Page 43 of Edge of the Wild

“What?” Erik asked, still moving.

They reached a landing, and Oliver gripped the front of Erik’s tunic. “Wait,” he repeated.

Erik stopped, let his feet touch the floor, and shifted around so they faced one another, arm still fastened around him, in case he –swoonedagain, or whatever it was he’d done.

“It’s all right,” Oliver said. “I’m – back.”

Erik’s gaze was sharp enough to cut. “Back from what?”

Oliver fought not to scowl in response. “When I was sick, when my marsh fever flared – when I was in the ice bath, there was this…blue light. All I could see was blue. And there was…I wasn’t alone. There was something there. Something that growled.”

Erik’s brow furrowed. “You had a fever. We’d given you ice rose. It was a–”

“Hallucination? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Only, just now, I wasn’t fevered, and I hadn’t had any ice rose. Ihadn’t,” he added, at Erik’s look. “I’ve been with you since before sunup; have I acted high in all that time? No,” he said, when Erik began to answer, “I haven’t. And then there was that animal. The thing that flew overhead.”

Erik’s jaw clenched. “Kjaran says it was an owl.”

“Bollocksthat was an owl.”

They regarded one another.

“Yeah,” Erik said.

Sounds of a commotion floated up from downstairs.

Footsteps and huffed breaths moved down the stairs from above, toward them. “They’re bringing in the wounded,” Kjaran said.

“Let’s go see, then,” Erik said, grimly.

This time, Oliver walked beside him of his own volition.

They reached the great hall just as a snow-crusted, torch-bearing party hustled in from a side hallway. Three men were being toted at head and feet, slung between two of their comrades.

Oliver smelled blood.

“Uncle!” Leif pushed through the crowd and came to meet them, mercifully whole, if wind-chapped, sword held in one hand – its blade dark with blood.

Lord Náli walked beside him, pale and unsteady, by contrast.

“What happened?” Erik demanded.

Leif shook his head. “The archers were in the trees. They got two. But…”

Two more bodies were carried past –bodies, because they were obviously dead, and their wounds were large and gaping. Not made by any arrow. They looked jagged, as though made by claws.

Leif said, “We slew the archers. But there was…something else.”

All of Oliver’s nerves plucked tight. “Was it flying?”

Leif’s frown looked remarkably like his uncle’s. “Flying? No. This was a man. At least, I think it was a man. But he had” – he gestured above his own head with his free hand – “antlers.”

“Antlers,” Erik repeated, flatly.

“It killed two of the men in my party, whatever it was. I got a good slice in, but it took off. Náli” – he clapped his hand down on the Corpse Lord’s shoulder – “is going to see if he can learn anything.”

~*~

A table was hastily set up in a storage room. Casks and crates and baskets lined the walls, a silent audience, as two servants laid a corpse out on the table. The blood had only just stopped flowing, still wet and crimson across the man’s chest and belly; skin, bone, and viscera showed in gleaming crescents through rent fur, and wool, and lawn, and flesh. Even freshly dead, there was a smell: blood, and fear, and voided bowels.

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