Owlflight

Right. He could kill all the guards that he could see. How many more men were there that he couldn’t see? If they’d gotten to the point this quickly of killing and eating the oxen - tough meat at best -

Anger flooded him next, anger at the Hawkbrothers. Why hadn’t they told him the truth?

It faded as quickly as it came. They hadn’t told him, perhaps, because they didn’t know themselves. It was entirely possible that this was the first day the villagers had been put to work in the fields. Why should the enemy have put them out? It would have been more logical for them to take their captives away; sell them, perhaps, or put them to work in their own fields back in the northern mountains.

Unless, of course, they had decided to stay.

He couldn’t do anything here, and this was information that the Hawkbrothers didn’t have. He had to get back, as quickly as he could.

It’s not cowardice to go. I can’t do anything by myself, and Stariall and the rest need to know what’s happened here.

Carefully, he backed the horse into the heavier cover before he mounted. He considered his next move carefully. He hadn’t really been paying attention when the horse took off on its own. Somehow, if there were sentries (and there probably were) the horse had managed to thread its way past them without being spotted. So if he could retrace the horse’s path, he could do the same.

Finally, finally something he could do right! He felt a grin stretch his mouth, an expression that had not been on his lips since his parents died. If? Say rather, how quickly. The day he could not track a shod horse in the soft earth of the forest floor would be a day when he renounced his heritage and asked to be apprenticed to a clerk!

He had to cast around a bit before he found the clear trail; it had gotten a little muddled when he finally got control of the reins back from the stubborn beast. But once he found the trail, the rest was easy.

He soon saw how the horse had gotten up onto the bluff without his realizing it; the beast had wound a zigzag course up the slope, taking the ascent so gradually that he hadn’t known they were climbing. He was tempted to cut straight down, but reminded himself that the horse had managed to avoid the sentries this way; it wouldn’t be a good idea to take what appeared to be a shorter path only to run into one of the enemy.

The horse didn’t want to be ridden away from its mates, and fought him for a good long time, which didn’t make finding the path more difficult, but did take up more valuable time. It was sunset by the time that Darian got to a point where he was fairly certain that there were no enemies to watch out for. By then, the horse was tired enough to stop fighting, which was just as well, because Darian’s temper was frayed to a thin strand, and he was in no mood for further nonsense.

With a clear path ahead of them, Darian finally got some revenge; he smacked the horse’s rump with his unstrung bow, startling it into a tired gallop, and headed for the Hawkbrother encampment as fast as the miserable beast would go.

Weary and aching, Darian found himself the center of another Council, but now he understood what was being said, which was certainly an improvement over the last time.

Hweel had met him outside the valley, and Snowfire at the entrance; Darian had feared anger or reproach for being gone so long, but to his surprise, Snowfire had been perfectly calm right up until the moment he had gotten within speaking distance and blurted, “I’ve been to Errold’s Grove! They’re all slaves!”

Snowfire’s expression had changed completely in that moment, and Darian found himself swept off the horse and into the middle of a Council that was assembled so hastily that people actually came running to the clearing while pulling on tunics or holding half-braided hair in one hand. Hertasi simply appeared with boots, shirts, food, hair-thongs, or anything else that had been forgotten, and vanished again. One of them left a bowl of stew, bread, and tea at Darian’s hand without him ever actually seeing the food left there, just the flash of a departing tailtip.

As firelight flickered on the concerned faces of his Hawkbrother hosts, he alternated bites of stew and gulps of tea with words of explanation.

The only person missing from this council session was Starfall, but although no one said anything, Darian guessed from what wasn’t said that Starfall had more than enough problems of his own.

Finally the others stopped firing questions at him and began a worried discussion among themselves. Darian turned his own attention to the remains of his meal, too tired and hungry to really think of anything else. As he wiped the bowl with his bread, Wintersky came and sat on a rock beside him.

“I hope you don’t think we deceived you, Dar’ian,” the young man said, leaning forward earnestly. “After the way that Kel and Hweel were caught by those magic-sniffing creatures, we didn’t want to risk anything or anyone that might set off more such guardians, and someone kept us from being able to use scrying to set a watch on the place magically. And it didn’t seem advisable to risk being seen ourselves - the enemy doesn’t know we’re here, and if he did, he might decide to attack. We were certain that all the barbarians had were houses, some stock, but never people. If we’d had any idea that those barbarians had your people, we’d have risked more to find out for certain, then to do something for them - “