out living, but instead the world is utterly silent, and if it wasn’t for my heartbeat skittering loudly inside me I’d worry I’d gone deaf. Where are the soldiers who are supposed to be patrolling? Why can’t I hear them laughing nervously and joshing one another to keep the night at bay? The lack of sound makes me feel too aware, my senses reach out into the darkness for anything that will anchor me, any sound or scent or thing to see.
I use the moonlight to guide me as I try to keep to the shadows. It hangs lower in the sky now, and its light has turned the world monochrome: everything is black and white and grey and silver. The village looks painted, like a model, not at all real, and I have the uneasy sense that I’m not here. Almost every window in the village is dark as I scurry through; only the House of Justice is lit, candlelight visible in one of the upper windows.
I’m about to turn down the track that leads to the cottage Silas is staying in when a flash of silver in the distance catches my eye. A shadow moves along the treeline; is it a soldier? Then I freeze.
From the woods a huge figure lurches into view, seven feet tall at least, its outline misshapen and hulking. A scream is born and instantly dies in my throat when I see its head.
It has no face.
The place where eyes, a nose, a mouth should be is a craggy, bulging mass atop a shape that’s barely humanoid. But its lack of eyes and ears doesn’t stop it from raising its head, as though sniffing the air, before its body turns towards me.
Then another steps out beside it and a gust of wind rattles the treetops and carries the creatures’ odour to me. Wet mud, rotting leaves, and sulphur; sweet, heavy, cloying decay. I turn then and run. I don’t look back as I move, running from Silas’s house, running past the House of Justice, running through the village, determined to put as much space as I can between myself and them. I run to the outskirts of the village and throw myself into a hedge, crawling through the brambles and tugging my cloak from them until I’m sitting in a tangle of undergrowth, my heart racing so fast I don’t know how it still beats at all. I curl up, my heart thudding, my eyes shut, panting and shaking.
My heart is beginning to slow when something touches my shoulder and I inhale, ready to split the night apart with my scream. A hand covers my mouth and then Silas is beside me. He’s not wearing a shirt; he’s naked from the waist up, and barefoot, his skin torn and bleeding from scratches where he’s followed me into the bush. As he twists around, peering out from our hiding place, I see markings along his spine, discs, fading from fully black to three quarters shaded, then half full, to a crescent, and finally an outline, a perfect circle of black ink on his skin, crossed through the centre with a line.
I tear my gaze from the tattoo and peer out through the twigs, waiting for the creatures to appear. He follows my gaze, his head tilted as he strains for the sound of movement, the moonlight reflecting off his silvery hair. I start to shrug my cloak off.
“What are you doing?” he whispers.
“Cover yourself.”
He looks down. “Sorry. I was getting ready to sleep.”
“No. Your hair,” I hiss. “It’s shining.”
His eyes widen and he helps me take my cloak off, pulling it as best he can over his head and shoulders.
We wait, silently, each moment allowing the fear to slip away. After a long while, he nudges me and jerks his head; then he begins to crawl out from our hiding place.
I follow. My arms are scratched by the thorns, but the cold numbs the pain, and then he’s touching me, gloved hands on my arms as he hauls me out.
“I think they’re gone,” he says, scanning the space around us.
I look around too, the hairs on my body still standing upright. “Wait, did you see anyone out there, near the woods? A soldier, maybe?”
He shakes his head.
“I thought I saw someone, before I saw the golems come out.”
“I saw two golems.” He peers around again. “You’re sure you saw someone?”