He will approach but not free them yet

“What in Hades is making that ungodly racket?”

Matt stepped out from behind the trees as the last word carried through the perimeter. The struggling stopped. Six Hunters turned toward him, though the one supported by a low branch had to twist to manage it. Nearer the road, two remained tangled together where the first trip line had taken their legs out from under them.

Beside a trunk, he stopped with the dagger low against his thigh. The hammock hung in plain sight behind him, his duffel beneath it. He let his gaze travel from one trapped Hunter to the next, giving them time to notice where he had been sleeping. “Right. That explains the noise.”

“Boy.” The Hunter nearest the road looked him over, then glanced at the dagger. “Release us.”

The hammock seemed to interest her considerably less than getting free. No question about whose campsite they had entered, or what had woken its occupant. Matt stayed where he was. “Eventually. First I’d like to know how the Hunters of Artemis managed to walk through my entire perimeter.”

From inside the snare came a sharp answer. “The storm concealed your traps.”

Water dripped from the canopy above her, though the rain had eased before Matt tied the lines. “It wasn’t raining when I set them.”

Silence spread across the group. The Hunter by the road drew herself as upright as her bound legs permitted and declared that he must have placed the traps dishonourably.

Matt looked at the nearest line. “At knee height?”

“You hid them,” she said.

“They’re traps.”

A cord creaked farther in as one of her companions tried to turn her pinned shoulder. The attempt gained her nothing, but it gave her a clear view of the lines running through the undergrowth. “A Hunter would not fill the forest with coward’s snares.”

Matt had heard enough stories about the Hunt at camp to doubt that. “You use snares.”

“For monsters,” she replied.

“So do I.”

“You are no Hunter.” She turned her face away as though that settled the matter.

For a moment, Matt studied the knot at her shoulder. It held exactly as he had tied it, regardless of what she thought of him. Correcting her would do little good while all six remained trapped and none had given him a reason to come closer.

The woman near the road evidently considered the discussion finished as well. “Cut us down.”

“Still deciding whether that’s a good idea,” Matt admitted.

The admission earned a look of outrage from the hunters, “there is nothing to decide.”

That was rather strange, Matt knew they had been cursing minutes earlier. “You threatened to kill whoever set these about five minutes ago.” Matt’s eyes moved to the knife lying in the wet leaves between two of them. Neither Hunter could reach it yet.

One woman glanced away. Another, pinned against a trunk, managed a small shrug. “That was before we knew who had laid them.”

“Does knowing make it better?”

“You were concealed,” she said, putting the blame back on him.

“I was asleep.” Matt indicated the hammock behind him. “Then six people set off my traps and started threatening whoever lived here. I stayed out of sight until I knew what I was dealing with.”

The woman by the road seized on the admission. “You watched us.”

“After you woke me up.”

Inside the snare, a Hunter shifted and sent water pattering from the branch overhead. “A decent man would have freed us immediately.”

Matt looked from her to the trapped bows. “A decent man would still prefer not to get shot.”

“We would not shoot someone offering aid,” she insisted, though the effort to get loose had left her breathing harder.

“One of you said I wouldn’t leave these woods alive.”

“That was a warning,” said the woman near the road.

“Saying I wouldn’t leave *walking* was a warning. The other one had fewer possible meanings.”

She held his gaze without withdrawing the threat. Instead, she accused him of insulting the Hunt by keeping them trapped. Matt pointed toward his hammock. They had walked into his campsite. By her account, that no longer mattered: once he found them, he owed them help.

The argument might have been easier to dismiss if he could simply cut a line and walk away. A root lay beneath the Hunter in the snare; release her from the wrong side and she would land on it. Reaching the knot properly meant stepping between two of her companions. Even with their arms bound, he had no wish to test how much of his sleeve one could catch as he passed.

“I’ll help,” he said. “After a Styx oath.”

The change in their expressions was immediate. The Hunter beside the road stiffened, while the woman caught with her stopped trying to work a leg free.

“You dare demand an oath of Artemis’s Hunters?”

Matt raised an eyebrow. “Is that a no?”

“It is an insult. Our word should be sufficient.”

“Your word five minutes ago was that I wouldn’t leave the woods. I need to know you’ve changed your mind before I step in there.”

A voice from the trees answered that they had spoken before they understood the circumstances. Matt looked across the group, waiting to see whether anyone would ask for his account of them. No one did.

“You still don’t understand them,” he said. “None of you has even asked my name.”

The Hunter by the road opened her mouth, then closed it. Beside her, the woman tangled in the same line finally looked at Matt rather than at the cord around their legs.

“Your identity changes nothing,” the first Hunter said.

“Then you didn’t need it to decide whether I deserved to die.”

Farther inside the perimeter, the Hunter supported by a low branch had stopped struggling. Her attention rested on the hammock and duffel behind him. “What did you expect us to do when we found ourselves trapped?”

“I expected you not to come through my campsite. I didn’t know you were here.”

“You expect us to believe you had no idea the Hunt would pass this way?”

At least she had looked at the campsite before asking. Matt shifted enough to give her an unobstructed view of it. “If I’d known, I would have slept somewhere else.”

Her gaze followed the line from his hammock to the traps nearest it. For the first time, someone appeared to consider that he might actually have laid them so he could sleep. She said nothing, and the woman by the road took the silence as an opening.

“Whatever your intention, you hold Hunters of Artemis against their will.”

Matt turned back to her. He could imagine how the incident would sound when reported to Artemis, particularly if the six of them spent the rest of the night working themselves free. He wanted them down before then. He also wanted enough distance to reach the road once their hands were on their bows.

“Here are the terms,” he said. “Everyone swears on the Styx. No revenge for the traps, no hunting me afterward, and no lying to Artemis that I ambushed you. Then I start cutting lines.”

The Hunter in the snare stared at him. “You would place conditions on our freedom?”

“You placed conditions on whether I keep breathing.”

“We gave you no cause to fear us.”

The woman who had said the trapper would not leave the woods alive met his eyes across the perimeter. Nothing in her face suggested she had forgotten saying it. Matt kept the dagger at his side and waited.

“Styx oath,” he said. “Then I cut you down.”

Rainwater continued to fall through the leaves. Near the road, the first Hunter looked toward her companions, but none spoke for her. She settled her attention on Matt again.

“And if we refuse?”

His duffel was still within reach of the hammock. He could collect it and get to the road before any of them worked free, though that would leave Artemis with a grievance he did not want to follow him to camp. Moving among the Hunters without an oath was a risk he could measure more plainly.

“If you refuse,” Matt said, “I go back to deciding how much of this is actually my problem.”