He opened his eyes at the murmur of surprise, but now attention was completely off him for the moment, as the Hawkbrothers discussed possible numbers represented by what he remembered. From their worried faces, he gathered that the implications weren’t good.
“Were all the bear-men on the bridge?” Starfall asked him quietly.
“I think so,” he said, just as quietly. “But I don’t know for sure, because I ran. Some of them might have jumped into the river, and some of them might have gotten out of the way.”
“And some might have been farther back in the ranks,” Snowfire pointed out.
Starfall sighed and nodded agreement. “Did you see anyone that - “ He groped for words for a moment, then said something incomprehensible to Snowfire.
“Did you see anyone who looked like a mage?” Snowfire asked, then raised one eyebrow as if aware of the useless-ness of such a question.
“I didn’t see anyone wearing fancy robes, or who looked like he was doing any magic,” Darian replied, trying to be as exact as possible. “The thing on the lizard acted more like - like - somebody who was in charge of things, but not really in charge of everything, if you get my meaning. He acted like somebody who had to answer to somebody else. And when he got caught in the fire, the rest of ‘em acted like it was no great thing that he wasn’t there. Like maybe they were getting orders from somebody behind them.”
Darian was doing his best to answer the questions to the fullest, but the more he had to think about Justyn, to see the scene in his mind, the worse he felt. He was doing his best to hold back tears, but it wasn’t easy.
And it didn’t get any easier. “Where were the rest of your people at the time the bridge was destroyed?” Starfall asked.
“Gone,” Darian told him glumly. “They were all running away from the village when I was running toward it.”
“And you turned to run when the bridge was destroyed?” That was one of the scouts, a very young man whose face Darian remembered from last night.
He hung his head, not liking to think what they must believe of him for running. “Yes,” he admitted, flushing hotly, from the top of his head on down.
“And where were the enemy then?” the young man persisted. “Still on the other side of the river?”
Darian looked up, surprised to see that there was no open scorn in their faces. “No - “ he told them. “No, some of them were on the other side when I got out to the fields. I guess they must have forded the river, or something, but they were working their way through the fields, I guess to keep people from escaping.”
“And you eluded them?” came the question.
“Well,” he admitted, “there weren’t many of them. And I - ran away.” Admitting that to all of those people was one of the most difficult things he’d ever had to do, and he felt tension build up suddenly inside him. “I had to!” he cried out, the words forced out by the tension, “I had to! I couldn’t help Justyn. I didn’t know what else to do!”
And then, unexpectedly, he lost control of himself and burst into tears again, and felt another overwhelming wave of shame for losing control of himself, which ironically only made him cry harder.
Starfall patted his shoulder sympathetically, but evidently was not prepared to leave him alone. “I am sorry that we must ask these questions, Darian, but we need the answers. Now, do you remember how many men you saw on your side of the river, and if they were entirely human? An accurate number?”
The questioning went on despite his distress, becoming more and more detailed. Several times he lost control again and began to cry; each time the Hawkbrothers waited politely for him to regain control of himself, then continued from where they had left off.
Finally, though, they had exhausted everything he could tell them about the enemy army - for such, they were all agreed, it was. The questioning turned to another subject, one even more trying for him to face, because the subject was himself. Some of the scouts had gone off, leaving only Starfall, Snowfire, Wintersky, and two others, but the five of them were inexorable in their questions. If all the villagers were afraid to go into the Forest, why was he out there? Why was he not afraid of the Forest? What had happened to his parents? Why had he been signed over to Justyn’s care by the rest of the villagers? Why did the villagers have any say in what was to happen to Darian? Why didn’t Darian want to be a mage? Did he think there was something wrong with being a mage? Did he often run off? What did Justyn do when he disobeyed? Was he thinking of running away at the time of the attack? How did he feel about what Justyn did on the bridge?
It was the last question that undid him. It was bad enough having to admit how often he had gotten into trouble, and worse admitting that the reason he’d been sent out of the village was as a punishment for running away from a duty, but to be asked how he felt about seeing Justyn sacrifice himself -
Again, he started to cry, but this time he couldn’t get control of himself once he started. Snowfire even tried to soothe him, saying that he wasn’t at fault - but he knew that he was, and he was certain that, in some strange way, he should have been able to do something. But all he had done was to run away, like the coward he was.
“You weren’t there, you don’t know, you didn’t see what I did!” he wailed, his voice breaking with hysteria. “You don’t understand! I’m a coward, I’m a rotten, lying coward, and it’s all my fault!”
And with that, he ran, stumbling and half blinded with tears, out of the clearing, in the direction he’d been led from.
He couldn’t think of what to do, but when he found himself back in front of Snowfire’s hut, the darkness inside seemed a good place to hide himself in, and he blundered in. The owl was gone, it was very quiet, and he crumpled into a miserable heap on the sleeping pallet, crying so hard that he thought he would never be able to stop.
“Now I feel guilty,” Starfall murmured to Snowfire, as the child stumbled out of the gathering space, choking on his sobs.
Snowfire sighed. Nightwind had warned him last night that scenes like this would occur, and probably several times. “Nightwind thinks there are emotional hurts that he has not dealt with, except by avoiding them,” he told the Adept. “She said last night that he was suffering from other troubles, things that perhaps occurred some time ago. She was quite sure he would not even mention them unless he was prodded into it.”
“Well, it seems that one of those hurts was the loss of his parents,” Starfall said, and ran his hand through his silver hair. “Poor child. I would feel terrible if something happened to mine - he must feel dreadful.”
“It seems obvious to me that he has not been allowed to properly mourn for them,” Snowfire pointed out. “These people who took him in seemed to want to make him ashamed of them. Children may be resilient, but - “
“But not that resilient,” Starfall interrupted, his mouth set grimly. “And although these Valdemarans may have meant well, it is said by our cousins that ‘The road to disaster is ordered by the righteous, planned by the well-meaning, and paved with their good intentions.’ I think that, although Dar’ian has many faults, as do most younglings, they were viewed in an exaggerated manner. On the whole, they were in a fair way to ruining a fundamentally good child.”