Page 140 of A Vow of Blood and Tears

I don’t think ignorance is a gift I can afford anymore, I said bitterly.Did anyone live? Anyone at all?

“No,” he said softly.

We passed the dead man by the tree, and Bane paused to respectfully close his eyes.

As he did so, I kept an eye on the path we’d walked. Made absolutelysurethat the warg’s leg hadn’t moved an inch from the log.

My ignorance had been remedied in a terrible way. My steps in the snow stopped sounding like crunching, and started to sound like clapping hands.

Ate them all up!

Never, ever again would I walk into the forest on my own.

Chapter 34

Bane

Istayed between my wife and the tree of limbs as we passed through the village, one arm around her shoulder to stop her quaking shivers, but she didn’t stop trembling. She kept her hand cradled to her chest, the hunting knife clutched in the other, her expression a strange rictus of terror, pain, and shock.

It had been a mistake to bring her, and yet she was right. There was no room for ignorance for one living in the Rift—not while Hakkon lived. I had been the fool to think I could keep her safely coddled away in Ravenscry, wrapped warmly in the bliss of innocence, while still expecting—hoping—that she would come to care for the people on her own.

She had to see it to care. To see the cost of making a mistake, as I had.

Caging her in safety and ignorance would only separate her from the people, and as much as I hated to see her own fear, it was better to see it now. Better to see it as an observer, rather than a victim.

When I went hunting, she would rule in my place. She would have to be the one to overrule and order strong men into doingthings they hated, for their own sake. She would have to tell the Gilams of the Rift to open the mines, to cut down the trees, to build their defenses, even as they insisted they feared the ghosts more than the wolf in the wood.

So. Now she had seen it. Now she understood the price of failing to enforce our rule.

And now I wanted her far away from it all. Enough was enough.

I took her hands and led her through the cracked gap in the wall, out into the frosty field where the legions had set up camp. Wyn’s tent was near the road, where the horses had been tethered. None of them were grazing; they stamped and tossed their heads, the whites of their eyes showing when the breeze carried the scent of blood to their noses.

“Come along now,” I growled softly, unable to summon any more anger. I had left her alone; did I not know my own wife? Of course she had gone to look.

Wyn’s tent was bright red canvas, as all bloodwitch tents in the war had been. They were the first thing one looked for when seeking a healer, too often the last thing one saw.

I pulled back the door flap and herded Cirri inside. It was much warmer, heated by a brazier of coals, a cauldron of water already set to boil. Wyn was grimly unpacking a box of bandages, but she moved almost lethargically: she already knew there would be no need.

“Brought me another body to examine, did you?” she asked acerbically, but she cut herself off when she looked up. “Ah, you’re not Miro. What’s happened here?”

Cirri stared at her, purple slices of shock-flesh under her eyes, and I put a hand on her shoulder, gently forcing her to sit in one of the camp-chairs.

“There was a survivor in the forest.” I stroked the top of her head, and Cirri looked down at the knife she still clutched. “It didn’t end well.”

He couldn’t see me, she said.He could only hear me. He thought I was one of them.

“Missing his eyes,” I said softly to Wyn as she knelt in front of my wife, taking her cut hand. “He couldn’t see her… trying to speak. Cut his own throat.”

My advisor’s pale eyes flicked to Cirri’s face, understanding. “Sheer bad luck, that’s all. It’s a clean enough cut, no compounds that I see…” She took the knife, tilting the blade to examine it in the light, and puffed out her cheeks. “There’s not even wolfsbane on it. Ancestors, Bane, you’d think some of themwantto be massacred.”

I shook my head, not entirely disagreeing, but with the tree of limbs being pulled apart behind the walls, the distant cracks as the legions chopped down the poles, I couldn’t summon the heat of outrage.

Wyn returned the knife to Cirri, and fetched an opaque white bottle and cloth. She knelt again, and the tent flap was pulled open, spilling cold light over them.

“We’ve got another one for you to look at.” Miro’s cheeks were flushed with cold, his breath steaming. “What happened here?”

“None of your business,” Wyn said briskly, shoving the bottle and cloth into my hands and dusting hers off. “Show me.”

---