She guessed at the direction the wolf tracks had been heading and trudged in a somewhat parallel direction, hoping to intersect them again. She prayed that the wolves had stayed true to their original course. She heard a shout far behind and knew that her path had been rediscovered. This was now the endgame; she’d find no more lucky streams. Even now, her legs barely responded to the commands that her brain shouted at them.
She spotted a hollow ahead in the trees. This was where she’d make her stand. She caught a whiff of urine on the wind. She looked about wildly until she spotted a hint of yellow against a tree and made a beeline for it. It was surrounded by wolf tracks that looked fresher than the trail she’d first come across. She trudged along the recently-laid prints, feeling like a vice was closing on her from both ahead and behind. She heard sounds of renewed pursuit.
She spotted a thick stand of spruce and headed for it. Arriving at its base, she crawled under the low-hanging boughs and slithered along the ground deeper into the stand. The ground was sheltered from the snow and covered in needles, but the stand wasn’t so large that the men might lose her trail. She was just buying herself time. Arriving at what she judged to be the center of the stand, she looked for a climbable tree. The spruce had dense boughs that made climbing nearly impossible, particularly in thick furs. She spotted one that looked thicker and older than the others and headed toward it. She put her foot on a low branch and wriggled her way upward.
It was slow going, but she gradually made it to the height of two or three men. The tree swayed slightly but held her weight. She gripped the trunk with one arm and tried to pull off her pack with the other. She couldn’t properly accomplish the task with her mittens on and had to remove them. She placed them on a nearby branch and again fumbled for her pack. With an effort, she twisted it around her body. The tree swayed, and she barely caught herself from falling. She watched in horror as one of her mittens tumbled to the ground. She hadn’t time to retrieve it, and it would either guide the men to her location, or she’d simply added freezing to death to her growing list of ways in which she’d meet her end today.
She fumbled through her pack until she found what she was looking for, a whistle that had been given to her by one of her village’s eldest hunters. She’d been told that it called deer. She’d tried it in the past, and no deer ever came, but she wasn’t after deer this time. She blew into it in bursts as she’d been instructed, and it made short, deep grunting sounds. Having spent so long in the woods, it sounded unnatural to her ears. It would convince no animal that she was a deer, and likely just aid her pursuers in finding her, but she kept at it. Winded and worried that her pursuers might be close, she tucked it into her furs and waited.
She heard a rustling below but couldn’t see its source through the dense branches. The sound was quickly drowned out by the voices of men arriving at the stand. In the space between their calls and replies, she heard a deep, bone-chilling growl, then another and another. The stand erupted, and the men’s shouts turned into screams. There were yells and grunts, yelps and cries. The melee lasted only moments and silence returned.
Forest tightened her grip on the tree. Her hands smarted from the cold. She reached for her one remaining mitten and worked both her hands into it. It was a tight fit, but she hoped it would keep them from freezing. She no longer had feeling in her feet, so she kicked them against the trunk to keep blood circulating to them. Her bottom ached from where the branch supported her weight, but she could only shift about slightly, and she dared not descend.
The light was fading. Forest heard scratching, but no voices, so it was clear who the victors had been. She clung to the tree and swung her feet back and forth until darkness took her. Sometime in the night, she fell from her branch. She flailed about, trying to grab onto something, but realized too late that both her hands were trapped together in a single mitten. She ricocheted off branches until she found herself lying on her back across some lower ones. The wind was knocked out of her, and she lay awkwardly, struggling for breath. When she could muster the strength, she rolled slightly toward the trunk and a less precarious position.
Forest knew that she’d made a gods-damn racket with her fall and had no idea how close to the ground she now lay, but her limbs did not respond, so she knew she was unable to climb back up. She lay there, hoping that she was high enough to be above the wolves’ reach. Darkness reclaimed her once more.
A lance of sunlight pierced the branches and stabbed her in the eye. She woke disoriented and felt like she was floating. The afterlife isn’t so bad, she thought, but it dawned on her gradually that she wasn’t quite dead yet. Despite having escaped death at the hands of marauders or in the jaws of wolves, the cold would surely take her. The loss of feeling in her feet had moved up to claim her legs. She did her best to descend the tree, but without proper control of her limbs, the best she could manage was a somewhat controlled fall.
The taste of spruce needles in her mouth signaled that she lay face down on the ground. She grunted and rolled over. Her pack was still tangled up in her arms, and her dropped mitt lay in front of her face. She groaned and forced her weary arms to reach for it. Pain shot through her shoulder as her arms woke from their slumber. The stars in her eyes abated slightly, and she succeeded in sliding the mitten onto her hand. The inside of it was ice-cold, and she wondered whether she was generating enough body heat to warm it.
Forest knew that she had been far from quiet, but if the wolves were still around, she was as good as dead no matter what she did, so she concluded that stealth was pointless. She wriggled on her belly until she was free of the stand of trees and emerged into a field of carnage. Whether the wolves or scavengers had done it, the chewed-up remains of eight to ten men lay strewn about. She couldn’t settle on an exact count because so few bodies were possessed of all of their parts. Among them lay three dead dire wolves.
She knew that a fire was her only hope for survival, and she didn’t care that it might give away her location. She rolled back under the spruce boughs and gathered enough needles to make a pile. She snapped off smaller branches and placed them on top of the needles. She pulled out her knife and dragged herself to the nearest bodies and harvested several shocks of hair. Some part of her was revolted, but she was mechanical in her actions. She pulled her flint from her pack and, after several attempts, succeeded in lighting the hair on fire. She blew on it until a proper fire took hold. She desperately wanted to lie beside it, but without more fuel, it would burn out in no time. She spent the next while moving between her fire and the spruce stand to gather branches for the fire.
Whether from her exertions or the heat of the fire, feeling slowly returned to her extremities. When it came at last to her feet, she bit down on the bloody murder that she wanted to scream. Even that passed, and she lay panting by the fire.
She dragged herself to her feet and took stock of her surroundings. Among the bodies, she found several waterskins. They were frozen solid, so she placed them near the fire. She rummaged through the remains of the men’s packs. Here and there, she found food that she imagined the carnivores had found less appetizing than the men. She ate ravenously but was careful not to eat so much as to make herself sick. The meat was spiced with unfamiliar seasonings, but she didn’t care. She found some dried fruit and nuts and replenished her supplies as best she could.
The Council needed to know the threat their village faced, and she needed proof that she wasn’t a hysterical girl imagining things. She searched the bodies and found that many wore distinctive necklaces. She retrieved the ones that weren’t broken or missing along with a head. She assembled a collection of six that she stuffed into her pack along with the salvaged food.
She waited by the fire until she was warm, and more importantly, dry. She rose with the determination that she had to warn her village that death roamed the countryside, and they were in its path.
22
Kala
Once back at Baron’s, Kala headed for the sho
wers. They were used mostly by the working girls, who tended to give Kala a wide berth. She stood under the near-scalding water, scrubbing the soot off her body. She rubbed her skin raw but never truly felt clean. Thoughts of the people she’d hurt plagued her. They troubled her even more than the people she’d killed. They were still out there, wrestling with pain and loss that she’d inflicted. Some of them had probably just been going about their lives, nit hurting anyone.
I’m a weapon all right, she thought, a blunt weapon.
She gave up on trying to feel clean and got out of the shower. She threw her clothes in the laundry and wore a robe back to the great room. Arriving at the empty room, she climbed up to her nest and lay facing the ceiling. She recalled a time when she had lain under the stars beside a boy who didn’t think her a monster. Thinking of stars, his name came back to her… Sky, no Skye. Silent tears leaked out as she wondered, Where are you, Skye? She let the darkness of sleep claim her.
She awoke to voices.
“Tito’s burned to the ground,” Baron was saying, delighted at the carnage.
“I know,” Rat replied. “I watched it burn most of the night.”
“Tito hasn’t been seen.”
“I doubt he will. He’s dead.”
“How do you know?”
“Your assassin told me.”
“Birdy?”
“That’s the one.”
“She told you before or after Tito’s brothel burned down.”
“Sort of ‘during,’ actually. She started the fire to cover her exit.”
“She got out?”
“Yes, but a little worse for wear.”
“Will wonders never cease?” Baron marveled. “Her little fire is benefiting us even more than eliminating Tito. His business empire is in shambles, and many of his lieutenants are missing. No one is picking up the pieces. Just us.”
Baron sure likes to say ‘us’ when he means himself, Rat thought.
“Most of Tito’s girls have come to us now that his brothel has burnt to the ground. I’m keeping the high-earners here and sending the plain and worn-out girls over to Thane’s warehouse, where we’ll set up a second brothel.”
“That place is a dump and Thane doesn’t exactly radiate ‘customer service.’”
“Be that as it may, it’s the only place I have that can accommodate so many girls. Besides, it’ll be easy to throw together some tables and chairs and get a bar up and running.”
“You could send Marija over there to keep Thane in line and maybe work the floor a bit.”
“I want her here. Thane will manage. Besides, those girls are leftovers.”
What an ass, Kala thought from her perch.
Baron left, gleefully making plans for how to spend this unexpected windfall.
“I assume you heard all that,” Rat said to the air.
“I can’t fathom why you don’t punch him in his smug face,” Kala replied.
“He’s the boss.”
“You’d make a way better boss.”
“Never say something like that again unless you’re trying to get me killed, and even then, just kill me outright – Baron wouldn’t make it pleasant.”
“Is it ever pleasant?”
“Let’s just say it’s a spectrum, and you don’t want to find yourself at Baron’s end of the spectrum.”
“Noted.”
“I’ve got some things to do,” he said and left Kala to her thoughts.
A while later, Baron and Marija entered with the girls from Baron’s brothel and those that had come from Tito’s. Some of them were barely dressed, having fled the fire in whatever they’d been wearing at the time. Several girls were still dirty with soot, having not yet had a chance to wash. Baron’s guards took up positions against the wall and, with the exception of Rat, looked over the girls in a way that made the girls uncomfortable, despite having been leered at daily.
Baron stood on the dais and announced, “Welcome, those of you who are new to our establishment. We’ll get you settled in, but first, let’s have a look at you.”
Baron waved the girls to one side of the room and stood in the middle conferring with Marija. Then he walked over and began sorting them out. Having gauged the worth of each to him, he’d send them to stand on the opposite side of the room in one of three groups. The girls figured out very quickly that the value of their lives was being measured and did their best to look either demure or provocative.
Most of Baron’s girls were sent to stand in one of the first two groups, and they looked relieved. It was harder for the girls who were older or dirty from the fire to impress him, and they looked discouraged as most of them were sent to stand in the third group. When this initial sorting was done, Baron waved the three groups farther apart and had the middle group spread out. He and Marija then debated which girls from this group would be sent to one of the other two groups.
Baron counted the girls in the first group, conferred with Marija, and added one more. Then he waved the remaining girls over to the third group. From her perch, Kala saw that Amber was among the girls consigned to the third group, and her heart sank for her.
Baron stepped back onto the dais. “We’ll house you lot here,” he said to the first, smaller group. Follow Marija, and she’ll assign you a room. If you already have a room here, I hope you’re not attached to it because Marija will probably move you around.” He waited for the girls in the first group to file out.
To the remaining girls, he said, “We’ll set you up at the warehouse. Follow Thane over there.”
A girl who had fled the fire at Tito’s in nothing more than her undergarments and still wore nothing else, asked timidly, “Do you have any clothes?”
“We’ll sort all that out over at the warehouse,” he replied, cruelly indifferent to making her walk across town in her underwear.
Kala clenched her fists in the rafters.
Baron added finally, “For those of you that used to have a room here, go collect your things and Rat will walk you over to the warehouse as soon as you’re all back. Assuming there are no more questions, you can go.”
The dejected girls shuffled out, led by Thane and a few guards. Shortly after that, the remaining girls that were relocating from Baron’s to the warehouse returned, holding their life’s possessions in their arms. Rat motioned them to follow him and at least had the decency to pause to let the girls pick up items that fell from their grasp. The procession had the air of a funeral march.
Kala had often ensured that everything she needed for survival fit into a pack on her back, but at least when she headed into the woods, she had a home to return to, or vaguely remembered feeling as though she had. These girls had only themselves and maybe each other. It struck her as sad that the sum of a person’s life could fit in their arms, and the more she thought about it, the more her sadness turned to anger. She couldn’t stay in her nest and stew – she needed to move.
She jumped down from the rafters and walked to the cabinet in which Baron kept his wine. She picked the lock with a thin dagger the way she’d once seen Marija do when she didn’t know that Kala was watching. She pulled out a bottle of one of Baron’s best wines. He’ll miss this for sure, she thought smugly, threw it in a bag, and headed out.
Kala preferred to come and go unnoticed, so she climbed to the third floor, exited out a window overlooking the alley, and shimmied down a drainpipe. She probably wouldn’t be questioned if she walked out the front door, but she felt that her business was her own.
She walked toward a footbridge spanning the canal. She caught a glimpse of herself in a store window and stopped to look at her reflection. She didn’t recognize the girl staring back at her. The girl in the window was hard and jaded. Part of her cried out that this wasn’t her, wasn’t supposed to be her. She pried her gaze away and continued down the street.
She sat down on the bridge, dangled her feet above the water, and pulled Baron’s wine from her bag. She took a deep drink and thought, What am I doing wi
th these monsters? Part of her knew that there were once people that she cared about, who cared about her. She needed to find a way back to them. A pair of monks walked past, eyeing her disdainfully. Screw you, she thought, and washed it back with a last swig, rising and heading for the warehouse district.
It wasn’t hard to find Thane’s warehouse – she just had to follow the stream of workers coming and going. The guards at the door let her pass, assuming that she’d been sent on some errand of Baron’s. She looked around the main floor. The space had long sat empty and was now being converted into a bar. It looked tired, but Kala guessed that once the alcohol started to flow, no one would notice or care.
She ascended the stairs to the second floor. Workers were busy creating tiny rooms by portioning off the open space with hastily-constructed walls. Baron was too cheap to have it built with timber, so the workers were using heavy canvas as walls between the rooms. Girls milled about, waiting for a room to be constructed for them or tidying the one that had been assigned to them.
Kala wandered by a room that hadn’t yet had its canvas door installed and saw Amber sitting forlornly on the bed inside, idly running the edge of the bedspread between her fingers. Kala stopped and poked her head in. “Can I come in?” she asked.
Amber looked at her, but struggled for recognition – then it dawned on her. “You’re the girl from the other night with the boyfriend, aren’t you?”
Kala nodded but added, “Not my boyfriend, though.”
“And wasn’t it also you that barged into my room and sent me running from the fire?”
“The same.”
“And now you appear at my door again,” Amber mused.
“If it isn’t a good time…”
Amber laughed, “Are there good times?” She wiped her eyes and added, “Anything that gets my mind off my misery would be welcome.”
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