She cared little for Glyph and his reasons for this new war. She was indifferent to the bitter grief of the hunters, and their anguish at discovering that no amount of murder could fill the emptiness inside them. For Lahanis, it was enough that killing was taking place; enough that summer’s green forest was transformed into winter’s hunting ground, and she was free of the webs of the past.

For all that, and her habit of avoiding the priest with the scarred face, she had felt the man’s attention drawn to her, like threads sent out to ensnare her, and this made Lahanis uneasy. There were many kinds of hunting, she now understood, and one of them was intent, born of focus or even obsession. It bore the face of a boy grown past his confusion, with the lure of mystery beckoning, where all games vanished and suddenly everything was in earnest. Even the laughing Lahanis, in those lying summers, had known enough to be wary of such boys among the pack pursuing her.

But she did not think the priest desired her in that way. There was something broken in his study of her, something too weak to be calculating. Still, a part of him circled her in the camp, and again and again a glance would find their eyes meeting.

When he rose in the depth of night, with the air cold enough to bite the lungs, and walked out beyond the clearing, to stand beneath skeletal trees blackened with soot, Lahanis edged out from under her furs, her knives in her hands.

Priests did not belong in war. They had a way of reminding killers that their living was a crime, an abomination, that the world created by blood and fury was itself an act of madness. And though the priest might bless, though the priest might proclaim for his or her own side a certain righteousness beneath the eyes of their god, surely such claims crumbled to war’s incessant blows. Before the flickering knife, every face was the same, and every death delivered was another knot on the tally string. Knotted strings that grew into ropes and ropes into chains. Every tally a crime, every crime yet one more step away from any god.

Slipping past sleeping forms, the hunters huddled beneath furs, fast breaths riding unpleasant dreams, limbs twitching, or faces upturned in the promise of death’s simple semblance, she was silent as she crept up behind the man, drawing to within a few quick steps, her blades ready.

Then he spoke. ‘It wasn’t long ago, Lahanis, when someone cut away my mask.’ He turned slightly, only enough to make out her form on the edge of his vision. ‘He used fists to make his point. What point was he making, you wonder? I have long pondered that question. Night after night.’

She said nothing, lowering her knives to hide them as best she could.