Felryn tried to resolve his friend’s dilemma. “Warden, the blood is cold on the ground,” he said. “If Grane abandoned his men as you say, then by now he’s three days hard riding from here.”
Egrin insisted Lord Odovar should be told.
The healer replied, “I’ll tell him. You take the lad home.”
Tol’s farm was half a day’s ride from there. Egrin promised to make straight for Juramona after speaking with Tol’s father.
“On the way back, I’ll cross country to the Caer road, in case Lord Odovar decides to sortie in search of Grane,” the warden said.
“I’D carry your words to him. Farewell, warden. Be on watch, always.”
“I shall. Fast journey, Felryn.”
The healer thumped his heels hard against his mount’s sides, urging the reluctant horse back across the awful battlefield. At the far end of the vale he turned and waved.
“He’s a good man,” Tol said, and he and Egrin waved back.
“The most honorable man in the Eastern Hundred.”
“More than you?” blurted the boy.
The warden looked away to the horizon, absently rubbing one earlobe under his short helmet. His face was devoid of expression.
“I’m not honorable,” Egrin finally said, “only obedient.”
The hills grew higher and closer together as they neared Tol’s farm. Mud squelched under Old Acorn’s hooves. The last of winter’s snow had melted, leaving the high ground dry but the notches between the hills sodden.
They passed the place where Odovar had been ambushed. Scarcely twelve days had elapsed, but the site was much changed. The bodies were gone, either dragged away by wild animals or interred by pious farmers. Dead horses had been butchered for meat, and the trampled wreckage of battle scoured clean by scavenging homesteaders. Only memory and the scarred soil remained. A similar fate eventually would engulf the larger battlefield they’d seen.
It was dusk when they arrived at the onion field. Tol leaned to one side to see around Egrin. Neat hills of seedling onions had been planted despite his absence. That cheered him, but his pleasure quickly gave way to guilt. His poor mother must be mad with grief, wondering what had become of him! Perhaps they’d be so relieved at his return they wouldn’t mind so much that he’d left the ashwood hoe in Juramona.
They followed the well-worn path over the hill. Beyond the crest, Egrin pulled Old Acorn to a halt.
“You’d best go in alone, Tol,” the warden said, “Let them know I’m coming. A mounted man arriving after dark would frighten them.”
Tol slid off the horse and made his way alone down the sandy slope. He took care to whistle a tune his father had taught him as a recognition sign.
The family hut was nestled tight against the facing hill, three walls of wattle-and-daub, with the hillside itself serving as fourth wall. A pigsty squatted to the side of the hut, and there was a brick cistern in the yard.
Tol’s whistling abruptly ceased. No plume of smoke rose from the chimney hole-where was the evening’s fire? And why were the windows shuttered and dark?
Tol licked his dry lips, thinking silence would be safer than whistling. He left the path and skulked along the row of hay-berry bushes that lined it. His father had planted the thorny shrubs to keep wolves and panthers away. They were as tall as Tol and practically impenetrable. Hayberry thorns were a handspan long and tough enough to punch through boiled leather.
A horse neighed nearby, and Tol almost jumped into the thorn bushes. His family was too poor to own a horse, yet three were tethered to a post on the far side of the pigsty. Two animals were sturdy war-horses of no particular distinction, but the third was a splendid gray animal, trapped with gold-edged green silk that shimmered even in the twilight.
Green silk. Pakins!
Dropping to the ground, he crawled along the base of the thorn hedge. By the pigsty he found a heap of cold ashes, and many burnt bones. Where once there had been three yearling pigs in the pen, now only two remained, stirring restlessly at the sty’s far end. Someone had obviously roasted the third.
He reached the hut at last, and pressed an ear to the wall. There was no sound from inside. All was deathly still.
Something cold and metal touched his cheek. Tol jerked in surprise and looked up. A very dirty, ragged-looking soldier stood over him, his iron saber pressed against Tol’s face. On his upper right arm, the soldier wore a blood-streaked swatch of green cloth. Snarling, he seized Tol by the collar and dragged him bodily out into the yard.
“My lord,” the Pakin soldier called out. “I caught this boy sneakin’ around.”
The door of the hut swung in, and a figure stood silhouetted against the brighter interior of the hut.
“Who is it?” said the dark apparition.
When Tol didn’t answer, the soldier slapped him. “My name is Tol!” he said, rubbing his stinging ear. “I live here! With my family!”
The man emerged into the starlight. Instead of a face of flesh, the intruder’s countenance was chiseled bronze, fixed in a hideous grin. Tol instantly recognized the armor and carriage of the man he’d met before at the onion field, the lord who had hunted Marshal Odovar and commanded the monstrous panther-creature. It was Spannuth Grane, leader of the Pakin rebels in the southern and eastern provinces.
“I know you, boy,” Grane said, voice hollow inside his closed helmet. “You’re the farmer’s son. Where have you been?”
“Carried off by soldiers, master.” Tol was surprised both by his own easy lie and that such a lordly fellow would remember him after their brief meeting. “I was made to work for them until a few days ago, when I ran away.”
The leering bronze visor nodded slowly up and down. “Put him with the others,” Grane said. A second Pakin warrior came out of the house, and together he and his disheveled comrade shoved Tol inside.
His family was there, huddled by the hillside wall-his father, Bakal, his mother, Ita, and his two sisters, Zalay and Nira. His father had taken a beating: his face was bruised, and one eye was blackened and swollen shut Tol’s mother whimpered with relief and tried to stand and take him in her arms. She was stopped short by a cord tied to her wrists and ankles.
The Pakin soldiers shoved Tol at his anxious mother. They sprawled in a heap on top of his sister Nira. Sorting themselves into sitting positions, they had a low-voiced but joyful reunion.
“How long have they been here?” Tol asked softly.
“Since sundown yesterday,” muttered his father through split lips. “They killed our best pig, and mean to take the others-”
“Shut yer hole,” one soldier snapped. Bakal prudently obeyed.
One man went back outside, to stand watch. Lord Grane shut the door and sat down in the only chair, Bakal’s, by the cold fireplace. A lamp flickered on the hearth near his knee.
Grane removed his fearsome helm. Beneath it, he wore a close mail coif, so all Tol could see of his face was his nose and eyes. He did not resemble Vakka Zan, the White Pakin, for Grane’s eyes were as black and cold as unburned coal.
“Is this all your brood, farmer? Are we to expect any more visitors?”
“This is all,” Tol’s father grunted.
With arms folded, Grane sat facing the cowering family. Tol kept his eyes downcast, even as he strained his ears to hear any sign that Egrin was coming. He heard nothing, and finally his curiosity would not be denied.
“Sir, what are you going to do with us?”
His father growled at him to hush, but Grane replied, “A fair question. Since you were brave enough to ask, I’ll tell you. I shall tarry here awhile, resting. If you do not vex me, I shall spare your lives. When I depart, I shall resume the campaign of my master, the Pakin Successor, against the Ackal tyrant.”