They did not rest. For two days, there was only the road, the rain, and the cold. Sleep was a stolen commodity, taken in hour-long increments in the lee of a wet boulder or in the stinking dark of a hollow log. Food was a memory. Every time Sineus closed his eyes, he saw the smiling, empty face of his mentor, Pyotr Orlov, and the world would tilt. Then Alessandro’s hand would be on his shoulder, hard and grounding, and they would move again.
The hunt was relentless. It was not a simple pursuit. It was a herding. Sineus could feel it in the Istopis, the memory-script of the world. Their pursuer was not just following their trail; he was closing doors ahead of them. A bridge they aimed for would have its memory of structural integrity subtly frayed, forcing them to ford a freezing river miles downstream. A game trail that promised a shortcut would be laced with the psychic scent of a wolfpack, turning their horses skittish and wild-eyed.
This was the work of Janusz Kurov. The Lodge’s hound. A man who saw the world not as a text to be read, but as a map of weaknesses to be exploited. He was not a gifted artist like Sineus, but a brutal, efficient craftsman. He was always one step behind, his presence a constant pressure at their backs, a promise of cold iron and a final, tidy end. The memory of their own passage felt like a raw, severed thread trailing behind them, a luminous trail for the hunter to follow.
— He’s pushing us north, — Alessandro said, his voice a low rasp. They were crouched in a thicket of skeletal birches, watching a road they could no longer use. A Lodge patrol was moving along it with disciplined speed.
— I know, — Sineus replied. The dull throb behind his eyes had become a constant companion. Attrition. That was Kurov’s strategy. Wear them down, drain their resources, and drive them into a pre-arranged kill box.
— We need to break the pattern, — Alessandro insisted, wiping rain from the stock of his rifle. — Do something he won’t expect.
Sineus scanned the blighted landscape. His gaze fell on a cluster of dilapidated cottages in the distance, a village called Gniloye that was slowly being digested by the Ashen Tract. It was a place of rot and bad memories, a place no sane person would go.
— Then we go there, — Sineus said. The price of the unexpected was to walk willingly into the poison.
Gniloye was a place of profound quiet. The silence here was different from the rest of the Tract; it was heavier, layered with the memory of forgotten sorrows. They moved through the single muddy track that served as a street, past houses whose thatched roofs had collapsed into black, pulpy masses. A child’s doll, its face a featureless smudge, lay half-buried in the mud, a single severed thread of yarn dangling from its cloth arm.
They chose a collapsed barn at the edge of the village, a place with a sagging roof but a solid rear wall. It offered a defensible corner. For a moment, there was only the sound of their own breathing and the steady drip of water through the broken timbers. It was the closest they had come to peace in three days.
— We rest for one hour, — Alessandro said, his voice low. He took the first watch, positioning himself by a crack in the wall, his rifle a dark line in the gloom.
Sineus slid down against the damp stone, the exhaustion a physical weight. He closed his eyes, and the trap was sprung.
It was not a psychic assault. It was simpler. The sound of a boot scraping on stone, just outside the barn. Alessandro was already moving, a silent shadow, pressing himself flat against the wall. Sineus was on his feet, his own weapon in hand, his heart a cold hammer in his chest. Kurov had not been behind them. He had been waiting.
A figure appeared in the wide, open doorway of the barn, silhouetted against the joyless grey light. Then another. Two of Kurov’s cadre, moving with the fluid certainty of hunters who had their prey cornered. They held their rifles at the ready, their eyes scanning the darkness within.
From the left, a third man slipped through a gap in the side wall, his movement barely making a sound. They were being flanked, boxed in. Alessandro caught his eye and gave a subtle jerk of his head toward the rear wall. There was no back door.
Sineus understood. He focused his will, not on the men, but on the barn itself. He found the memory of the stone wall behind him—the memory of its construction, of the mortar setting, of its long years standing against the wind. He found the memory of a hairline crack, formed during a hard winter a decade ago.
He pushed.
The two hunters in the doorway took a step inside. The third was ten meters from their position.
With a groan of tortured stone, a section of the rear wall gave way, collapsing outward in a shower of rock and rotten mortar. Dust and the smell of damp earth filled the air. Sineus and Alessandro were already through the opening, scrambling over the rubble and into the open field behind the barn.
Shouts erupted from inside. A rifle shot cracked, the ball whining past Sineus’s ear. They did not stop to return fire. They ran, plunging back into the grey, skeletal woods that bordered the village. They had escaped, but it was a near thing. Too near. The margin for error had shrunk to nothing.
They ran for another hour before they dared to stop, their lungs burning in the cold air. They found cover in a deep, water-logged ditch, the muddy water seeping into their boots.
— He knew, — Alessandro panted, leaning against the wet earth. — He knew we would choose the most unlikely place.
— He is not predicting, — Sineus said, the headache behind his eyes sharpening to a razor’s edge. He knew Janusz Kurov. He had trained with him in the Lodge, years ago. Kurov was not a strategist. He was a tracker. He didn’t think. He followed the scent. — He is driving us. This was not the kill box. This was just another turn in the maze.
They pushed on, moving north, just as Kurov wanted. There was no other choice. The hunter had all the advantages. They were merely prey, their path dictated by the closing walls of the trap. The land itself felt like it was working for him.
Two days later, they found his message. It was at a crossroads, a place where they had to choose between a path leading deeper into the blighted heartlands and one that led toward the more populated territories of the west. Impaled on a splintered fence post was a small, familiar object.
It was a Lodge signet ring, the silver dulled by weather. It had been crudely severed from a finger.
Alessandro stopped, his hand resting on the hilt of his knife. — What is it?
Sineus walked closer. He felt no psychic trap, no illusion. This was real. The signet was hung from the post by a dried, severed thread of sinew. It was a clear, brutal statement. A judgment. This was the fate of traitors. He did not need to see the memory of the man it had belonged to. He knew. It was one of the agents from the patrol they had evaded in the forest.
— A message, — Sineus said, his voice flat. He reached out and took the ring. It was cold. He felt the faint, dying echo of the man’s terror, a memory he did not want.
He turned his back on the signet and looked west, toward the path they needed to take. He tried to extend his senses, to read the script of the road ahead, to feel for Kurov’s presence or Lacroix’s more subtle poisons.
But his focus shattered.
Instead of the clean, luminous lines of the Istopis, his mind was flooded with a chaotic surge of noise. The dying terror from the ring, the lingering grief for Pyotr, the phantom heat of Lacroix’s fire trap, the exhaustion, the hunger—it all crashed together. The threads of reality tangled into an indecipherable knot. He could not separate them. He could not read them.
A sharp pain lanced through his skull, and he staggered, putting a hand to his temple. The world swam in a grey haze. His greatest weapon, his unique perception, was failing him. The constant pressure, the relentless attrition, had finally taken its toll. His control was fraying.
— Sineus? — Alessandro’s voice was sharp with concern. He had taken a step closer, his eyes narrowed. — What is it? What do you see?
— Nothing, — Sineus forced the word out. It was the truest and most terrifying answer he could give. — I see nothing.
The rain began to fall again, a cold, steady drizzle that soaked their coats and turned the world to mud. The wind whispered through the dead trees, carrying no secrets, only the promise of more cold.
There was nowhere to rest. And no way to see the path ahead.
