“I saw it,” the boy said eagerly. “I saw it at the edge of the woods.”
“Algaf,” the woman snapped. “I’ve told you not to go there. Ever.”
“Yes, Mum. But Riqqi ran up there, and I had to go after him.”
“We can get another dog, if it comes to that,” the woman said. “Never, you hear me?”
“Yes, Mum.”
“But what did you see, boy?” Aspar asked.
“I think it was an utin,” the boy said cheerfully. “He stood taller than you, but he was all wrong, if y’kann me. I only saw him for a minute.”
“An utin,” Aspar grunted. Once he would have gruffly dismissed the boy’s words. His whole life he had heard tales of utins and alvs and boygshinns and all manner of strange beasts in the King’s Forest, and in almost four decades he had never seen any sign of them.
But he’d never seen a greffyn before this year, either, or a Briar King.
“I can take you there, master holter,” Algaf said.
“Your mother just told you to stay away from the forest,” Aspar said. “It’s fine advice. You just tell me where, and I’ll have a look before sundown.”
“You’ll stay with us, will you?” the woman asked.
“I wouldn’t impose,” Aspar said. “We’ll pitch a camp in your field, if we may.”
“Stay in the barn,” the woman said. “It won’t be an imposition—it’ll be a comfort.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
“Well enough,” Aspar said. “Thank you for your kindness.” He motioned to the Wattau. “Ehawk, you come with me. We’ll go see if this thing left any sign.”
Aspar wrinkled his nose at the smell.
“Don’t touch it,” Aspar warned Ehawk, who had bent to trace the track with his finger.
“Why, Master White?”
“I touched a greffyn track once, and it made me ill. Killed smaller creatures outright. I’ve no idea what left that, but it’s nothing I know, and when I see things I don’t know in the King’s Forest, I’ve learned to be careful about ‘em.”
“It’s big,” Ehawk observed.
“Yah. And six toes, yet. Do they have anything leaves tracks like this up your way?”
“No.”
“Mine either,” Aspar said. “And that smell?”
“I’ve never smelled the like,” the boy admitted. “But it is foul.”
“I’ve known that scent before,” Aspar said. “In the mountains, where I found the Briar King’s barrow.” He sighed. “Well, let’s go back down. Tomorrow we’ll track this thing.”
“Something’s tracking it already,” Ehawk said.
“Eh? What do you see?”
The boy knelt and pointed, and Aspar saw he was right. There was another set of tracks, small, almost child-size, these in soft-soled shoes. The prints were so faint, even his trained eye had skipped over them.
“Those are good eyes you have there, Wattau,” Aspar said.
“They might be traveling together,” the boy allowed.
“Yah. Might be. Come along.”
Brean was the woman’s name, and she served them chicken stew, probably better than she and the boy had eaten in months. Aspar ate sparingly, hoping to leave them some when they’d gone.
That night they slept in the barn. The dogs, as Brean had claimed, did bark all night, for leagues in all directions and probably out of earshot, too. There was fear in their voices, and Aspar did not sleep well.
The next day they rose early and went utin-hunting.
Unfortunately, the tracks didn’t go far—they vanished about twenty yards into the woods.
“The ground is still soft,” Aspar said. “And this beast is heavy. There ought to be tracks.”
“In the stories I heard growing up, utins could shrink to the size of a gnat or turn into moss,” Winna said. “It could be hiding right beneath our feet.”
“That’s just stories,” Aspar said.
“Greffyns used to be just stories, too,” she replied.
“But the stories didn’t have it all right,” Stephen pointed out. “Each tale and account I read of the Briar King had only a few words of truth about him. And the real greffyn was very different from phay-story greffyns.”
“But real, yah?”
“Werlic,” Aspar agreed. “I never trusted those stories.”
“You never trust anything except what you see with your own two eyes,” Winna shot back.
“And why should I? All it ever took to convince me there was such a thing as a greffyn was to see one. All it will ever take to convince me a beast that weighs half a ton can turn into moss is to see it. I’m a simple man.”
“No,” Stephen said. “You’re a skeptical man. That’s kept you alive when others would have died.”
“Are we agreeing about this?” Aspar asked, one eyebrow raised.
“More or less. It’s clear that many things we once considered legend have a basis in fact. But no one has actually seen a greffyn or an utin since ancient times. Stories grow and change in the telling, so no, we can’t trust them to be reliable. The only way to sort out truth from invention is with our own senses.”
“Well, use your senses,” Winna said. “Where did it go?”
It was Ehawk who answered, solemnly pointing up.
“Good lad,” Aspar said. He motioned to where Ehawk had indicated. “The bark is scraped there, see? It’s traveling in the trees.”
Stephen paled and stared up at the distant canopy. “That’s almost as bad as being able to turn into moss,” he said. “How will we ever see it?”
“Is that a riddle?” Aspar asked. “With our eyes.”
“But how to track it?”
“Yah, that’s a problem. But it seems to be going along the forest edge where the briars are, which is where we’re going, as well. The praifec didn’t send us out here to hunt utins. I reckon we’ll keep on with what we were hired for, and if we run across it again, all well and good.”
“That’s not at all well and good by my sight,” Stephen said, “but I take your point.”
They traveled in silence for a time. Aspar kept his eyes searching the treetops, and his back itched constantly. The smell of autumn leaves was almost overpowering. Long experience had taught him that the smell was a sign that murder was coming. The Sefry woman who had raised him had told him the strange sense came from Grim, the Raver, for Aspar had been born at a place of sacrifice to Grim. Aspar didn’t necessarily believe that, nor did he care—he cared only that it was usually true.
Except in autumn, when the smell was already there . . .
But once again, his nose was right. Approaching a clearing, the scent intensified.
“I smell blood,” Stephen said. “And something very foul.”
“Do you hear anything with those saint-blessed ears of yours?”
“I’m not sure. Breathing, maybe, but I can’t tell where.” They advanced a little farther, until they saw the crumbled, torn body in the clearing.
“Saints!” Winna gasped.
“Saints bless,” Stephen said. “The poor lad.” Blood soaked the leaves and ground, but the face was clean, easily recognizable as Algaf, the boy from the homestead.
“I guess he didn’t listen to his mother.” Aspar sighed. Stephen started forward, but Aspar stopped him with an outstretched arm.
“No. Don’t you see? The boy is bait. It wants us to walk in there.”
“He’s still alive,” Stephen said. “That’s him I hear breathing.”
“Asp—” Winna began, but he hushed her. He walked his gaze through the treetops, but there was nothing but bare branches and a sigh of wind.
He sighed. “Watch the trees,” he said. “I’ll get him.”
“No,” Stephen said. “I will. I can’t use a bow the way you can. If it’s really hiding in the trees, you’ve got the best chance of stopping it.”
Aspar considered that, then nodded. “Go, then. But be ready.” As Stephen advanced cautiously into the field, Aspar nocked an arrow to his bow and waited.
A flight of sparrows whirred through the trees. Then the forest was eerily silent.