As she dug the snow away from the trapped and dying warrior, she realised it was the outcast.
His body was crumpled. A trio of spears pinned him to the earth. His right leg was severed, his hip a pulpy stump leaking blood, sluggish and dark, into the snow. His branches were torn away. His left foot was mangled. His right arm was crushed. His remaining eye swivelled towards her.
The outcast opened his ruined, bloody mouth and laughed.
Every story the branchwyches had told her, every warning that seemed so silly at the time, snapped through Kalyth. Don’t breathe their breath. Don’t look them in the eye. Never touch them. Nobody knows how the madness spreads. Cover your mouth. Don’t breathe. You’ll catch it.
You’ll catch it.
But this outcast had saved them, after all, whether or not that was his intention. Didn’t he deserve some sort of comfort? How could she leave him there? How could she not help him?
Kalyth hesitated and then touched an uncertain hand to the outcast’s heaving side. His head whipped back and he snapped his jaws, enraged, gurgling and growling.
Kalyth forced herself not to pull away. ‘I’m trying to help,’ she said and wished she could blame the way her hands trembled on the cold.
The outcast bit at her again, so hard this time that his bark cracked. The stump of his leg churned against the wet snow. Still pinned against her, he jerked, desperate and violent, and Kalyth realised, as his jaws snapped together again and again, faster, faster, that he would bite her hand off if he could.
Kill her, maybe, if he could.
Did he even understand she wasn’t the enemy? That she was sylvaneth? Or had the madness robbed him of that too?
‘I won’t hurt you,’ Kalyth said. Her eyes stung. Her throat tightened. ‘I’m sylvaneth. Like you.’ She wanted, so badly, for him to understand, to see some spark of recognition. Instead, the outcast keened, the sound needling through her ears and into her skull.
‘Oh, please, don’t do that.’ Kalyth pressed both palms to his chest. ‘I want to help. Please let me help.’ Kalyth was so close she could see the ridges in his bark, all the gashes and scars, every blow, every cut and scrape and wound. His face twisted. His body arched as far as the spears pinning him allowed and then, with a whimper, he slumped back towards the ground again. The outcast’s voice crumpled into silence. Kalyth felt a tremor race through him and his eyes widened. For a moment, his gaze was so clear, so intense, so frightened, that Kalyth could imagine the sylvaneth he had been before the madness took him.
Carefully, Kalyth stroked his shoulder.
He didn’t try to bite her.
He drew a breath instead, deep and ragged. He looked up at her and exhaled, his feverish breath washing over her, tasting like lost summers and blood and dying things.
He convulsed one last time.
Kalyth held him until his body grew cold in her arms. As the silence stretched around her, she thought she heard a whisper. It didn’t sound like the Spirit Song. It was infinitely softer. Infinitely more mournful and deep.
Kalyth looked up. The snow was still falling but, for a moment, it wasn’t white.
For a moment, it was crimson.
In the centre of the sylvaneth grove, where the evergreens gave way to ash trees, a thicket grew. The soulpods nestled there, spherical and shielded from the snow by a knot of low branches and thorns. They pulsed softly in the morning light. It wouldn’t be long before new dryads emerged from them.
Kalyth wondered if the snow would still be there when they did. Would there even be enough sylvaneth to tend them?
There were so few of them left.
It wasn’t until morning that the full impact of the battle became evident. The servants of Chaos had been driven back, but not before they devastated the Wargrove. They had lost nearly two-thirds of their army and the forest felt empty. There should have been branchwraiths with grave faces planning the next battle. There should have been dozens of dryads gathered beneath the evergreens, trading war stories, tending each other’s wounds, grumbling or laughing in the cold morning light. There should have been noble spirits quietly listening to the Spirit Song, drifting between the trees, murmuring about the ‘pettiness’ of dryads, about how emotional and unstable and loud they were.
Only the branchwyches’ numbers seemed untouched. They gathered in solemn circles, their broad backs hunched as they planted lamentiri after lamentiri, burying the souls they had harvested the night before in the cold soil.
The young dryads were silent, their heads bowed as they passed. Every one of those lamentiri was a sister or a brother, a friend, a face, a voice, a life. Even though the lamentiri would grow into new soulpods eventually, the memories and experiences that made each individual unique would never really return.
They had lost so many.
Kalyth felt physically sick with grief. It gnawed at her. It made her itch. She felt it like a living thing crawling through her in fits and spurts, as if the sorrow had grown legs and scuttled through her, racing through her and filling all the empty pockets inside.
Idrelle had been casting worried glances at her all morning and, as they reached the forest’s edge with the other young dryads, she looped her arm through Kalyth’s and pressed close. The snowstorm had stopped before daybreak and the field stretched before them, a pale sky against pale ground, smooth and rolling and still.
Kalyth tried not to think about what lay under the blanket of snow as the other dryads set out across it.
‘You’ll be careful, won’t you?’ Idrelle’s voice was hushed, her body tense against Kalyth’s side.
Kalyth squeezed Idrelle’s hand, took a deep breath and tried to ignore the itching, the feeling of sickness. ‘The rotbringers won’t be that hard to find,’ she said. ‘Besides, scouting is a lot less dangerous than fighting. We’ll all be back before nightfall.’
‘But you’ll be careful?’
Kalyth forced a laugh she didn’t feel. ‘I’m not planning on attacking them single-handedly, if that’s what you’re asking.’
Idrelle shifted, darted a look back at the forest. ‘You shouldn’t even be doing this. You’re too young.’
‘And you’re not? Besides, who else is there?’ Kalyth tried not to sound bitter. Idrelle wrapped her arms around herself, long claws ticking against her bark. ‘It’s just that we lost so many.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t want to lose you, too.’
Idrelle always fretted, always worked herself into knots, even when there wasn’t immediate danger. Now that there was, Kalyth didn’t want to make it worse for her. Hands on her sister’s shoulders, Kalyth rested her forehead against Idrelle’s and met her gaze. ‘I’ll be careful. I promise.’
Idrelle nodded, her branches tickling Kalyth’s. When she finally pulled away, she trailed her finger over Kalyth’s cheek. ‘You look unwell,’ she said.
Kalyth felt unwell. She needed to put some distance between herself and the yawning emptiness of the forest. The memory of the field. The outcast dying in her arms. She could almost feel the heat of his last breath ghosting over her still.
‘I’m fine,’ Kalyth said.
