None of us took a wound, none of them. And Eirik's men made it out of the forest, and we made it back to our cave, and King Harald was still dead, still not coming back to save us.  The nuthatch still trilled its descending wippling notes in the trees, unconcerned by the arrows. Nothing changed.

The doe's blood melted and burned the earth. The smell of old rot poured into the forest. The ground collapsed, pulling the saplings and ferns down into the underworld, and Sal and her company stepped back. A single segmented leg, infinitely thin and long, crept out from the hole. First one, then another.