Page 25 of A Land So Wide
The air between her father and Ellis grew taut before Hessel finally nodded, conceding. “Roibart!” he called out. “How many rifles do you have?”
The race throughthe dark woods to the Calloways’ farm felt feverish and surreal. Nothing seemed to play out in linear time. There were cries in the dark and strange flashes of light as everyone from the barn warming took up lanterns and weapons and charged after the Stewards.
Greer caught sight of scythes and pitchforks, broad knives and wooden rifles. Wide-eyed children clung to their mothers’ skirts.
As they headed through town, men shouted at sleeping houses, calling for more weapons, more hands, more help. Dazed couples, still dressed in their sleeping gowns and nightcaps, wandered out. They tugged on coats and cloaks and joined the party.
When they reached the Calloway house, nothing seemed amiss.
The group stopped short before the darkened structure, swaying with exhaustion and uncertainty, their whispers and speculation hushing to silence.
Then came the crying. It was faint at first, a wayward kitten wailing for its mother.
Slowly, Greer turned, tilting her head toward the noise, toward the incoherent gibberish, the wet coughs, the strange grunts of pain. Tears pricked at her eyes. She’d never heard such anguish in all her life.
“Father!” she called out, stopping Hessel from approaching the cabin. She could feel the weight of Mistaken’s attention fall upon her, as heavy as the hinged bar of the pillory at the center of town. “They’re not here!” She licked her lips, wanting to cover her ears as a trembling moan singed them. “They’re in the fields. With the flock…I think.”
Without waiting for the Stewards’ command, the townspeople pressed forward, climbing the grassy slope. Ellis fell alongside Greer, gently folding his hand round hers, but she barely recognized him. Her head throbbed and felt hazy, too full of Mistaken’s whispers.
As they crested the hill, the whispers died, replaced by breathless gasps and murmurs for mercy. At first, Greer swept her eyes over the field without horror, unable to identify what she was looking at.
It was dark.
The blood made everything darker.
The rest of the group staggered up, brandishing their lanterns andoil lamps, small beacons of light daring to hold back the night’s terrors, and she began to understand.
There was a hand.
A hoof.
A foot and something that looked like the back of a man’s head. The curved bit of scalp and skull wasn’t attached to anything else. It was just there, lying in the field, with so many other similar shapes.
In the center of this mess was Tàmhas Baird. He’d been making the noises. He’d been the one crying and snorting and sobbing as he held on to the partially intact form of Fiona Calloway.
They’d been smitten with each other since Beistean MacIllenass’s barn raising last spring, and it was common understanding that Tàmhas would catch her in the Hunt.
Except now Fiona was no more, and Tàmhas could only cling to what was left of her. His mouth was open and moving, but his cries for help had died away, replaced by heaves of grief and the wet sound of air trying to escape from a throat scoured raw by screaming.
He stared at his approaching neighbors with dull incomprehension, eyes glassy and unseeing.
Ellis reached him first. “Tàmhas,” he said, gently placing his hand on the young lad’s back. “What happened here?”
The bear,Greer thought.The white bear.
But as she looked over the field, spotting parts of the Calloways and their herd of sheep, she understood it wasn’t that. No bear could cause so much destruction, so much wanton carnage.
This was something worse. This was something far…
She looked up, searching the sky.
Had the Bright-Eyeds somehow broken through the Warding Stones? Had they gotten into Mistaken and attacked the Calloways, massacring them and their flock? A single bear could not lay claim to so many kills, but a Bright-Eyed? An entire pack of them?
Greer felt sick, and turned away, wanting to throw up. Why would the Benevolence have allowed this? Why wouldn’t they have stopped them? How could they have—
Then she saw it.
Greer froze, studying the line of Warding Stones. Their hulkingshapes rose from the earth in craggy cuts of burnished red, cutting across the field like a carving knife through flesh.
