Oath Breaker by Michelle Paver, Geoff Taylor

the black forest horses. The black ones are sacred. It's forbidden even to touch them." Then he did something he'd never done before. He grasped Torak's hand.
    Torak couldn't speak. Fa had done the same thing as he lay dying.
"Torak ..." The blue eyes pierced his. "You seek vengeance. But don't let it take over your spirit."
With his paddle, Gaup pushed the canoe away from the bank, forcing Torak to let go of his foster father's hand.
"Vengeance burns, Torak," said Fin-Kedinn as the river bore him away. "It burns your heart. It makes the pain worse. Don't let that happen to you." Renn had run up the slope toward the shelter. She couldn't bear to watch the Blackwater take her uncle away.
Then she'd changed her mind and raced down again. She was too late. Fin-Kedinn had gone.
In a daze, she went back to the shelter. She shouldered her sleeping-sack, quiver, and bow, and stamped out the fire. She told herself that Gaup would get Fin-Kedinn safely back to the clan. But the truth was that anything
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could happen. Fin-Kedinn might succumb to a fever, or start bleeding inside. Gaup might abandon him. She might never see him again.
When she reached the river, Torak was gone, probably to fetch the other canoe. She couldn't face doing nothing, so she dumped her sleeping-sack and stumbled along the trail that led to the Deep Forest.
    She stopped well short of the gaping jaws. The mist had lifted, and the rocks glittered in the sun. To her left, a slope of alders and birch whispered secrets. To her right, the Blackwater snaked slyly past. Twenty paces ahead, the spruce trees of the Deep Forest warded her back. They were taller than their Open Forest sisters, and beneath their mossy arms, shadows shifted ceaselessly.
Torak had once reached the borders of the Deep Forest, but Renn had never been this close. It filled her with dread.
     
The Deep Forest was different. Its trees were more awake, its clans more suspicious; it was said to shelter creatures which had long since vanished elsewhere. And in summer, the World Spirit stalked its valleys as a tall man with the antlers of a stag.
    Out of nowhere, Rip and Rek swooped, startling her. Then they were off, disappearing into the sky with caws of alarm.
Renn couldn't see anything wrong, but just in case, she moved off the trail, behind a juniper bush.
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Ac the edge of the Deep Forest, the shadows beneath the spruce trees coalesced--and became a man. Then another. And another.
Renn held her breath.
    The hunters emerged without making a sound. Their wovenbark clothes were mottled brown and green, like leaves on the Forest floor; Renn found it hard to tell where men ended and trees began. Each hunter wore a green headband--she couldn't remember whose side that was--and each head was obscured by a fine green net. These hunters had no faces. They were not human.
One raised his hand, his green-stained fingers flickering in a complex signal that meant nothing to Renn. The others headed up the slope to her left. A hunter passed within a few paces of where she crouched. She saw his thin slate axe and his long green bow. She smelled tallow and wood ash, and caught the glint of eyes behind the net. She saw how it sucked in and out where the mouth should be.
     
From the Deep Forest, another faceless hunter emerged, this one carrying a spear. When he was five paces from Renn, he thrust it into the ground with such force that it quivered.
    At head height, the spear-shaft bore a bundle of leaves which Renn recognized as poisonous nightshade. From this dangled something dark, the size of a fist. The hunter shook the spear to make sure that it was
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firmly planted, and walked back into the Deep Forest. Renn's gorge rose.
The thing hanging from the spear was a fist. It was Gaup's severed hand.
The meaning of the curse stick was clear. The way is shut.
Renn couldn't take her eyes off the hand. She thought about living the rest of her life like Gaup. Unable ever to use her bow again ... A movement to her