Into the Deep Wood

They only got a few hours of sleep after finding solace from the days events in each other. With the first light of day they feverishly began packing up their things. If they could find the horses, it would still take weeks to get to the White Cities, and horses would be difficult to come by in a place like Middle Town. The people here could not spare the animals by which they made their livelihood.

“ALL-FATHERS NAME–FUCK!”

Val heard the words inside a high-pitched scream behind her and spun around to find Arachne on the table with her front legs raised at Ivan, who had inelegantly crossed the room.

The woman’s face on its abdomen was smiling.

“Oh.” Val hurried to retrieve the spider and cradled her in her hands. “She’s mine.”

“Take back any time you’ve claimed not to be a witch!”

“She's harmless!” She said, and realized she had not actually known that. “She’s… been harmless.”

He stood the maximum distance away without going through a wall, his eyes fixed on her cupped hands, unwilling to take her word for it.

“Give it a chance!” Val laughed, and set Arachne back down on the table. Ivan watched from afar, and when nothing happened, he looked expectantly at her. “She does things when you’re not here. She’s just nervous.”

He frowned and did not move.

“Are you… afraid of spiders?” Val’s smile broadened. “It isn’t that she’s Nothing-touched, is it?”

“I just don’t like them is all. Their hairy legs are creepy.” He answered.

“Come.” Val motioned for him to approach as she scooped the spider back up in her hand.

“It doesn’t jump, right? The ones that jump are the worst.” He came toward her, hesitantly glancing at the little creature sitting on her knuckles.

“Not that I’ve seen.” Val shook her head. “Sit.”

He sat, but she noted that there was quite a bit of distance between them.

Val slowly spread her fingers out as far as they could go, and Arachne edged forward, then hurried down her index finger, and onto the next. They watched as she spun a web between them, so strangely geometric that it had almost looked decorative.

“This is not helping your case.”

Val did not answer. Something very familiar appeared in the web. A pattern? She did not quite recognize it; it was not as if she had seen it before, it just felt like…

It looked like the threads felt.

Suddenly right before her eyes was a weave pattern of the threads, thin and complex.

“That is the pattern of a chort…” She whispered. The web was what Val had undone in the Deep Wood.

“What is a chort?”

She did not hear him. She stared in wonder. All the spiderwebs she had torn down. All of them that she had looked at and never realized - they’d all been the bindings of the Nothing-touched.

She held her hand up as Arachne finished, turning it slowly and looking at the web at different angles. She was sure it had been exactly the same.

Ivan was looking at her face with slight distrust.

“If you weren’t so pretty the nuts would be a bit much.” He said. “Please for the love of the All-Father do not let it touch my things.”

They’d walked outside into the cold. It would have been rather refreshing if the both of them didn’t already know it would be their fate for the next few weeks. They began down the road when someone called out from up the street. Val turned to see the ornate carriage belonging to Lady Katerina. It approached them, the driver glancing around in disgust. When it stopped, the creature had not even waited for him to open the door.

“I’ve considered it.” It did not greet them nor give any context to its words. “Your words have given me some worry in the night. You see, I do not wish to lose my freedom, and I fear my proximity might put me at an arm’s length.”

It stomped past Ivan, who was eyeing it with distrust.

Stopping directly in front of Val, its breath a bit strained, it spoke hurriedly.

“I am leaving. I am leaving and I am leaving now. And you,” its bony finger bumped against Val’s chest. “Oh Mother, I am taking you and I am keeping you until I get there safe lest he try and come after me.”

Val stood, astonished at both the creature’s bold choice of words in public, and the happenstance opportunity. But, she shook her head, no.

“I cannot. We must make it back faster than you can travel.” She gathered herself. “But I can meet you in the Southern courts and do all I can to make sure you are out of his reach.”

The creature looked entirely insulted.

“Faster?” She purposefully made a show of looking Val up and down.

“There will not be a court to go to should we fail.” Val explained. She lowered her voice significantly, “they look to surrender, I hear. Please, give us horses so we may go.”

Lady Katerina looked uncharacteristically disheveled.

“You will have them.” She said finally. Then, her voice turned a whisper. “I’ll give you vouchers of commerce. Only traders are allowed on most Northern roads anymore. But, in exchange, you ensure that I will be placed in Batyr’s court without question. You are to promise me that no hunter crosses my path there, and no one is to know what I am.”

“I do not have the power to take that promise, I will not lie to you.” She shook her head. “Not even if it costs your aid.”

“Good. Because I would have known, take the horses, and when you gain such influence, I will come.”

As they rode away, Val could not help but feel uneasy about the deal made with the Skriga. But, they were not in a position to turn down the very thing they needed.

They left Volkograd in a thin mist of snow behind their horses.

Val had not ridden in a long, long time. Even then, the horse below her had not even compared to Aditi - her beloved chestnut mare. The ride was rougher, and staying upright in the saddle was more difficult.

Ivan explained to her that in the North they rode in a different style. The saddles Lady Katerina’s horses had were beautiful. They were decorated and had flowers pressed into the leather. But, the skirt had been too long and made it far too difficult to give the horse cues with her already short legs. Ivan seemed not to have those issues, and so he was not nearly as worn out when they stopped for the night.

They spent the next day the same, only sleeping a few hours. It had become very obvious that the horses were not conditioned for long and strenuous travel. They began stumbling more, making Val worry that one would get injured soon - and that would significantly slow their progress. They could not afford the lost time.

Ivan had done well in leading them, but the harsh late winter conditions were unpredictable and often left them unable to move forward for hours.

“Whore’s tongue!” Ivan swore, his horse sinking into a hidden snowdrift. Val glanced back at him.

“Horse tongue?” She asked incredulously.

“Whore’s tongue.” He repeated, holding the reins up and trying to get unstuck. “Busy, unclean.”

“Is that a southern term?”

“I think it’s a fairly universal notion.”

She laughed, but he did not. This was the fifth day, and the night prior they had to let the horses rest for the longest time yet - hindering their overall time.

“Do you think he would take the same route?” She asked as his horse struggled back onto solid ground. “To go south? Would we see him if he passed? What did you say his name is?”

“The Ember Sword,” Ivan said.

“That’s kind of a silly name…” she muttered.

“I do not think he was a pathfinder. I will always find a faster way.” Ivan caught himself, “That is not to pat myself on the back. It’s just years of training - a road might go unmarked and without being on a map, but I can tell if it had been ridden. The roads with the deep ruts have carts and wagons traveling along them. They aren’t ideal for a horse with speed. There are many roads made for couriers, they are not obvious to avoid highwaymen trying to intercept important messages.”

But gods, he was attractive when he spoke of such things, Val thought.

Then again, he could have spoken of a wooden spoon and she would have been completely captivated. Even as ruffled as they both had been, there was something so comforting in seeing the profile of his face with all its angles and his straight, slightly too-large nose. The span of his shoulders. The pronounced cowlick of his blond hair near the nape of his neck. The way the age lines on his face had become deeper from a lifetime of that bright, unrestrained smile.

She tried to picture him in farmer’s clothes as he’d often claimed to have been. But, at those times, her thoughts would inevitably drift to places far more imaginative and far less clothed. Never before had the idea of hay; the smell of horse manure and the bleating of sheep seemed more appealing.

“Storm.”

“What?” She snapped out of her thoughts. They’d make it to the steppes, still many days away from the border.

Ivan had stopped his horse. He was looking ahead where, in the distance, large dark clouds hung over a veil of white. When she rode up to him, she saw that his face had been just as gloomy.

“We have to backtrack not to get caught in it.” He sighed, defeated. “There is no cover. Even if we can find a way to weather it out, the horses won’t.”

“We’ll lose days…” She looked on in horror, trying to think of the last town they had passed - and how deeply the roads would get buried afterward.

“We’ll lose our lives.” He shook his head. “And there will be no sense in it.”

The two of them looked on as their hopes slowly disappeared in the white of the horizon.

“Show me a map…” Val said suddenly. Ivan looked at her with an eyebrow slightly raised but said nothing. He reached into his tunic and produced a fine vellum map, holding it out to her. She took off a glove, taking the calf leather and laying it out atop the horse’s neck. “Where are we?”

He pointed at a vague spot toward the middle.

“It won’t be marked. We are in the steppes between the western mountains and the Deep Wood, here.”

Val’s eyes narrowed.

“You mean to say we are going all the way around?” She ran her finger to the left until the Deep Wood parted, leaving them off leagues upon leagues past the road leading to the Midtrade City.

“The only other valley nearby that leads past the Deep Wood will take an extra day. It was where my outfit entered. It was where we were ambushed.”

Val’s eyes stopped on the large, dark inked area that covered a quarter of the map. The Deep Wood. The wall made up of trees and Nothing-touched that inadvertently had become the North’s greatest defense.

“How long if on a bird’s wing?” She asked. He looked at her as if she had just asked the dumbest question on the face of the earth.

“Do you plan to sprout wings and fly there? Is that something the Hag had granted you?” He chuckled, but carefully - he did not look convinced that the answer wasn’t yes.

“How long?” She said as if she didn’t hear him.

“Two days, I suppose. To the Midtrade City. Four to the first of the White Cities.”

“That cuts off more than a week…” Val whispered.

“It takes a few years off my total count when you use that tone.” He warned, getting more nervous the more concentrated she became. “What are you thinking?”

She smiled slightly.

“I mean to take us across the Deep Wood.”