The forest did not care that Cian was an exile. It did not care that he was homeless. It only cared that he was soft.
By midday, the adrenaline had faded, leaving behind a hollow ache in his chest and a gnawing hunger in his belly. The road was little more than a cart track, rutted and flooded with brown water. The trees pressed in close, their branches weaving together to block out the grey sky.
Cian walked because stopping meant thinking.
He clutched the straps of his pack until his fingers went numb. He hadn't opened it yet. He was afraid to see how little was inside. It felt like an admission that his life was now measured in ounces of hardtack and drops of water.
A twig snapped nearby.
Cian spun around, his hand flying to his belt.
There was no axe. The blacksmith had taken it. He had a small eating knife in the pack, maybe, but at his belt, he had nothing but his hands.
He stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Garret said a sword is a promise, he thought. I don't even have a promise.
It was just a squirrel. It skittered up an oak tree, chattering at him.
Cian let out a shaky breath that turned into a laugh. A jagged, hysterical sound. "Just a squirrel. Just a stupid squirrel."
He slumped against the trunk of a tree, sliding down until he sat in the damp moss. He needed to check the pack. He needed to know.
He untied the canvas knot with trembling fingers.
Inside: Two loaves of dense, black rye bread. A wedge of hard cheese, the rind spotted with mold. A wool blanket, smelling of his house—woodsmoke and lavender. A small skin of water. And a knife.
It wasn't a fighting knife. It was a paring knife, the blade worn thin from years of peeling potatoes. His mother's knife.
Cian picked it up. The handle was smooth wood, shaped to his mother's hand, not his. He gripped it, stabbing it into the dirt.
"Useless," he hissed.
He ate a hunk of the bread without tasting it. It was dry and stuck in his throat, but he forced it down.
What was he supposed to do? The capital was weeks away. He had no coin. He had no trade. He couldn't fight. He couldn't hunt.
I'm going to die here, the realization came coldly. I'm going to starve, or a wolf will find me, and no one will ever know.
He looked at the road ahead. It stretched on into the gloom, indifferent and endless.
He stood up. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders like a cloak, though it made him look like a beggar. He picked up the paring knife and tucked it into his belt.
"I'm not going to die," he said aloud. The forest absorbed his voice, swallowing it whole.
He started walking again.
As the afternoon wore on, the silence of the woods began to change. The birds stopped singing. The wind died down.
Cian felt eyes on him.
Not the yellow eyes of a Warg. Something else. Something calculating.
He passed a milestone, an old stone pillar covered in lichen. He recognized it. This was as far as the village traders usually went in a day. Beyond here was the weeping country—lands that had been skirmished over by petty lords for a hundred years, leaving behind nothing but burned villages and deserters.
He saw something in the mud of the road.
Footprints. Shod in boots. Fresh.
Cian stopped. He knew he should hide. He knew he should get off the road.
But he was tired. He was cold. And a stupid, childish part of him thought, Maybe it's a merchant. Maybe they'll let me ride in their cart.
He rounded the bend.
A cart was there, upturned in the ditch. The horse was gone.
Three men were crouched around a small fire they had built right in the middle of the road. They weren't merchants. They wore mismatched armor—a rusted pauldron here, a greave there. Their clothes were stained with mud and old wine.
Bandits. Or deserters. It made no difference.
One of them, a man with a nose that had been broken so many times it looked like a squashed plum, looked up. He saw Cian. He saw the blanket. He saw the terror.
He smiled, revealing a mouth full of rot.
"Well now," the man said, standing up slowly. "Look what the rain washed in."
Cian backed away. "I... I have nothing."
"You have a pack," the man said, stepping over the fire. "And you have boots. And you have a pretty mouth."
The other two men laughed. It was a wet, ugly sound.
Cian turned to run.
He made it three steps before the man with the broken nose caught him by the back of his tunic and slammed him face-first into the mud.