He shook his head. They weren’t dead yet, and it was possible to avoid corelings for a night, if you kept your wits. He squeezed his fiddle case reassuringly. If they lived through the night, he could cut off a lock of Leesha’s hair and make a new bow. The corelings couldn’t hurt them if he had his fiddle.
To either side of the road, the woods loomed dark and dangerous, but Rojer knew corelings hunted men above all other creatures. They would stalk the road. The woods were their best hope to find a hiding place, or a secluded spot to prepare a circle.
How? that hated voice asked again. You never bothered to learn.
He moved back to Leesha, kneeling gently by her side. She was still shuddering, crying silently. ‘Leesha,’ he said quietly, ‘we need to get off the road.’
She ignored him.
‘Leesha, we need to find a place to hide.’ He shook her.
Still no response.
‘Leesha, the sun is setting!’
The sobbing stopped, and Leesha raised wide, frightened eyes. She looked at his concerned, bruised face, and her face screwed up as her crying resumed.
But Rojer knew he had touched her for a moment, and refused to let that go. He could think of few things worse than what had happened to her, but getting torn apart by corelings was one of them. He gripped her shoulders and shook her violently.
‘Leesha, you need to get a hold of yourself!’ he shouted. ‘If we don’t find a place to hide soon, the sun is going to find us scattered all over the road!’
It was a graphic image, intentionally so, and it had the desired effect as Leesha came up for air, gasping but no longer crying. Rojer dried her tears with his sleeve.
‘What are we going to do?’ Leesha squeaked, gripping his arms painfully tight.
Again, Rojer called upon the image of Marko Rover, and this time it came readily. ‘First, we’re going to get off the road,’ he said, sounding confident when he was not. Sounding as if he had a plan when he did not. Leesha nodded, and let him help her stand. She winced in pain, and it cut right through him.
With Rojer supporting Leesha, they stumbled off the road and into the woods. The remaining light dropped dramatically under the forest canopy, and the ground crackled beneath their feet with twigs and dry leaves. The place smelled sickly sweet with rotting vegetation. Rojer hated the woods.
He scoured his mind for the tales of people who had survived the naked night, sifting for words with a ring of truth, searching for something, anything, that could help them.
Caves were best, the tales all agreed. Corelings preferred to hunt in the open, and a cave with even simple wards across the front was safer than attempting to hide. Rojer could recall at least three consecutive wards from his circle. Perhaps enough to ward a cave mouth.
But Rojer knew of no caves nearby, and had no idea what to look for. He cast about helplessly, and caught the sound of running water. Immediately, he pulled Leesha in that direction. Corelings tracked by sight, sound, and smell. Barring true succour, the best way to avoid them was to mask those things. Perhaps they could dig into the mud on the water’s bank.
But when he found the source of the sound, it was only a trickling stream with no bank to speak of. Rojer grabbed a smooth rock from the water and threw it, growling in frustration.
He turned back to find Leesha squatting in the ankle-deep water, weeping again as she scooped up handfuls and splashed herself. Her face. Her breasts. Between her legs.
‘Leesha, we have to go …’ he said, reaching out to take her arm, but she shrieked and pulled away, bending for more water.
‘Leesha, we don’t have time for this!’ he screamed, grabbing her and yanking her to her feet. He dragged her back into the woods, having no idea what he was looking for.
Finally he gave up, spotting a small clearing. There was nowhere to hide, so their only hope was to ward a circle. He let Leesha go and moved quickly into the clearing, brushing away a bed of rotting leaves to find the soft, moist soil beneath.
Leesha’s blurry eyes slowly came into focus as she watched Rojer scraping leaves from the forest floor. She leaned heavily on a tree, her legs still weak.
Only minutes ago, she had thought that she would never recover from her ordeal, but the corelings about to rise were too immediate a threat, and she found, almost gratefully, that they kept her mind from replaying her assault again and again, as it had been since the men had taken their spoils and left.
Her pale cheeks were smudged with dirt and streaked with tears. She tried to smooth her torn dress, to regain some sense of dignity, but the ache between her legs was a constant reminder that her dignity was scarred forever.
‘It’s almost dark!’ she moaned. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’ll draw a circle in the soil,’ Rojer said. ‘It will be all right. I’ll make everything all right,’ he promised.
‘Do you even know how?’ she asked.
‘Sure … I guess,’ Rojer said unconvincingly. ‘I had that portable one for years. I can remember the symbols.’ He picked up a stick, and started to scratch lines on the ground, glancing up to the darkening sky again and again as he worked.
He was being brave for her. Leesha looked at Rojer, and felt a stab of guilt for getting him into this. He claimed to be twenty, but she knew that for a lie with years to spare. She should never have brought him along on such a dangerous journey.
He looked much like he had the first time she had seen him, his face puffy and bruised, blood oozing from his nose and mouth. He wiped at it with his sleeve and pretended it did not affect him. Leesha saw through the act easily, knew he was as frantic as she, but his effort was comforting, nonetheless.
‘I don’t think you’re doing that right,’ she said, looking over his shoulder.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Rojer snapped.
‘I’m sure the corelings will love it,’ she shot back, annoyed by his dismissive tone, ‘since it won’t hinder them in the least.’ She looked around. ‘We could climb a tree,’ she suggested.
‘Corelings can climb better than we can,’ Rojer said.
‘What about finding someplace to hide?’ she asked.
‘We looked as long as we could,’ Rojer said. ‘We barely have time to make this circle, but it should keep us safe.’
‘I doubt it,’ Leesha said, looking at the shaky lines in the soil.
‘If only I had my fiddle …’ Rojer began.
‘Not that pile of dung again,’ Leesha snapped, sharp irritation rising to drive back humiliation and fear. ‘It’s one thing to brag to the apprentices in the light of day that you can charm demons with your fiddle, but what do you gain in carrying a lie to your grave?’
‘I’m not lying!’ Rojer insisted.
‘Have it your way,’ Leesha sighed, crossing her arms.
‘It will be all right,’ Rojer said again.
‘Creator, can’t you stop lying, even for a moment?’ Leesha cried. ‘It’s not going to be all right and you know it. Corelings aren’t bandits, Rojer. They won’t be satisfied with just …’ She looked down at her torn skirts, and her voice trailed off.
Rojer’s face screwed up in pain, and Leesha knew she had been too harsh. She wanted to lash out at something, and it was easy to blame Rojer and his inflated promises for