Vorwich motioned to one of his men to come forward. The man carried a leather pouch across one shoulder and reached into it for a pen and paper he then handed to his boyerman. “I need to send a rider back to Clengoth to semaphore on to Hetman Keelan the general situation. I’m sure he’s hard to be around right now, wondering what’s happening here. He needs to know the situation is stabilized, and there’s no need to send more men.
“Abbot, I know you have more immediate tasks, but as soon as you can, write a detailed report of everything that happened. Best if you and Denes both write separate reports to get different perspectives. Although I don’t think there’s any chance the Buldorians will return, just in case, the fifty men I brought with me will stay the next two days, until your other men return from Gwillamer and patrol. The rider carrying the message for the hetman should meet the additional men coming from Clengoth. I’ll include instructions for them to turn back. I don’t see they’re needed here. I’ll return to Clengoth tomorrow, so have your reports ready by tomorrow morning.”
For several more hours, Yozef sat on a stone curb, watching people moving about. His leg throbbed from his wound and the stitches. He relived the minutes of the battle a hundred times. It was late afternoon by the time he recognized signals from his body. His muscles ached, his throat was parched, and his stomach growled to remind him that despite what had transpired, he was still alive and had not eaten or drunk anything since the morning meal.
It was a slow walk to the cottage, aided by a forked tree branch serving as a makeshift crutch. Seeing the cottage exactly as he had left it that morning seemed . . . wrong, as if the intervening time might have been another dream . . . or a nightmare.
Elian sat on the porch. As soon he rounded the hillock a hundred yards from the cottage, she rose and went inside. When he approached, Brak appeared in the doorway of the barn he had built to replace the original dilapidated one. He held a pitchfork in one hand, the other arm bandaged and tied to his side. Brak gave him a curt nod and disappeared back into the barn.
He entered the cottage. It smelled of freshly baked bread and a meaty stew. The table was set for one.
“Is Brak all right?” Yozef asked. “His arm is bandaged.”
“A minor cut from the abbey this morning. The medicants treated it, and we came back here.”
“Is he working in the barn with an injury?”
“There’s work to do,” Elian said matter-of-factly. “He’s not one to let needed work be put off.”
Not even if wounded in a life-or-death fight that morning?
“Sit and eat,” Elian said. “I bet you haven’t eaten anything since morning meal.”
She never asked about his limp or the condition of his pants leg.
Yozef sat. Elian set a bowl of stew, a covered loaf of warm bread, and a flask of phila wine in front of him, then stood there to be sure he ate. He looked at the food . . . at the older woman . . . at the food . . . and ate.
He thought he had caught a glimpse of her at the abbey this morning. She and Brak must have moved as fast as their aging bodies would let them get to the abbey before the raiders, taken part in the defense, then come back here for Brak to work and Elian to bake fresh bread.
Who were these people?
Culich Keelan couldn’t sit. He had been on his feet for ten hours, ever since first word of the raid on Abersford and St. Sidryn’s had arrived from Clengoth via semaphore. His bad knee ached, and Breda gave up trying to get him to sit. Maera didn’t try; she knew it was futile and was surprised her father didn’t wait for news at the semaphore station in Caernford, instead of at the Keelan Manor.
The men in the main hall also waited for news, but most sat. Word had spread throughout Caernford, and those with families and friends at Abersford, along with those simply concerned, milled by the hundreds around the semaphore station just outside the clan’s capitol.
For the fifth time, Culich asked the same question. “Pedr, Vortig . . . you’re sure we shouldn’t be sending men to Clengoth?”
For the fifth time, Vortig gave the same answer. “Not from the reports we’ve had so far. Boyerman Vorwich dispatched a hundred and fifty men. They should be at St. Sidryn’s by now, although even they are likely too late to make any difference. If the pattern is the same as raids on other clans, the raiders are gone within a few hours. All we can do is wait and hope for the best.”
For the fifth time, the answer did nothing for the hetman’s mood.
Maera and Breda watched the latest exchange from a doorway to the main hall.
“I wish your father would get off that bad knee of his,” Breda said. “What good does it do to aggravate it?”
“Speaking of Father sitting, what about you, Mother? I can’t remember seeing you not standing.”
Breda wrung her hands. “Oh, Maera. I still have trouble even conceiving of this. St. Sidryn’s! I can’t help but imagine Culich and Diera killed and the abbey burned! That’s what happened to other abbeys attacked the last few months. Somehow I didn’t believe it could happen in Keelan.”
“I know how you feel. I knew it was possible, but knowing something is possible is nowhere near the reality when it happens. There’s still hope. The abbey is some distance from the shore, and people might have had time to flee inland.”
Breda shook her head at the attempt to assuage her fears. “Do you really think Culich would abandon the abbey or Diera, if there was even one patient in the hospital?”
Maera was quiet for several seconds, then morosely shook her head. “No. They’d both stay at the abbey. All we can do now is await word and pray they fought the raiders off.”
“Which is what I have been doing all day. I only hope God is listening.”
Both women jerked their heads toward the front of the house when they heard a horse gallop up, then neigh as if being brought up short by its rider. Then voices—many voices from the others waiting on the front veranda. Culich and the other men poured out from the main hall and through the front door, Maera and Breda merging with the men.
A messenger from the semaphore station leaped off his horse and bounded up the front stairs, as Culich rushed out the door. The hetman grabbed the message without saying a word or looking at the messenger. He glanced over the message, visibly relaxed, and then read it again slower. People held their breath. Culich let the hand holding the message fall to his side. Pedr Kennrick snatched it without asking and started reading, as the hetman spoke.
“The raiders were beaten off and have left. St. Sidryn’s and Abersford suffered minimal damage and casualties. No further assistance is required, according to Boyerman Vorwich.”
The sounds of multiple lungs letting out air was audible, followed by a cacophony of exclamations and questions.
“How—? Other information—? Thank the Merciful God! How many casualties—?” On and on it went.
Culich raised both arms to quiet the gathering. “There’s no other information in the message. Boyerman Vorwich says he’ll pass on more as it comes to him. There’s no way to know when more will come, so it’s best we return to whatever we were doing until we hear more later today or tomorrow.”
The request to disperse was fulfilled, although it took a half hour of small groups talking and Culich meeting with Kennrick and Luwis before he could finally sit.
The day after the raid, word spread that in four days, Godsday, a special service for those slain in the raid and for deliverance of the rest of the people would be held in the cathedral. The time was later than normal for a Godsday service to allow those more distant to travel. And they came: every soul in Abersford and the abbey who could move, people from farms, mines, and settlements as far away as Clengoth, including Boyerman Vorwich and his entire family. Visitors traveling through the empty countryside and nearby hamlets would wonder what had happened to the people. They’d have learned the answer if they reached St. Sidryn’s Abbey and viewed horses, carts, wagons, and carriages staked for hundreds of yards around the main wall, and they may or may not have been able to pack themselves into the cathedral. The normal seating capacity of 800 was extended to 1,300 with temporary benches, chairs, cushions, boxes, and anything else that could support a person, with more people crammed into the pews than usual. Another almost 300 souls stood at the back and sides, on walkways two, three, and four stories around the chamber and a final hundred or more sat on the floor of the altar area normally reserved for the brothers and the sisters.