Page 7
Story: Feed Me to the Wolves
“I’m heading back,” I said quietly.
“To your hut? No way.”
Then she had her hand around my arm and was pulling me close to her side.
“You can’t leave me,” she said. “I could get lost. You’re a mapmaker.”
I tried to pull away, but her grip was relentless. My eyes darted around the street, between and among the people, landing nowhere for long.
“He’ll be there,” I whispered.
I saw her frown out of the corner of my eye.
“Roan?”
Of course, Roan. Who else? Toke himself, god of storm and skies?
It was the kind of thing I wanted to say but held back. Words weren’t easy for me with so many people around, and it was better to keep my thoughts to myself.
“I can take care of him,” she said, and then she proceeded to yank me after the others like a mother struggling with an obnoxious child. I put up a valiant effort on my part. Unfortunately, it only made us late.
Damn and hell, Esska was strong. She shoved me through the door to the meeting house, and I stopped resisting only as the dark and the warmth enveloped me.
“—and we grow weary,” the man at the front of the assembly was saying.
I blinked, my eyes adjusting slowly, and made room for Esska to slip in as well. We took spots standing alongside the far wall, and I didn’t miss the dirty look she shot me.
I lifted my chin, ever the defiant youngling.
“We would be foolish not to notice the changes in the land around us,” the man continued, “and we would be foolish not to change with it.”
What was he on about?
I turned my attention from my horrible friend and sharpened my gaze. It came as no surprise that I didn’t recognize the speaker. I avoided the men like the blood cough, and many were often away hunting. This man looked the same as the others: tall, burly, likely smelled. It was clear he was an elder, the silver broach of a storm cloud saying as much from its place pinned over his heart. His skin was tan with sun and looked thick and dry, like he spent his days out of doors, because of course he did. He was a hunter. He’d crewed the boats, navigated rivers, trekked the forests, and stalked his prey. His weathered face and rough hands told the story. One had only to read it.
I pushed my ink-stained fingers into my pockets and glanced about for Roan. It was useless. I’d never seen an assembly so large, and I could hardly make out one hunter from the next in the dim light.
“I will be brief and to the point,” the man said. “We hunters no longer wish to sail between the hunting grounds to the north and our village to the south. The elders have come to a unanimous decision. We intend to hunt on the same lands where our families live and grow. The other Caed clans have moved north, and the time has come for Toke’s people to move as well. We’re building a new village. It’s among the northern forest, in the heart of the Hinterlands, and you’re all coming with us.
“We are leaving the home of our parents behind and traveling to the home of our children—together.”
The meeting house filled with the din of gasps and talking, but the sound of it grew distant as I saw my future shifting. My heartbeat was in my ears, and I was only vaguely aware of Esska’s hand squeezing mine. I’d hoped I could lie low until Roan sailed back away. Now that hope was slipping.
Because, when he did sail away, he’d be taking me with him.
Chapter Four
Roan
I’d seen the pair of them slip in—Esska a little heavy-handed with my bride on entry—and I’d seen Fenli’s face after the news had been dealt, when the words settled in her mind and she understood them. I hadn’t been able to get that image out of my head since. Even three days later, as I ran my knife down the length of the whetstone again and again, I kept looping back to it.
Light had flickered off her face from a nearby oil lamp, illuminating what I didn’t want to see yet couldn't pull myself away from. Her dark, chin-length curls had framed a face that betrayed every thought and feeling she’d had. Her lips had parted, and her brows had flinched before knitting together. But her eyes had been the worst part, going wide, then unfocused. And she hadn’t moved. When the space around her had erupted in frenzy and chatter and life, she alone had stood still.
Hopeless.
That was how she had looked.
And now I had to take her north and show her the place we were meant to share.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7 (Reading here)
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
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- Page 47
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- Page 49
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- Page 53
- Page 54
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- Page 57
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- Page 86
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- Page 94