Midwinter

Satterly was unable to judge his emotional response. Amid the dread of being led single file at gunpoint toward an unknown destination, he felt a peculiar elation, the comfort of human voices and faces, almost a feeling of kinship. Only the red-haired man, Broward, spoke. The other two men and the young girl with the bandaged ears walked in silence through the wood. The girl, who had introduced herself to Satterly as Rachel, skipped ahead of them, seemingly oblivious to the gravity of the situation.

"Tell your friends that the first one of them that makes a sudden move gets buckshot in his face," said Broward. "Tell them that if anyone moves their hands funny or reaches for a weapon, or starts to chant or anything like that, we shoot first. Tell them."

Satterly repeated Broward's words to the others in Common, translating awkwardly.

"Where are they taking us?" asked Mauritane, his face grave.

"He hasn't said." Satterly turned and spoke to Broward in English. "Where are we going?" he asked.

"You'll find out," said Broward, urging him forward with the barrel of his shotgun.

Satterly turned back to Mauritane and shrugged. "He won't say."

"Are those weapons dangerous?" said Mauritane.

"Very. One shot at this range would take off your head."

Raieve walked beside Gray Mave, letting him put weight on her shoulder. "How are you, Mave?" she asked.

"I'll manage," he said, but his face was pale and he'd begun to breathe in ragged, wet puffs.

"He can't take much more of this," Raieve said.

Mauritane looked back at her and said nothing.

Silverdun walked at the front of the line, his eyes downcast.

After two or three hours of marching, the forest trail opened onto a clearing at the base of a tree-lined hill. Inside the clearing was a row of three small wooden huts, with simple open windows and roofs of thatch. A large fire pit was in the center; several more humans sat around it, one of them turning food on a spit. The clearing was empty of snow, floored with packed earth, and was surrounded by a fence made of dark, corrugated metal rods bound together with some kind of rope. One of the humans, a boy scarcely out of his teens, ran forward and pulled open a wide gate constructed of the same materials.

Behind the huts was a low structure, again of the corrugated metal rods, that reminded Satterly of the lion's cage in the circus. Taking the place of the lion, however, was a solitary Fae man, dressed in the robes of a scholar, seated in meditation at the cage's center.

Something in the clearing caught Satterly's eye. It was a machine; a short, wheeled contraption with a metal bar that rose from the chassis to make a handle. It was covered in rust. Satterly racked his brain trying to figure out what the thing could be, his mind settling on the single, narrow point of reference rather than try and comprehend the situation at large. He'd seen the thing before, or something very like it. A long time ago. What was it? He pondered the problem for the space of a few breaths, utterly confused. Then the answer hit him with an almost physical force.

It was a lawn mower.

Satterly stood in the center of the noise and activity around him, trying to take in the scene at once and failing. The girl Rachel was one of three children, all girls, all about the same age of nine or ten. All three of the children wore the same bandages on their ears. Everyone Satterly could see was dressed in a bizarre combination of tattered human clothing, animal skins, and cheap Fae cloaks and boots.

The woman talking to him, Linda, was in her fifties and had long curling gray hair tied loosely behind her head.

Linda walked alongside them as they were led past the huts toward the low metal cage. "We don't mean you any harm," she said. "At least, not most of us, anyway." She tried a weak smile. "Hopefully if everything goes as planned, we'll be out of your way and you guys can just go on with your lives."

"But what are we here for?" said Satterly. "What do you want with us?"

"You'll find out," she said. "Soon enough."

One of the men, the one who'd led the horses, now crossed in front of them and opened the cage's door. There was no lock, just a simple latching mechanism that worked from the outside.

"Oh, shit!" said Satterly. "The bars! Don't touch the bars!"

Silverdun, who had been reaching toward the side of the cage to steady himself, withdrew his hand. "Why not?" he said.

"This stuff that the cage is made of," said Satterly. "It's called rebar. It's made of steel. Steel is made of iron. You guys shouldn't go anywhere near it."

At the mention of the word "iron," all four of the Fae shrank back from the bars.

Once the cage door was shut, the Fae scholar raised his head and looked up at them as though he hadn't noticed anything prior to that moment.

"Hello," he said. "Welcome to hell."