The stranger’s eyes were … ruined. They looked as though someone had hacked straight across them with an ax. Blood, trapped somehow beneath the eyeball’s surface, washed the part that should have been white. The dark part around the pupil-the iris, Valyn remembered vaguely-was black as burned wood, blacker, dark as the dot at the very center, except for a ragged line of star-white scar. They didn’t look like a man’s eyes. They didn’t look like eyes at all. Valyn wanted to scream.
“Keep your mouth shut,” the stranger said, stepping forward. He still hadn’t drawn a weapon, but Valyn could see the axes now, two of them, handles lopped short, hanging from a poorly tanned leather belt. Dangling from the same belt was the corpse of a rabbit, skull crushed and bloody.
“My rabbit,” Valyn said stupidly, words spilling out of him as he stared. “You been stealing from my snares.”
The stranger grimaced. “You have bigger problems, kid.”
Valyn took a step back, trying to keep some space between them, raising his hands. “I won’t tell no one. You can have the rabbit. You can have all of ’em. I’ll show you where the snares are.…” He was babbling, but he couldn’t stop himself. He’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to see, had caught this man who was barely a man with the stolen rabbit, and now he was going to die. Valyn glanced over his shoulder into the sluggish river. He could jump, could try to swim it out. Maybe the man in black didn’t know how to swim. He turned back just as the hand closed around his throat.
Valyn felt his bladder give way. He tried to scream, but the hand wouldn’t let him. The man might look starved, but his grip was iron.
“Quit squirming, kid. I’m trying to help you.”
Stars screamed across Valyn’s vision. Everything started to go dark. He aimed a kick at the killer’s gut. Like kicking stone, he thought, just before he passed out.
A hard slap across the face brought him back. The stranger had laid him out on the granite ledge, was kneeling beside him now, hand poised at his throat.
“Don’t scream,” he said. “They’re far off, but that’s no reason to take chances.”
He paused, raised his head. The movement-both wary and predatory-reminded Valyn of a lone wolf sniffing the air. After a moment, the man cursed quietly, then turned those awful, broken eyes back to Valyn.
“You know who the Urghul are?”
Valyn managed a weak nod.
“They’re headed toward your cabin now. A small band of them. Maybe twenty. If you go back now, they’ll catch you, too. Hurt you. Kill you.”
For a few heartbeats, Valyn struggled to make sense of the words. There were no Urghul this far north. He was safe here, he and his family both. They’d come here so they would be safe. The stranger was lying to him, was going to kill him.… He stared up at the man. Those eyes were worse than a skull’s hollow sockets. He was horrible, more terrifying than Valyn’s worst dream, but he wasn’t lying. A new horror bloomed inside Valyn. He tried to yank free, but the man held him down easily. It didn’t seem possible he could be so strong.
“There aren’t any Urghul here,” Valyn protested. “They don’t come up here.”
The stranger grimaced. “They didn’t. Now, it seems that they do.”
“How do you know?”
The man hesitated. “I can smell them,” he said finally. “Horses and blood. They reek.” He turned an ear to the wind. “I almost believe I can hear them.”
It didn’t make sense. Valyn sucked in a huge breath. He didn’t smell any horses. The only thing he could hear was his own desperate panting.
“If there’s Urghul, I gotta warn my folks, my brother.”
The man in black shook his head grimly. “Too late for warning. Your cabin’s a long way off. They’re almost there.”
“Then I’ll fight ’em!” Valyn said, trying again to twist free. This time, to his surprise, the man let him up.
“Four against twenty? All you can do is die, kid.” He looked off blankly into the darkness between the trees, then shook his head. “Don’t go back.”
Valyn expected something else, something more, but the man just turned on his heel. He even moved like a wolf, stalking toward the trees. He paused at the edge of the forest, turned, yanked the rabbit free of his belt, and tossed it to the ground in front of Valyn.
“Yours,” he said, then turned away again.
Valyn caught up with him a dozen paces into the hemlocks. Terror made him reckless, and he seized the stranger by the leather belt, pulled him back a moment, then found himself lifted by the front of his shirt, then slammed against the rough trunk of a tree. He could feel the jagged ends of the branches stabbing at him through his clothes as the man in black leaned close.
“Never touch me,” he hissed.
Valyn could barely breathe, but he forced himself to speak.
“I need your help.”
“You already got it.”
“I need more. I need to save my family. You can fight.…”
He couldn’t say how he knew. Something about the way the man moved, about those twin axes hanging from his belt, about the terrible strength that kept him pinned against the tree. He’s a warrior. The thought spun around and around in Valyn’s mind like an autumn leaf caught in an eddy. He’s a killer.
“I can’t fight them alone,” Valyn pleaded. “I need your help.”
“I don’t help.”
The stranger held Valyn a moment longer, then dropped him.
Valyn struggled to catch his breath, to get to his feet. One of the branches had torn through his leather tunic, tearing open a gash across his back. He could feel it bleeding. It didn’t matter.
“You helped me,” he insisted. “You warned me. You’re not Urghul. You’re Annurian. You speak Annurian. And you warned me.”
“It was convenient.”
Valyn stared, aghast. He couldn’t get the vision of his burning cabin out of his head. This time in the morning, they would all be there-his father and mother chopping firewood for the fall; his brother digging the new well. He imagined his family bleeding, sprawled out on the ground, cut open, bled out like wild game.
“Please,” he said, staying on his knees, staring up at the horrifying figure above him. “Please help me.”
The stranger ground his teeth so hard Valyn thought his jaw might crack, that the tendons of his neck might snap in two. It was impossible to read the emotion on that face: Rage? Regret? He didn’t seem the type of person to feel regret, but he was hesitating, and that hesitation gave Valyn a faint, horrible hope.
“Please,” he said again, voice barely louder than the breeze.
“I need you to guide me,” the man said at last.
Valyn nodded eagerly, lurching to his feet. “All right,” he said, stumbling down the low slope. “This way. Hurry!”
After a dozen steps, he turned, realizing that the man in black hadn’t moved. He remained standing on the rock ledge, back turned to the morning sun, face lost in the shadow.
“Please!” Valyn pleaded. “Come on!”
The stranger shook his head slowly. “I can move through the forest alone, but I’m too slow.” Then, with a movement that was the opposite of slow, a gesture so fast Valyn didn’t have time to flinch, the man slipped one of the short axes from the belt at his side, spun it once in the air, then caught the haft below the head. He held the handle out toward Valyn. “Take the other end,” he said. “Lead the way. It’ll be faster.”
For a moment, Valyn couldn’t move. He was terrified of what the stranger claimed was happening at his home, and terrified, too, of the stranger himself. Touching that ax, even the harmless butt of the wooden haft, seemed dangerous. More than dangerous. “What?” he asked, rooted to the spot by his conflicting horrors. “Why?”
“Because,” the man replied grimly, “I’m blind.”