"Great," Wiz muttered, appalled at the prospect.
True to her word, Moira set an even faster pace for the day’s journey. Wiz struggled to keep up, but he didn’t do any better than he had the day before. Several times they had to stop while he rested and Moira fidgeted.
From time to time Moira would take something from her pouch. Sometimes she flung the object as far as she could into the woods. A couple of times she buried it carefully. Once she hid a folded bit of cloth in a hollow log and once she dropped a piece of carved wood into a swiftly running stream.
Wiz could see the effort it took her to discard each of those items but he said nothing. There was nothing he could say.
The forest was more open than it had been the day before. The trees were smaller here. They were just as thick where they grew, but they were interspersed with clearings. Once they passed the ruins of a rock wall, running crazily through the woods.
They kept to the forest and stayed as deep among the trees as possible. Occasionally they had to skirt an open space and it was near one such clearing that Moira stopped suddenly and sniffed.
"Do you smell it?" she asked.
Wiz sniffed. "Something burnt, I think."
"Come on," Moira said, forging ahead and breasting through the undergrowth.
They were in the clearing before they recognized it. One minute they were pushing through bushes and brambles and the next they were standing on the fringe of a meadow, looking at the smoldering remains of a homestead.
There had been at least three buildings, now all were charred ruins. The central one, obviously a house, had stone walls which stood blackened and roofless. The soot was heaviest above the door and window lintels and a few charcoaled beams still spanned the structure. Of the nearer, larger building, a planked barn, there was almost nothing left. On the other side of the house was a log building with part of one wall standing.
"Something else," Wiz said, sniffing again. "Burned meat, I think."
But Moira was already running across the meadow. Wiz cast a nervous eye to the clear blue sky, then shifted his pack and followed.
When he caught up with her, Moira was standing in the space between the remains of the house and the smoldering heap of ashes that had been the barn, casting this way and that.
"What about dragons?" Wiz asked, looking up.
Moira’s suggestion on what to do with dragons was unladylike, probably impractical and almost certainly no fun at all.
"Did a dragon do this?" Wiz asked as they walked around the remains of the house.
"Probably not," Moira said distractedly. "Dragons might attack cattle in the fields or swine in their pen, but they seldom burn whole farms. This was done from the ground, I think."
"Well, then who?"
"Who is not important, Sparrow. The important thing is what happened to the people."
"I don’t see anyone," Wiz said dubiously.
"They may all have escaped. But perhaps some are lying hurt nearby and in need of aid. I wish I had not been so quick to discard parts of my kit this morning."
"There doesn’t seem to be anyone here."
"Then search more closely."
Moira didn’t call out and Wiz didn’t suggest it. He felt conspicuous enough as it was.
While Moira searched near the house and log building, Wiz wandered around the remains of the barn. The heaps of ashes were unusually high there and from the remains he guessed the barn had been full of hay when it went up. He wondered what had happened to the animals.
Wiz stumbled over something in the debris. He looked down and saw it was an arm, roasted golden crisp and then obviously gnawed. A child’s arm. Wiz opened his mouth to scream and vomited instead.
"What is it?" Moira came rushing up as he heaved his guts out. "What did you… Oh." She stopped short as she saw what lay on the ground between them.
"Oh my God," he moaned, retching the last bit of liquid from his stomach. "Oh my God."
"Trolls," Moira said, her face white and drawn, her freckles standing out vividly against the suddenly pale skin. "They burned this place and put the flames to use."
"They ate them," Wiz said
"Trolls are not choosy about their fare," Moira said looking out over the smoldering ruins.
"Hey! Do you think they’re still around?"
"Possibly," Moira said abstractedly. "After a meal like this trolls would be disinclined to go far."
"Then let’s get out of here before they come back for dessert."
"No!" Moira shouted. Wiz started and turned to see tears in her eyes. "We go nowhere until we bury these folk."
"But…"
"There was no one to do it for my family."
"Did your family end up… like that?" Wiz finally asked.
Moira’s face clouded. "I do not know. We never found them."
"What happened?"
"It was a summer day, much like today only later in the year. I had gone into the wood to pick berries. I filled my apron with them that my mother might make preserves. My father had found a bee tree, you see.
"It took me all the afternoon to gather enough berries. I was away for hours. And when I returned… there was no one there.
"The door to the cottage stood open and the cream was still in the churn, but my parents and brother and sisters were gone. I looked and called and searched until after nightfall. For three days I looked, but I never found them."
"What happened to them?"
"I don’t know. But there are worse things on the Fringe of the Wild Wood than being eaten by trolls."
Without thinking, Wiz clasped his arms around the hedge witch and hugged her to him. Without thinking she settled into his arms to be hugged and buried her head in his shoulder. They stood like that for a long minute and then Moira straightened suddenly and pulled away.
"Come on!" she said sharply. "Find something to dig with."
There was a charred spade leaning against the remains of the log building and Moira set Wiz to work digging a grave in what had been the kitchen garden. The tilled loam turned easily, but Wiz was red-faced and sweating before he had a hole large enough to suit Moira.
While he dug, Moira searched for pieces of bodies. Somewhere she found a smoke-stained old quilt to serve as a shroud. Wiz kept his head down and his back to her so he would not have to see what she was piling on the cloth spread among the heat-blasted cabbages.
With Wiz’s help, she hauled the lumpy stinking burden to the hole and dumped it in. It weighed surprisingly little, Wiz thought.
They shoveled dirt onto the quilt as quickly as they could. Wiz wielded the spade uncomplainingly in spite of the aches in his arms and back and the blisters springing up on his hands.
"It will not stop wolves or others from digging down," Moira said frowning at their handiwork as Wiz scraped the last of the earth onto the mound. "It should be covered with stone that their rest may be more secure."
"You want rocks?" Wiz said warily.
She thought and then shook her head. "There is not time. We will leave them as they are and hope." Then she bowed her head and her lips moved as she recited a blessing over the pathetic mound of fresh earth. When that was done she turned abruptly and signaled Wiz to follow.
The hurried back to the shelter of the forest. For once Moira didn’t have to urge Wiz on. He was more than eager to get away from that grisly farmstead and he was absolutely convinced of the reality of magic and their present danger.
"How did it go with the Council, Master?" Bal-Simba’s apprentice asked as the giant wizard came into his study.
"Well enough, Arianne." He leaned his staff against the wall and loosened his leopard-skin cloak. "But it is very good to be away from them for a while." Bal-Simba settled into a carved chair with a sigh and leaned back.