Gamble King Chapter 41. Her (Part 1)

Max shoved the man forward. "Move."

The warrior stumbled, catching himself against a tree trunk. His whole body was shaking, not just trembling, but full-body convulsions that made his teeth click together in a rhythm that had nothing to do with breathing. The sound was loud enough that Max could hear it over the crunch of snow under their boots.

It was cold, yeah. Very cold. The kind of cold that made your breath fog and your fingers ache. But this wasn't that.

This was fear.

Max felt something crawl up his own spine watching it. Some sort of recognition that the man's terror wasn't coming from the knife at his back or the hostile stranger dragging him deeper into the woods.

"Hey," Max said to Tarak, keeping his voice low. "Why are they so afraid of this place?"

Before Tarak could answer, the White Hand warrior spoke. His voice came out strangled, words tumbling over each other. "Because there's a witch! She eats people. She—she takes them and they don't—you can't—" He stopped, gasping. "Please. Please let me go back. I'll tell them to leave you alone. I'll say you went deeper. I'll—"

"I see," Max said.

He didn't ask any more questions after that. What was the point? The White Hands would have killed him. Or the witch would. Those were his options. He'd have to try escaping this place first, see how it went from there. Maybe the White Hands would turn out to be easier to deal with than whatever lived in these trees.

Maybe.

They kept walking. Max consulted his mental map every few minutes, tracking their progress toward the nearest marked shelter. Two hours, give or take. That's what it should take to reach it.

The trees here were massive. Ancient things with trunks so wide it would take four or five men holding hands to circle them. Their branches twisted overhead in patterns that seemed almost deliberate, blocking out most of the sky. The snow on the ground was pristine, undisturbed except for the tracks they were making now.

No animal prints. No bird calls. Nothing.

Just their breathing and the click of the warrior's teeth and the crunch of snow.

Max stopped.

Tarak shifted on his back. "Why you stop?"

Max stared at the tree in front of them. "I'm not quite sure, but..."

He trailed off, looking around. The placement of the rocks to their left. The way that fallen log sat at an angle, half-buried in snow. The shape of the clearing they'd just entered.

"We've been walking for two hours," Max said slowly. "Should've reached the shelter by now. I was sure—certain, even—that we'd get there."

Tarak waited.

Max pointed at the tree. "We passed this one before."

"Many trees look the same—"

"No. This one. I stopped here." Max walked closer, studying the base of the trunk. There, on the side facing away from where they'd just come from. Yellow snow. Frozen now, but unmistakable. "I had to take a piss. Right there."

Tarak leaned around Max's shoulder to look. His breath caught.

The White Hand warrior made a sound—half sob, half laugh. "She's onto us. She knows. She knows we're here and she's—oh gods, oh gods, she's playing with us. We're going to die here. We're going to—"

"It's not nighttime yet," Max interrupted. He checked the sky through the canopy. Still light, though the gray made it hard to tell exactly how much daylight remained. "There's plenty of time before that."

The man's laugh went higher, edging toward hysteria. "Who told you the witch only comes at night? Who—who told you that? This is HER forest. Day, night, it doesn't matter. This is her home. We're in her home and she's—"

"Ah," Max said.

He looked at the yellow snow again. At the trees around them. At the way the forest seemed to press in from all sides.

"That's a critical piece of information I lacked."

Tarak shifted against Max's back. "If she come," he said carefully, "we can always...give her the White Hand. Sacrifice. Yes?"

The warrior made a choking sound.

Max said nothing.

It wasn't that he was against it. Not really. If it came down to his life or this guy's, the choice was pretty simple. He'd made that choice before. A lot, actually. More times than he'd expected when he'd first arrived in this world. Men had died because Max had decided he wanted to live more than they did.

The strange part was how little it bothered him.

No nightmares. No cold sweats. No moments where he woke up seeing their faces. He should probably think about that at some point, why killing people here felt different than it had felt back home when he'd never killed anyone at all. Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was the constant threat. Maybe he was just broken in a way he hadn't noticed yet.

But this felt different.

Killing someone who was trying to kill him was one thing. Handing someone over to be eaten was another. There was something about human sacrifice that crossed a line. Even if the human in question had tried to murder him a few hours ago.

Earthling sentiments. That's all it was. The kind of moral framework that didn't translate well here.

Max kept those thoughts to himself and shoved the man forward instead. "Move."

The warrior didn't move.

"I said move."

"No." The man's voice was flat.

"No?"

"No. I won't."

Max grabbed the back of his collar. "Do you want me to tell my spider to roast you? Because Bro's getting pretty good at that."

He felt Bro shift on his shoulder, felt the warmth building in the spider's abdomen. Bro started to glow, a soft orange at first, then brighter, like a coal being breathed on.

The man looked at the light. Then he looked at Max. "It doesn't matter."

"What?"

"The witch is onto us. What's your plan now? Keep walking?" The warrior laughed, high and bitter. "We passed that tree some time ago. We'll pass it again. And again. And she'll play with us until she's ready to stop playing."

He met Max's eyes. There was something in them that looked almost like relief.

"Just kill me here. Slit my throat and be done with it. I don't want to be eaten alive."

Tarak made a sound, something between a scoff and a laugh. "A White Hand saying that?"

"Saying what?"

"You people eat your own dead, yes? Why afraid of being eaten?"

The man's face twisted. Not fear this time. Anger. "This is the North," he spat. "Famine isn't a stranger here. When the snows come and the hunting fails and the stores run empty, we do what we have to do to survive. We eat what the gods provide, even if it's our own. But we don't—" His voice cracked. "We don't like it. We're not animals. We're not—"

He stopped. His shoulders sagged.

"We only do it when there's no other choice."

Suddenly, a giggling started somewhere to their left.

Max's whole body went tight. He'd been listening to the forest for about two hours now, waiting for something wrong, and here it was. Except it wasn't the sound he'd been expecting. Not footsteps or the crack of a branch or even the whisper of wind through the trees.

It was laughter.

High, light and completely out of place.

The White Hand's breathing stopped. Max heard it happen, heard the way the man's lungs just seized up mid-inhale.

"Holy shit," Max breathed.

The giggling came again, and this time it seemed to float through the trees from a different direction entirely, like it was circling them. Max's eyes darted left, then right, scanning the shadows between the pines. Nothing moved. The forest had gone completely still.

Then he saw her.

She was standing a few feet ahead of them, just off to the side of the path they'd been walking. She hadn't been there a second ago. Max would have sworn to it. He'd been looking at that exact spot, and it had been empty, and now it wasn't.

She was old. That was the first thing his brain managed to process. Old in a way that made it impossible to guess her actual age. Seventy? Eighty? Older? Her face was lined deep, creases running from the corners of her eyes and mouth, and her hair hung long and gray past her shoulders, loose and unbrushed.

She wore white robes that looked far too clean for someone who lived in a forest, and her feet were bare. Completely bare. No boots, no wrappings, nothing. Just pale skin against the snow and pine needles and small stones that covered the ground.

Max stared at those feet. They should have been filthy. Cut up. Calloused at the very least. But they looked soft. Clean. Like she'd just stepped out of a bath.

She giggled again, and the sound made something cold crawl up Max's spine.

The White Hand hadn't moved. He was frozen in place, his whole body locked up like someone had turned him to stone. His eyes were wide and fixed on the old woman, and his mouth was hanging open just slightly, like he'd been about to say something and forgot how.

"Tarak," Max said quietly, keeping his eyes on the woman. "Get down."

The kid slid off his back without a word. Max felt the absence of weight immediately, the way his shoulders dropped and his balance shifted. Bro's legs tightened against his neck.

The woman was still smiling. It was a gentle smile, the type an old lady might give you when you helped her carry groceries or held a door open. Except her eyes didn't match it. They were bright and sharp and far too aware.

She tilted her head, and when she spoke, her voice had that quality, rough and worn like someone who'd spent decades smoking cigarettes.

"Well now," she said. "What have we here? Travelers in my wood?"

She giggled again.

Max's heart was hammering so hard he could feel it in his throat. Bro shifted on his shoulder, and Max felt the warmth radiating from his body increase. Not burning, but definitely hotter than usual.

He tried to pull himself together. Back on Earth, when you met an old person, you were polite. You smiled. You offered to help. You didn't just stand there staring at them like they were about to murder you.

Except this wasn't Earth, and Max was pretty sure she absolutely could murder him.

"Uh," he started, then cleared his throat. "Hi. My name's Harek."

His voice came out steadier than he'd expected. He gestured to Tarak, who was standing just behind him now, pressed close against his leg. "This is Tarak."

The witch's eyes followed the gesture, tracking from Max to the boy. Her smile widened just a fraction.

Max glanced back at the White Hand. The warrior was still frozen, still staring. Max realized he didn't know the man's name. In all the hours they'd been walking, it had never come up.

"And...this is White Hands," Max finished.

It sounded stupid the moment he said it, but it was all he had.

The witch looked at the warrior. Her head tilted the other way now, birdlike. "White Hands," she repeated slowly, like she was tasting the words. "What an odd name."

Then her gaze shifted. Down. To Max's shoulder.

Her smile changed. It went softer, more genuine, and somehow that made it worse.

"And who might this little one be?" she asked, lifting one finger to point.

Max followed her gaze and saw she was pointing at Bro.

"Oh," Max said. He looked at his spider. Bro's legs were clamped tight against his neck now, all eight of them pressed hard enough that Max could feel each individual limb. "Him? That's Bro. He's a spider."

The witch took a step closer. Her bare feet made absolutely no sound against the forest floor. Not even the faintest whisper of skin against dirt.

"Oh, he's far more than just a spider," she said softly.

Her eyes stayed locked on Bro. Just on him. Like Max and Tarak and the White Hand had ceased to exist entirely. She was staring at the spider with an intensity that made Max's skin crawl, and he found himself taking a half-step back before he'd even decided to move.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk." The witch shook her head without looking away from Bro. "Don't be so afraid, child. I haven't decided what to do with you yet."

Child. Max was pretty sure he had at least six inches on her.

"The little one seems quite attached to you," she continued, and her voice had gone gentle again. Almost fond.

Max felt Bro's warmth spike. The spider was heating up more than he ever had before, not enough to hurt but definitely enough to notice. It was like having a small furnace pressed against his neck.

"Yeah," Max said. His mouth was dry. "I mean...he's my friend."

It sounded childish when he said it out loud, but it was the truth.

"I see," the witch said.

She finally looked at Max again, and he felt the full weight of her attention settle on him. It was like being examined under a microscope. She was reading something in his face, or in the way he stood, or in something else entirely that he couldn't even begin to guess at.

Then she smiled that gentle, terrible smile again. "And why, pray tell, are you in my humble forest? Disturbing my peace?"

Max swallowed. The other two still hadn't moved, hadn't made a sound. It was just him.

"I'm sorry," he said, and the words tumbled out faster than he'd meant them to. "We didn't mean to disturb you. I was being pursued. By White Hands—" He gestured vaguely at the warrior behind him, who still looked like he'd forgotten how to breathe. "I needed somewhere safe. Somewhere to hide."

He moved slowly, carefully, keeping his hands visible as he reached for the map tucked into his belt. No sudden movements. Nothing that might set her off. He unfolded it with deliberate care and held it out, pointing to the mark he'd made earlier with Tarak's help.

"There's supposed to be a shelter here," he said. "An old one. We were trying to find it."

The witch leaned forward, but she didn't take the map from his hands. She just looked at it, her eyes scanning the rough lines and marks.

"Oh, that place," she said after a moment. Her tone was almost cheerful. "Yes, yes. I took it as my abode some time ago. Made it into a proper house. Much more comfortable now."

Max's hand lowered slowly back to his side.

Fuck.

"I see," Max said.

He was trying to keep his voice level and polite.

The witch's smile widened just slightly, like she'd heard something amusing in his tone.

"But you are all welcome to come," she said. "It grows cold at this time of year. Four lost souls wandering such a dark and dangerous forest. You must be weary."

"No." The word came out faster than Max intended. "No, thank you. We appreciate the offer, but we didn't know you'd taken residence there. We'll just...we'll go back. We don't want to bother you any further."

He was already shifting his weight, preparing to turn around, to get Tarak and just start walking. Anywhere but toward that house.

"Who told you that you could leave?"

The witch's voice hadn't changed. It was still soft, still gentle. But something in it made Max's legs lock in place.

He froze mid-step.

His heart slammed against his ribs. Bro was burning now, actually burning, hot enough that Max could feel sweat starting to bead on his neck where the spider clung.

"Listen," Max started, trying to keep his voice calm, reasonable. "We really didn't mean to—"

"We have a sacrifice."

Max's head whipped around. Tarak had spoken.

"For safe passage," Tarak continued. He was pointing at the White Hand. "Him. He's a warrior. Strong. He was pursuing us, but now...he could be yours."

The witch's gaze followed Tarak's finger. She looked at the White Hand with interest, tilting her head again in that birdlike way.

The warrior's eyes met hers.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the White Hand's face crumpled. His mouth opened, and a sound came out that Max had never heard from him before. A sob.

The man dropped to his knees. His hands came up to cover his face, and his shoulders shook.

"No," the witch said.

Max blinked. "No? What do you mean, no?"

She was still looking at the White Hand, but her expression had gone flat. "I'm tired of these types of sacrifices. They've grown stale. Predictable." She waved a hand dismissively. "Warriors and hunters and lost travelers. It's all the same in the end."

Max's mind was racing. His hands were shaking, but he forced them to stay still. He reached slowly into his pack, fingers closing around the wendigo antlers he'd been carrying since the cave.

"What about this?" He pulled them out, held them up so she could see them clearly. The bone gleamed pale in the dim light filtering through the trees. "These are prized. Rare. You could have them."

The witch glanced at the antlers.

"No," she said again.

Max's stomach dropped.

He knew what she wanted.

He'd known from the moment she'd appeared, from the way her eyes had fixed on Bro and refused to move. The spider was heating up so much now that it was almost painful, a furnace pressed against his skin, and Max could feel the way Bro's legs were clamped down with desperate strength.

Bro knew too.

"I won't give you my spider, lady."

The words came out harder than he'd meant them to. He didn't care.

The witch's smile grew wider. It stretched across her face until it looked wrong, too big for the shape of her mouth.

"It seems the little one does not want to go either," she said. She was looking at Bro with something that might have been fondness if it weren't so deeply unsettling. "Bonded so tightly. How sweet. How rare."

She took a step closer.

Max took a step back.

"This would be...complicated," she mused, more to herself than to him. "To bind it when it's bonded like this. The threads are already woven. It would take time. Effort. And there's always the risk it would simply...die...rather than transfer its loyalty."

Max's hand moved to his shoulder, hovering near Bro but not quite touching him. Protective.

The witch's eyes flicked up to meet his, and her smile shifted into a calculating one.

"I will let you all go," she said.

Max didn't move.

"Spider included," she continued. "If you can do something for me."

"What?" Max asked. His voice came out hoarse.

"A death battle."

Max closed his eyes for just a second. "Oh. That. Of course."

Of course it was a death battle. Why would it ever be anything else in this nightmare forest?

"The terms are simple," the witch said. She was walking in a slow circle around them now, her bare feet still making no sound at all against the ground. The White Hand was still sobbing on his knees. Tarak had gone completely still beside Max, barely even breathing. "You fight me. If you beat me, I will have died, and you all walk free. Every one of you. The spider stays with you, bonded as it is."

She stopped in front of him.

"But if I win," she said, and her smile was back to that gentle, grandmotherly expression, "then I get to eat you. Slowly. And once you're gone, once that bond breaks with your death, the little dragon comes to me. Unbonded. Free. Ready for a new master."

Max stared at her.

Bro was so hot now that he could smell his own skin starting to burn.

"Those are the terms," the witch said. "Do you accept?"