Marren’s sword! How dare he make off with it! Malek attempted to stand, but pain shot through his ribs and brought him up short. Gasping, he dropped back on his hands. Rakell’s companions laughed.
“Heal up, firebrand!” Rakell said, chuckling. “Next time will be your turn. I’d take you now, but the work is hard enough with healthy ribs!”
Rakell’s lieutenants ordered the huts searched. Lancers and ogres scattered, kicking down doors and dragging out women and children who’d hidden inside. Behind Caeta’s hut they found her cow. A lancer looped a halter around the beast’s horns and led her away. When her shaggy calf tried to follow, bawling, another lancer speared it. The sight and smell of blood inflamed the ogres beyond reason. Whooping, they fell on the still-living calf and tore it apart with their hands. Aghast, villagers watched in horror as the ogres happily ate the raw, bloody flesh with all-too-evident joy.
The human raiders filled waterskins and bottles from the well. One young warrior fetched his commander a cool drink. Rakell raised the skin to his lips, squinting against the late-day sun. The water had just begun to flow when Rakell stopped swallowing. Water coursed over his black-bearded chin.
“Mother of scorpions! Can it be?” he breathed. “Are there ghosts in this wasteland too?”
“My lord?” said the young man who’d given his water to Rakell.
The commander tossed the bottle to his aide and spurred his horse forward. At a slow walk, he approached the two figures standing before a rude and humble hut.
“It is you!” Rakell said. “Marren uth Aegar!”
The blind man lifted his chin. “No one has called me that for nine and twenty years,” he said. “Who speaks that forgotten name?”
“I served under you as a lad, forty years ago,” said Rakell. “I fought my first battle in the vale of Garnet at your side.”
“Who are you?” said Laila sharply.
“Another ghost.” Rakell unbuckled the gorget around his neck, revealing the base of his throat. A great livid scar stretched from under one ear all the way around to the other. Laila cried out, unable to believe anyone could survive such a wound.
“What is it, girl?” said her father.
“His throat was cut, and yet he lives!” she said, choking.
Marren breathed a single word. It might have been a name, but no one near, not even Laila, could make it out.
Rakell replaced the gorget. “It’s a day for resurrections, girl, if Marren uth Aegar lives too.”
To his aides he said, “These two shall come with me. Take them!”
“No!” Laila bloodied her knuckles punching a visored warrior, but it was all for naught. Her hands were pinioned, but she continued to struggle and kick. Not until a noose was hung over her father’s unbowed neck did she relent.
“Leave him be!” she cried.
“He can be led or be dragged,” Rakell retorted. “I can set one of my ogres to the task, or you may do it-if you behave yourself!”
Pale but furious, Laila agreed. The noose was taken off.
The lancers and ogres, with twenty enslaved villagers between them, started off at a slow shuffle, their backs to the setting sun. When Malek saw Laila and her father walking in the midst of Rakell and his lieutenants, he found the strength to stand and shout her name.
Heads turned all around. Rakell reined up, waiting to see what Malek might do. Unarmed, unskilled, the young farmer stood, trembling with rage.
“Ride on,” Rakell said calmly. With his first step, his horse put a hoof through the village’s well bucket, crushing it.
Lancers and ogres rampaged through the village huts, taking what trifles caught their eye. They despoiled far more than they stole. The worst loss occurred when two ogres found Wilf’s pigs. With deep grunts of satisfaction, the towering monsters waded into the pen, grabbing the young farmer’s fat porkers by the hindquarters. Tucking a shrilly squealing animal under each noisome arm, the ogres followed their leader out of the village.
No one moved until the raiders were just a column of dust rising from the hills again. Malek shook his fist at the drifting ochre pall.
Someone touched his shoulder. Malek spun, fists ready. It was his brother Nils.
“They took Larem!” he said. Malek saw something in his placid brother’s eyes he’d never seen there before: total outrage. “He’s only sixteen!”
“I know.” Malek put a hand on Nils’s shoulder and coughed when the dust cloud swept over them. Every gasp felt like a knife in his ribs. Muddy streaks appeared on his face. “We must go after them!”
“Wait!” Caeta held Malek back. “You can’t go. They’ll kill you!”
He tore free from her grasp and stamped his feet in helpless fury. “Laila! They took Laila!”
“The Elder,” said Nils, casting eyes at the windmill, sited on a low rise outside the village. There amidst the cogs and grindstones lived Nowhere’s eldest resident. “Let’s ask Calec. He’ll know what to do!”
Old folks and children were sent back to their huts as the villagers swarmed up the hill to the mill. The airs were light, so the four vanes of the windmill quivered in place but did not turn. Without bothering to knock, Malek burst in. The others crowded in behind him.
“Aged One! Terrible news!” Malek said.
Calec raised his head from the knob of his walking stick. “I know. I saw.”
No one questioned his claim. The old man couldn’t see ten steps ahead, and he was nearly deaf, too. Only a deaf man could stand to live in the mill when the works were clattering. Nonetheless, for many years they’d all known the Elder could see and hear things an ordinary man could not.
“What shall we do, Papa?” asked Caeta.
“Do about what?”
“The bandits!” Malek ground his teeth. “They took our people to slave in some mine!”
The Elder’s toothless jaw worked. “Take ’em back!”
Malek and the others who’d lost people today roundly cheered the old man’s pronouncement, but Caeta said, “How can we? Those men are warriors. What about the ogres? How can we fight them?
“Then do nothing!” said the Elder testily. He lowered his chin to his stick and let his sunken eyes close.
“I’m going to try!” Malek declared. “Who’s with me?”
Some were, and some weren’t. It disgusted Malek that not all his fellow villagers would rally around him.
“Calves to the slaughter,” Calec muttered. “Go now, and die.”
Mentioning calves reminded everyone of the fate of Caeta’s unfortunate beast. The memory of the ogre tusks biting out mouthfuls of still-living flesh was all too vivid.
Seeing the increasing number of downcast faces, Malek exclaimed, “Are we beaten, then? Do we give up our loved ones without a fight?”
“We’re not warriors,” Bakar said dolefully.
Malek felt as though the dirt floor of the mill was crumbling beneath his feet. “I’ll go alone, if I have to!” he declared. He was almost out the door when Calec said, “Wait!”
Malek paused. “Speak your piece, old man, and be done with it.”
A thousand fine wrinkles appeared when the Elder screwed his ancient face into a grimace. “Would you plow a barley field with a dibble?”
“Of course not!” A dibble was a simple hand tool, useful only in small gardens.
“But you’ll fight an outlaw band alone-with your bare hands?”
“If I must,” Malek replied stiffly.
“You need a plow to cultivate a field,” said the Elder, wheezing a little as he shifted on his haunches. “For this great task, you need warriors to fight warriors.”
“What are you saying, Papa?” asked Caeta.
“Set a wolf to eat a wolf! The world is full of spillers of blood and wielders of iron. They afflict the land as fleas torment a dog! Go and find some to fight your battle for you. Let their blood be shed, not ours!”
Everyone began babbling at once, debating the old man’s notion. Nils spoke for the nay-sayers when he asked, “How will we pay warriors? They’ll want steel or gold. We have nothing!”