The woman glanced at him, guessing his thoughts. "Soldiers took em. And any that come'll take your horses."
"They can try," Magiere replied with the cock of an eyebrow.
It was difficult to guess her age.
A few more villagers came out of hiding, taking cautious steps at the sight of strangers. All were women and younger children but for one old man, thin and bony. The short crop of his white hair and beard suggested he might be one of the few who ever lived to serve his time at arms and be released to go home. He wore a vestment of furred hide, and the ridge of an old scar ran down his right forearm to the back of his hand.
"Who do you have there, Helen?" he asked in a cracked voice.
"Lodgers that can pay."
"Best hide those horses," he said with a steady gaze. "And the wagon."
Helen didn't answer. Perhaps she did not care to be reminded of something she already knew.
A wide main way ran through the village's clustered huts, with four crossing paths that were barely more than muddy trails. Leesil spotted a communal smokehouse for drying meat, but it wasn't in use this late in the year. The only dwelling alive with activity was a rickety structure with bundles of ash tree branches piled out front beside an entrance covered with a deer-hide curtain. Three elder women sat there on a bench, splitting and trimming feathers.
"You make arrows?" Leesil asked.
"We can't do the heads anymore," Helen said. "My father was the smith, so the soldiers let him stay here when I was a girl. He taught me to make proper shafts. I taught the others. Captain Kevoc arrives in a few days, as he does once a moon. He trades us fair… or more so than most."
Leesil looked back at Chap and Wynn still riding in the wagon. The sage stared about the village. When she looked Leesil's way, her gaze passed beyond him into the distance. She raised a hand to point, and Leesil looked back ahead.
Rounding a bend through the forest near the village's far end, Leesil counted five-no, six-men on foot. Most wore mismatched leather armor, while the lead man wore a chain vest. They were armed with short-swords and longknives sheathed at their waists, the typical armaments given to soldiers. It seemed the village's benefactor had arrived early, but then Leesil abandoned such a notion. Foot soldiers were one thing, but an officer never walked. All of these men were on foot.
"Forgetful gods," Helen whispered.
Magiere cast her a startled look upon hearing the curse Leesil so often used. "Are they soldiers?" she asked.
Chap jumped down from the wagon. As the dog came up beside him, Leesil noticed Wynn digging through their belongings.
"Magiere," Wynn called softly. She lowered the falchion and punching blades over the wagon's side.
Magiere backed toward her, but Leesil kept his eyes on the newcomers.
"Not soldiers," Helen said. "Deserters. They just come to take what we have."
Magiere stepped up behind Leesil, and he slipped one hand behind his back. She placed the handles of his punching blades into his palm. He gripped them both as one.
"Helen, girl," the leader called out as he passed between the farthest huts. "You have company."
Villagers backed away as his men spread out to peer into and between the huts as they came. One behind the leader was little more than a nervous boy carrying the remains of a horse mace, its haft broken off near the butt. The man to the far right kicked open a hut's plank door and leaned halfway in to look about. When he backed out, Leesil saw he had a woman's tattered shawl wrapped about his head, its tail end covering the lower half of his face. A deep harrow of split scar tissue arched from his left eyebrow through the bridge of his nose to disappear beneath the fabric. He grunted at his leader, who didn't acknowledge him.
Tall and lean, the leader wore a shirt of torn quilted padding beneath his chain vest. His black hair was cropped almost to his scalp, and his square jaw was covered in stubble. He remained calm and poised, walking with slow care. There were no visible scars on his forearms, hands, or face, and that made Leesil wary.
Leesil had seen their hardened kind before. But in his youth, marauding bands of deserters had been rare. That they moved so openly meant patrols through the land had become scarce. The way the boy huddled close to the leader gave Leesil pause. The man in the chain vest wasn't old enough to be the father, nor did they look alike, yet there was some bond between them. A litany of Leesil's own father surfaced in his thoughts as he studied the two, and some part of him understood and accepted their way in this hopeless land.
Do what is necessary. Take care of your own. And consequence matters not until it comes.
Chap began to rumble.
Leesil expected the deserters to come straight for the horses, but the leader stopped near the fletcher's shack. The three old women splitting feathers had vanished.
"A new crop of shafts are ready," the man said.
Helen tensed and pushed Willem off to the side and behind her.
Leesil remained still. These men knew the village's trading schedule. They'd come to steal arrow shafts before they could be traded for winter supplies. The scarf-wrapped man pulled aside the hide on the shack's doorway.
"I wouldn't do that," Leesil warned.
The leader looked at him without reaction. The man's lack of expression made Leesil shift his feet, feeling the ground for footing. Even the undead, like Ratboy, showed rage or hatred or passion, but this man's eyes held nothing. He was dead and didn't know it yet, or he didn't care either way.
Leesil remembered what that was like, felt it even now.
"Hold your tongue, man," the leader said, "and lead those horses over."
Chap growled, and Leesil sidestepped to the right, letting Magiere move into the open with her falchion in plain sight.
"Turn back and walk out," Magiere said.
Chap's low growl quickened to a snarl. Leesil lifted his blades in front of himself, both appearing as but one weapon. He heard a click behind him and knew Wynn had managed to load one of their crossbows.
The leader blinked once. That was all the reaction Leesil caught. Perhaps the man did still care about his own death or those under his charge.
"Six to three," the leader said. "The odds don't favor you."
The old man with cropped white hair stepped out of his hut a few paces behind the leader. Leesil hadn't even noticed him disappear. One of the marauders skidded back from him, drawing a shortsword. The leader turned his head just enough to see what was happening.
The old soldier held a barkless wooden rod the length of his arm and as thick as his wrist. Its smooth surface looked polished. Most likely it had been ground down-boned-with a cow's bone to make the wood hard and tough. He stood quietly, looking to the leader, matching his dispassionate gaze.
To Leesil's eye, there seemed little difference between them other than the choice of what was theirs to keep and protect. The rest of the villagers remained silent, cowering back out of the way. Even the people of Magiere's village had gathered together in their superstitions to face down strangers thought "unnatural." It wasn't the same here, where peasants were beaten down one generation after another, and fighting back gained little more than retribution.
As the leader looked back to Leesil, Helen pulled her skirt up and jerked a long iron knife from her worn boot. Another long moment and an elder woman appeared from behind a hut with a woodsman's ax in her hand. None of the other villagers moved, and one woman pulled her two girls farther back against a hut wall. The boy with the broken mace stepped a little closer to his superior, eyes frightened.
"Odds change," Leesil countered, and he separated his blades so that it was clear he held two. "That's the way of luck."