Alter Kindwood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Alter moved back through the pines while the sun climbed. The children were safe. The Hollow Man was not yet awake. Between now and dusk, he had one job: get a warning to the village without dying for it. If the villagers did not bar their gates before the light failed, the thing wearing his old face would walk in and take more children than three. He stopped at the ridge above the palisade. Red banners hung along the spiked wall. A severed head was stitched on each one. He had seen those banners aimed at his own back before. Any shape with antlers, they shot. Any voice from the trees, they answered with arrows. He could not walk to the gate. He could not shout from the treeline. He needed a mouth that was not his. He found the slime in the hollow below the ridge, squatting by a bush shaped like a skull, chewing its red leaves one at a time. Gorbov. Broad blue shoulders. A necklace of iron spikes. The one traveler the village tolerated because he sold them salt and never asked questions. Alter had watched him from cover for a season. He had never spoken to him. Alter stepped out where Gorbov could see him and stopped ten paces off, hands open. Gorbov froze mid-chew. His red eyes went to the antlers, then the flames in the skull, then the empty hands. "You're the thing they're screaming about," Gorbov said. His voice was low and flat, an island accent. "Down at the ford. All morning." "I brought their children back," Alter said. "There is another one. It looks like me. It will come at dusk. They have to close the gates before the sun touches the pines." Gorbov spat a red leaf. "And you want me to walk in and tell them a deer-skull said so." "They'll listen to you. They'll shoot me." Gorbov looked him over. Alter kept still. He had nothing to trade but the truth and the boat downriver. "The obsidian owl," Gorbov said. "On the bank. That yours?" "Yes." Gorbov grunted. He unhooked something from his belt pouch and tossed it into the moss between them. A circlet. Silver, gold curls, a teal stone at its center, made to sit between antlers. "Found it in a barrow last spring. Couldn't sell it. Wear it in." "They'll kill me." "They'll hesitate. That's a crown, not a trophy. Villagers know the difference. I'll walk in front. You stay ten steps back and don't speak." Alter lifted the circlet. It settled between his antlers and warmed against the bone. The teal gem caught the sun. Gorbov started down the slope toward the red banners. Alter followed at ten steps, antlers high, hands empty, walking into the range of every bow on the wall.