with every step.

A series of tents is set out against the murk and darkness, craggy triangles like the fins of some spectacularly large river carp. There’s a cluster of pale gray cattle, horns twisted as hugely as tree roots. A mop of a dog with coiled fur whines as we approach, wet nose twitching. Inside the knot of tents is a massive hearth, flinging its orange light, and above the fire is a spindly stick sculpture, carved roughly to resemble the Prinkepatrios’s three-pronged spear.

“I don’t think we can beg their hospitality,” I murmur. The fire coughs out sparks that look like a flock of molten insects.

“Of course we can,” he says. “I’m a prince. Better yet, a Woodsman.”

Before I can reply, one of the tents’ flaps open. A woman comes dashing out. Her hair is gathered into a limp brown plait, streaked through with gray, and her eyes are wild, wheeling.

“It’s a Woodsman!” she cries. “Godfather Life has answered our prayers, we are saved!”

More tents part, calfskin fluttering. Men and women filter out, chasing their children. It’s a poor village, I can see that at once—most of the children wear homespun tunics, pitted with tiny holes. The men’s coats are pulling at the seams. Their obvious desperation embarrasses me, because I’ve never thought to wonder about the plight of small villages like this one—villages not unlike Keszi, but without magic to dull the jagged edges of hunger and scarcity.

Gáspár, holy as he is, looks down at the woman with nothing but compassion, no artifice at all in his eye. “What has happened here?”

“We have been afflicted by a terrible evil, Sir Woodsman. We—” The woman stops, gaze fallen on me. Horror and repugnance pull dark clouds over her face.

“Perhaps it was this wolf-girl!” someone in the crowd cries out. “Look, there’s blood on her cloak!”

Peti’s blood, I think, anger rising in my throat. The blood of one of your blessed killers. My hand goes to the dagger in my pocket, but I find the length of my mother’s braid first, like some small animal slumbering.

“That’s impossible,” Gáspár says, his voice gentle but firm. “The wolf-girl has been under my watch since she left her village. She is not your monster.”

Not your monster, but a monster all the same.I reach past my mother’s braid and grasp the knife, chafing under all these Patritians’ flint-eyed stares.

“Please, Sir Woodsman,” the woman goes on. “An early frost killed all our crops and half our herd, and now our people are vanishing too. It must be a monster, drawn out of Ezer Szem by the smell of our blood. Last week, Hanna wandered off and never returned, but we found her handkerchief floating red in the water. Then Balász—we found nothing but his scythe and hoe. And last night, little Eszti left the village to play and still hasn’t come back. We’ve found no trace of her at all.”

The hairs rise on the back of my neck. The only living things we saw on our journey were grousing crows, but for all I know, the crows are as illusory as those black hens: ready to bare their teeth and claws as soon as the sun goes down.

“And have you kept your faith staunchly?” Gáspár asks.

“Yes, sir,” says the woman. “Our fire has burned steadily all this time, even without much dry wood to stoke it. This cannot be a punishment from the Prinkepatrios, or else he would have taken our fire too. It must be the work of Thanatos.”

The villagers murmur in troubled assent, and Gáspár’s concerned expression shifts to something more severe, with harder lines and sharper edges. I’m poorly informed about the Patrifaith, but I know that Thanatos is something to be feared above all else, something that tempts the good followers of the Prinkepatrios to evil and sin.

And after listening to all this, I want to laugh at their Patritian fairy tales. Humans don’t need some shadow-demon to tempt them; we are imprudent enough on our own. Even Isten and the gods are driven by greed and lust, prone to snatching stars from the sky and ravishing maidens by the riverside.

Yet Gáspár says, “I will speak to the head of your village. I will search for the monster that’s hunting you, and I will kill it. But it’s already dark outside. We’ll need lodging for the night.”

His seamless switch from singular to plural surprises no one more than me. The woman’s eyes narrow as she stares me up and down. The villagers whisper and whisper, the men nervously stroking their beards. I open my mouth to protest, but the smiling glint of their scythes stops me. I don’t know if I can risk even a word in front of these Patritians.

“Fine,” the woman relents. “But you must understand, Sir Woodsman, that we are rightfully suspicious of sleeping beside a wolf-girl.”

“Of course,” he says. “She will be under my careful supervision for the duration of our stay. I am bringing her to work as a scullery maid in the fortress of Count Korhonen. She is exceptionally docile for her kind.”

It takes all of my restraint not to tackle him off his horse, especially when he gives me a furtive nod, as if warning me not to imperil his lie. There’s the faintest quiver in his lips, just the sister of a smirk. The woman beams.

“It’s so wonderful when heathens find a way to atone for their sins,” she says. “Godfather Life is merciful, and he may accept her as a servant after all.”

I stare at Gáspár with near-murderous intent. We both leap from our horses and make our way through the crowd of villagers. They part easily for us, either out of respect for the Woodsman or terror at their imaginings of my pagan magic. Of course they have nothing to fear except the small dagger and my clumsy wielding of it, but I smile at the villagers, showing all of my teeth.

The head of the village is Kajetán, a young man with a fox-red beard and a ruddy face to match. I’m taken aback by his age, by his unlined brow. I expected every village head to be as wizened as Virág. But if Kajetán is not near Virág’s age, he is at least half as ornery.

His tent is the largest in the village, swooping and sun-blanched on its eastern-facing side, but he doesn’t even offer us a cowhide rug to sit on. Instead, he sulks on his own cowhide, hackles raised beneath his white suba.

“Tell them, Kajetán,” the woman, Dorottya, urges. “Tell them about the evil that has been stalking our village.”

“There is nothing more to tell,” Kajetán says, dipping into a bucket of well water with a rusted tin cup. He lifts the cup to his lips, drains it, and goes on. “There have been disappearances. An old woman, a young man, and a little girl. But I doubt the Woodsmen will be of any help—there are no tracks to follow, no bodies to bury. Besides, we can scarcely afford to spare any food for two such visitors. Winter is coming. I don’t need more hungry, wanting mouths.”

I glance sideways at Gáspár, waiting for him to respond. Waiting for him to introduce himself as Bárány Gáspár, and to enjoy the look of humiliation on Kajetán’s face when he learns that he has refused lodging to none other than Régország’s true-born prince. Gáspár lifts his chin.

“I understand your apprehension,” he says. “But I will not leave good, pious people to suffer. Give us lodging for one night. We will hunt for our own food, and tomorrow, I will find and kill your monster.”

Kajetán makes a noise in the back of his throat. “What makes you so sure you will be able to find it?”

“Godfather Life sent me to this village for a reason,” Gáspár says. “It is His will that I am fulfilling, and therefore I cannot fail.”

“Are you saying that you are holier than us?” Kajetán’s eyes are burning, but for all his brazenness, there’s dirt clotted in the wool of his suba. “That you will succeed where we have failed because Godfather Life has given you a greater blessing? We are not Woodsmen, sir, but I’ll not have you question our devotion to the Prinkepatrios.”

“Kajetán,” Dorottya murmurs. A warning.

Gáspár takes a step toward the headman, who has risen to his feet. He lays a hand on Kajetán’s shoulder and says, “I have sacrificed much, to be as blessed as I am.”

And then I swear that he turns the scarred half of his face into the firelight. Kajetán meets Gáspár’s eye with defiance, but the bluster drains out of him quickly. His gaze drops to the floor.

“One night,” he mumbles. “But I want the wolf-girl bound.”

I won’t make the same mistake twice. When Kajetán comes toward me with a rope, I thrash and scream so loudly that they all freeze like frightened chickens. I’m glad to be spoiling Gáspár’s story, his assertion that I’m a particularly pliant wolf-girl, mute and malleable, a rare jewel among my kind. I don’t want to think of myself as apart from them, even if it’s all a calculated tale. I won’t let the Woodsmen take that from me too.

By the time they finally get the rope around my wrists, my cheek is bruised and I am still screaming curses. Gáspár is pale-faced with misery. Kajetán is seething. As Dorottya leads us to an empty tent, she is careful to give me a wide berth.

“This tent was Hanna’s,” she says. “Of course, it’s empty now.”

I try not to let the grief in her voice temper my rage.

“Thank you,” Gáspár says. “Your hospitality is deeply appreciated.”

“It’s quite small,” she says.

“It’s fine.” He gives her a tiny nod. “May Godfather Life keep you.”

“May Godfather Death spare you,” she replies, in the instinctive, visceral way of an adage oft-repeated. Then she ducks out of the tent, leaving Gáspár and me alone.

As soon as she’s gone, I turn my livid gaze on him.

“Get this off me,” I growl.

Gáspár regards me with pursed lips. The ghost of his smirk is still maddening me. He stands across the tent, arms folded, and says, “You’ll have to show a bit more repentance than that.”

“Repentance?” I lurch toward him; if my hands were unbound, I might have put them around his throat. “Don’t needle me with your Patritian nonsense, especially not after you’ve volunteered me to fight a monster.”

“You don’t have to fight it,” Gáspár says. “I doubt the villagers would welcome your help anyway.”

“As if you could do a lick of damage without my help.” I twist my wrists futilely, furiously. “You beseeched me to aid you in finding the turul by Saint István’s Day, and now you’ve happily agreed to linger for who knows how long in some nameless village, to fight some monster you can’t be sure even exists. What are you trying to prove?”

Gáspár’s brow draws down over his eye. “And what have you proven, wolf-girl, except that you’re precisely like the heathens that these villagers fear? Vicious, wild, ungoverned by morality or good sense? There’s nothing to gain by confirming everyone’s worst assumptions about you.”

Spitefully, I laugh. “There’s nothing to gain by trying to prove them false either. I could have been the most humble, abasing wolf-girl you’ve ever seen and it wouldn’t have changed a thing. Do you think Saint István stopped to measure each pagan’s character before he cut them down with his sword? Do you think he cared how toothless their smiles were?”

Gáspár’s jaw sets, and he doesn’t reply. I think of the way his voice caught on the word Merzani. I wonder if he’s spent half his life with his belly to the ground, lowing to every man or woman who curled their lip at him. The thought mollifies me, dulling a bit of my blade-sharp anger.

“Will you please untie me?” I ask finally, teeth gritted.

I watch his shoulders slacken with a sigh. Gáspár crosses the tent in a single pace and begins to loose the rope around my wrists. “I’ll have to put it back in the morning, you know.”

“I don’t care. Do you know how hard it is to scratch an itch when your hands are bound?”

“I don’t, actually.”

I flex my newly freed fingers with a scowl. “Lucky you.”

The tent is small, cowhides and wool pelts heaped around a small hearth. Gáspár clasps his hands to light a fire, and it paints our murky, moving shadows against the tent’s calfskin walls. I lean closer, letting it warm my cheeks and my freezing pink nose.

Still not willing to make peace, I say, “I’m not convinced that this arrangement is preferable to spending a night on the plain.”

Gáspár gives me a dour look. “You seem to be enjoying the fire, though.”

“We could’ve had a fire there too.”

“But not a roof over our heads.”

“You just wanted an excuse to imagine me as a scullery maid. Scrubbing floors in penance for my impiety.” I let out another laugh: shorter, humorless. “Is that really why the king takes girls from Keszi? To clean his chamber pot?”

“No,” he says. “And you would make a poor scullery maid.”

“Pity. Now I’ll never be redeemed.”

“You could be.” Gáspár’s black eye is on me, with a sudden intensity that makes my face heat. “Godfather Life does not consider anyone beyond redemption.”

“And what of Godfather Death?” We learn very little about the Patritian faith from our village in the woods, but I’m glad I know enough to prick at him.

“You don’t understand. They’re one god—two halves of the same whole. Godfather Life is the bestower of mercy, and Godfather Death is the arbiter of justice. Both justice and mercy have their place, and I know Godfather Life would grant the latter to you and your kind if you wished to change your ways.”

“Two sides of the same coin.” As I speak, I turn my father’s coin over in my hand, tracing the unreadable symbols on each side. Yehuli script on one, Régyar letters on the other. Gáspár watches me, unblinking. “Your god can keep his mercy. Perhaps you should ask me for mine, since you just damned us both to fighting a monster.”

“I couldn’t ignore their plea,” Gáspár says, shaking his head as if my reticence disappoints him terribly. “I took the Woodsman vow. Even if I hadn’t—it’s the right thing to do.”

Ever the noble Woodsman. I think of the way he refused to reveal himself, how he accepted Kajetán’s rebuffs and impudence, and it angers me all over again. What’s the point of having power if you balk at every chance to wield it?

“I’m tired of this honorable Woodsman pretense,” I tell him. “You’re a prince. Act like one.”

“You wouldn’t like it much if I did.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d gag and bind you for talking to me the way you do.”

My mouth goes fiercely dry. I feel stupid for treating him like an acquaintance, like an ally, like anything but a Woodsman. I remind myself again that he’s far too young to have taken my mother.

But he might as well have.

“Is that your brand of justice?” I ask him blackly.

“Not mine, wolf-girl. The king’s, perhaps.” His voice is light, but there’s a furrow in his brow. “And you may have noticed I’ve not gagged you yet.”

Királyésszentség. The words that Peti spluttered as Gáspár’s ax loomed over him come flickering back to me. I go stiff at the memory: royalty and divinity are twin blades to cut through pagan flesh. Gáspár slips off his suba and rests his ax against the wall of the tent. He lies down on a silver cowhide, facing the fire instead of me.

I stare at the black outline of his body, light pooling on each crease in his dolman. I should only be thinking about his ax and his horrible missing eye. But instead I am wondering why he cares so much for his oath and so little for his crown. Why he seems to suggest that it’s easier to be a Woodsman than a prince. I curl onto one of the cowhides on the other side of the tent, closer to the fire, and sleep claims me before I can begin to wonder why I am thinking of him so much at all.