The ferryman’s name was Dek, and he had made this crossing eleven times. He had mentioned this fact twice already, both times with the careful emphasis that suggested eleven was a number worth respecting.

Amos sat at the stern, silently watching the riverbanks. His hand rested in its most natural position — on the hilt of his sword.

The name of the nobleman who’d hired them, he had already forgotten. The man sat midship beneath a makeshift canvas shade that Dek had rigged up for him. He wore fine travelling clothes which appeared to have done very little travelling. And he never stopped talking since they left the North River-port.

He talked about the shrouded men who roamed the streets of the capital at night. He talked about each of the merchants and minor nobles who had vanished within the past year. Then he shared a rumour about a farmer in the Hanto Valley who found his entire flock dead one morning, with no visible marks. Amos filed that detail away for his notes. Though he’d like to hear it again from someone more reliable.

“They say the rebel king Lysander will march on the capital before first frost,” the nobleman said, spilling tobacco on his lap as he filled his pipe. “His army grows by the week. Half of Dolimir is already behind him. Won’t be long before those Kaguitay filth are finally driven from our land.” He glanced at Amos with the bright expression of someone who had never deigned to read a room. “You have the bearing of a military man. Have you considered joining his cause?”

Amos gave him a flat look.

The nobleman turned, finding something interesting to examine on the opposite bank as he struggled to light his pipe.

Ahead, the river bent south, and the treeline rose into view. A wall of darkness in the bright summer’s day.

The Forsaken Woods. Only the oldest generation could remember a time when they didn’t exist. War fables say they sprang up overnight. Saplings growing into ancient giants in a matter of days.

No one had a good explanation for how or why. But the forest completely blocked the pass between East Dolimir and the rest of Satchea to the north. Because of this, some believed it was a blessing. The land’s way of fighting back against the Kaguitay invaders that landed on Dolimir’s shores. It was difficult to think of something so dark as being a blessing.

As the first shadows of the forest touched the ferry, Dek shipped the oars and picked up a ferry pole, making small, precise adjustments to centre them in the current.

“Quiet now,” Dek said. It was not a request. Even the nobleman understood that. He folded his hands in his lap, pressed his lips together, and watched the treeline as shadows enveloped the boat.

The world fell silent as the forest canopy closed above them. It wasn’t a gradual fading as they left the grasslands behind, but an abrupt quiet. Like being closed in a cellar. No birdsong, or chirr of insects, not even the leaves rustling in the wind. Only the soft movement of water against the hill and the careful dip of Dek’s ferry pole, diligently keeping them centred between the banks, and the nobleman’s breathing, which was already faster than it should have been.

What little light reached them through the canopy diffused in mist, giving the forest an even silver glow. The trees on each bank stretched infinitely into the dark above them, their trunks thicker than a man’s shoulders, roots in great arching tangles burst through the ground and down into the water.

Amos watched the banks. There was something moving between the trees, following them from the shore. He would glimpse something at the edge of his vision, a figure tall and dark, but when he turned, there was nothing there. Just the forest casting twisted, shifting shadows. He kept his hand on his sword.

As the last light of the grasslands faded from sight behind them, the nobleman began to him. A thin, nervous sound, barely audible, the kind a man makes without knowing he’s making it. Amos fixed him with another flat look, and the nobleman flinched. The man quieted, and his knee bounced.

Amos looked at Dek. The man’s eyes remained fixed on the water, his jaw set, the line of his shoulders tightened. His breathing was shallow and controlled, barely moving his chest.

The nobleman began humming again, louder this time. Dek rebuked him with a wordless hiss. But the damage may have already been done. Something stirred in the branches.

Amos had already drawn his sword when the ravens hit the ferry like a plough wind. Not one or two, but dozens in an indiscernible mass. They consumed the ferry in a storm of feather and talon. He struck down three of the beasts before his sword became caught in the mass of them like thick brambles.

Somewhere the nobleman screamed and Dek swore as the pole clattered against the hull. The ferry lurched and tilted, then slammed into the eastern bank with a sound of splintering timber. Throwing them all forward.