Kalyth needed to do something.
Jaws clenched, she pulled herself into the low boughs of an evergreen. The tree was massive, large enough to hold a young dryad if she was careful. If she could climb high enough to see above the constant swirl of snow, maybe she could get a better sense of the battle. Bracing herself against the evergreen’s trunk, Kalyth stretched, pulling herself up.
Her foot slipped.
A broad, clawed hand steadied her from below. Kalyth looked down and saw Idrelle, her face pinched against the snow, her branches whipping in the wind.
She helped heft Kalyth up and onto the branch. ‘Can you see anything?’ she asked.
Kalyth ascended two more branches before inching gingerly forward. Even in the daylight, there hadn’t been much to see. The Wargrove’s front line had dissipated hours ago, spreading wide as the dryads and branchwraiths, noble spirits and outcasts drove the servants of the Dark Gods from the forest, away from the soulpod grove. Now, in the dark…
Kalyth shook her head. ‘I can’t see much at all.’
But deep inside, she could feel the Song of War beginning to slow. Maybe the battle was finally dying?
A pair of warriors burst through the driving snow to the left of the evergreens, locked together and heaving, startling Kalyth so badly that she almost fell. Idrelle flattened herself against the tree’s trunk with a yelp.
The warriors tumbled closer, a tangle of thick limbs and armour and claws; struggling, grappling until one of them broke away. His mask was half-shattered and askew, the long mouthpiece bent nearly in half. Kalyth glimpsed blood beneath the broken patchwork of metal, a human face, shredded nose to jaw and panting. The cultist took a halting step towards his opponent, the wind snagging his ragged cloak away from his body as he raised a jagged axe. The cultist stumbled. Grunted. And then, as if surprised by the blood spreading from the hole in his belly, he collapsed into the snow.
For a moment, Kalyth thought the cultist’s opponent was one of their own enclave, perhaps one of their older sisters, but as the warrior rose and turned, Kalyth saw blue skin, a wide and dripping mouth, eyes flashing and wild. She had never seen an outcast so close before. He reared back, long claws splayed, and screeched. The sound shook the branch beneath her and she clung tight as the outcast pounced on the cultist’s body, yanking armour and flesh away in grisly chunks. He ripped meat from the cultist’s throat with his teeth, wrenched the axe from his dead hand and split his skull with it. He tore the cultist’s arm from its socket with one savage pull and flung it across the field.
The arm arced high into the air, buffeted by the wind. It tumbled end over end and landed with a soft thump at the edge of the tree line.
The outcast’s eyes shifted from the arm’s trajectory to the trees. His gaze slid over Idrelle and then, slowly, climbed the evergreen and landed on Kalyth.
Below her, Idrelle whispered, ‘No, no, no.’
The wind howled. Snow whipped between them. The outcast panted. Snorted. Stared.
Kalyth tried to tell herself the outcast wouldn’t hurt them. He fought alongside their Wargrove, after all, even though he called Drycha Hamadreth queen and not Alarielle. He was more like them than not, wasn’t he? Even with that scar puckering one side of his face like a long, sideways grin. Even though he trembled with bloodlust. Even though he was utterly, utterly mad.
Gristle dripping from his chin, the outcast cocked his head. His lips crawled away from his teeth. A smile? A snarl? He took one lurching step towards them. And then, with a roar, he turned and dashed away across the field.
As soon as it was clear the outcast wasn’t turning back, Idrelle whispered, ‘Cover your mouth.’ Her voice quavered.
Kalyth could see the outcast still, a dark, loping figure in the gusting snow. ‘Cover my mouth?’
‘You don’t want to catch the outcasts’ madness, do you?’ Idrelle gave the tree a shake. ‘Cover your mouth!’
‘He saved us,’ Kalyth murmured.
‘That doesn’t make him any less mad!’
‘Do you suppose he was a spite once? Or was it tainted soil that turned him? I heard there was a soulpod grove south of here that was cursed when–’
‘Kalyth!’
Kalyth finally looked down at her sister. Idrelle’s hand was plastered over her own mouth, her face bright with fear. Sighing, Kalyth descended. ‘You worry too much,’ she said. ‘Outcasts aren’t creatures from some sapling bedtime story. Besides, how can madness be contagious? It isn’t wood blight.’
‘You don’t know that! Nobody knows how the madness spreads!’
‘Idrelle, he saved us. Did you see how he swung that axe?’
‘Kalyth, please.’ Idrelle was on the verge of tears.
Kalyth wanted to tell Idrelle she was being ridiculous. The stories they’d been told, about the outcasts’ contagious madness, were just that, stories. But Idrelle was trembling when Kalyth dropped to the ground beside her.
Guilt sank into her and Kalyth moved to wrap her arms around her, to apologise, when the Song of War shifted. Wavered. Stopped. The Spirit Song returned, flowing softly through the sylvaneth.
The battle was over.
In unison, the young dryads at the edge of the forest lifted their heads. They emerged together, filing across the stormy field towards the remains of the Wargrove, to tend their wounded brothers and sisters and, in the deep night, mourn their dead.
It wasn’t long before the young dryads separated to cover more ground. The field was almost as long as it was wide and between the distance and the snow, Kalyth soon lost sight of Idrelle and the others.
She was alone when she first saw one of her sisters, dead.
Her body lay like a fallen willow tree, torso curved and slumped, her branches spiralling away from her in the snow. Kalyth waded as quickly as she could through the deep drifts, calling out to her as she knelt, but as she rolled the older dryad onto her back, her head swivelled at an unnatural angle. Her broken neck was crooked so far to one side, Kalyth could see heartwood punching through her skin. Her lower jaw had been ripped away. Snow, black with blood and riddled with bark, slushed out.
Kalyth pulled her hands back as if she’d been burned. Grief soured her gut. She realised now, as she looked around her, just how dire the situation was. There, what she thought were uneven drifts were half-buried bodies. There, a broken branch resolved itself into an arm, frozen stiff and jutting skyward through the snow. That small rise was nothing but a smothered jumble of bodies, a dozen of them, broken, puzzled together and still. Dead faces emerged from the shadows, depressions became open mouths. Every icy glimmer was an open, sightless eye.
Kalyth wanted so badly to help. To do something. To be useful. But what could she do when so many were already dead?
Shivering, she pressed her hand reverently to her sister’s forehead and stood, marking the spot for the branchwyches to find so they could harvest her lamentiri and take her soul back to the sylvaneth grove.
Kalyth had taken no more than a few steps when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw breath rising in short, cloudy bursts from the side of a snow bank.
Kalyth ran towards it.
