They left the Luna River camp in the early afternoon, Arturi in front, the doctor beside him. Arturi warned them the dead would not come before dark, but the curse might fight back once the rite began.
On the road Van Richten taught Aleksander what he knows of the undead, which is more than anyone alive should.
Near Krezk, Arturi found an overgrown trail down to the Raven River, and ten minutes later they stood in the hollow. Half a dozen wagons, barrel-topped and rotting. For a moment he showed them the camp as it had been: the fire, the violin, a raven-haired girl dancing. Then the mist took it back.
The story of the years
The rite needs more than blood. It needs both men to truly forgive, and Arturi was not sure that had happened.
Freyja did not argue grief again. She pointed out that each of them had lived fifteen years since that night, and neither had ever seen the other as anything but the source of a curse. So she asked them to tell each other those years.
Arturi told of running: every village, every host he left before nightfall, every tribe that turned him away. Van Richten told of being alone, and of why he sent his apprentice away. Ezmerelda stood close enough to hear it, for the first time.
Arturi drew an obsidian knife and cut both their palms. They clasped hands. One drop of blood hissed on the ground, the mist swirled and thinned, and when Van Richten opened his hand the cut had closed clean. The curse was gone.
“Anyone got a light?”Rudolph van Richten
The wagons burn
The fire took the first wagon, then the next. Arturi was already looking at the tree line.
“They’re here.”
The dead came for the two men and nobody else. The first wave was a shambling mass of fast corpses that struck all at once, and Aleksander, who had been whole a heartbeat before, was suddenly on the ground. Ireena and Fergus had him on his feet again inside the minute, and the mass was ground apart before the next wave landed.
Arturi called out how each thing hunted, so the company could step out of its way. Van Richten studied each thing as a case, and told the company exactly where to strike. One knows how to run from the dead. The other knows how to hunt them.
Ghasts came next, in a stench that turned stomachs. Ireena opened one almost in half. Altair stood in his own light, and the dead burned for coming near him.
The ghasts were not all down when the wolves came bounding out of the trees, grey and rotten and fast, and the wagons were still burning.