amazement of the other monks, he grabbed up one bucket of water and doused himself.
'Brother Cranston!' Francis scolded. 'We are all uncomfortable in the heat-'
'Rosy plague!' Cranston replied desperately. 'In that house… a woman… already dead.'
Francis rushed over and grabbed the man, shaking him. 'Rosy plague?' he asked breathlessly. 'Are you sure, brother?'
'Red spots with white rings all about her body,' Brother Cranston replied. 'Her eyes were sunken and bruised, and she had bled from her gums and her eyes, I could see. Oh, but she rotted away!'
Brother Julius came up to Francis and dropped a heavy hand on the master's shoulder. 'We must be far from this place at once,' he said gravely. Behind him, Francis heard another mutter, 'Better that the goblins come back and burn the whole town to the ground.'
Francis wanted to shout at the brother, to shove Julius and his words far aside. But he could not dismiss any of the remarks. The rosy plague! The scourge of Honce-the-Bear. Francis' primary duties at St.-Mere-Abelle for years had been as a historian, and so he knew, better than any, the truth of the rosy plague. It had first occurred in God's Year 412, devastating the southern reaches of the kingdom. One in seven had died, according to the records. One in seven. And in Yorkey that number had been closer to one in four. And yet the plague that had occurred the following century, from 517 to 529, had been even more virulent, devastating the Mantis Arm and spreading across the Gulf of Corona to Vanguard. Ursal had been particularly hard hit. Afterward the record keepers of the day, Abellican monks mostly, had put the death toll at one in three-some had even claimed that half the population of Honce-the-Bear had fallen.
The rosy plague!
How vulnerable Honce-the-Bear would have been then to invasion by Behren, to the south, except that Behren had not been spared either. Francis, of course, had no records of the death toll in that southern kingdom, but many of the accounts he had read had claimed that the Behrenese had suffered even more than the folk of Honce-the-Bear. Now the kingdom was even more thickly populated than it had been before the 517 plague, Francis knew. And now, given the war, the kingdom was even less prepared to handle such a disaster.
So even though Master Francis Dellacourt-the enlightened monk who had learned the truth of Father Abbot Markwart and of the heroes he had once considered enemies, had turned his life down a different road, a road of compassion and of service-wanted to yell against the callous remarks of his brethren, he could not find the strength to do so. Not in that terribly shocking moment, not in the face of the threat of the rosy plague!
But first he had to go and see. He had read the descriptions of the disease, had seen artists' renderings of the victims. Several times since 529, there had been reports of the plague, but they had proven either to be minor outbreaks or simply the mistaken claims of desperate people. He bade his brethren to stay there, except for a pair he sent in search of the three stillmissing brethren, and then Master Francis gathered up his strength and strode determinedly toward the hovel at the end of the lane.
He heard weeping and found a pair of children within, looking haggard and afraid. He brushed past them and through a curtain, and there she lay.
Ring around the rosy, Gather bowls of posies
Burn the clothes
And dig the holes And cover us with dirt.
It was the first verse of an old children's song, a poem that had been penned sometime around God's Year 412, a song of the attempts to ward off the killer plague by diminishing the rotting stench of its victims with flowers, a song that told the honest truth for those who contracted the illness. ' 'And cover us with dirt,' ' Francis whispered. 'Get out! Get out!' he yelled at the children. 'Out and far away from here. You can do nothing for your mother now. Get out!' He chased the weeping children out before him into the lane; and several townsfolk, Laird Dinnishire among them, came over.
'My brethren and I will go out after the goblins,' Francis explained to him. 'With luck, they will not return to your town.'
'What's wrong in the house?' the concerned laird asked.
Francis looked at the hovel. 'Burn it,' he instructed.
'What?'
'Burn it to the ground,' Francis declared, fixing the man with a determined stare, 'at once.'
'Ye can'no-'
'Burn it!' Francis interrupted. 'You must trust me, Laird Dinnishire, I beg of you. No one is to enter.'
The laird stared at him incredulously, and those behind Dinnishire shook their heads and mumbled.
Francis took the laird by the arm and pulled him aside. And then he explained to the man, plainly and honestly, that the goblins were not the worst of their troubles this hot summer day.
'Ye canno' be sure,' Dinnishire protested.
'I am not,' Francis lied, for he did not want to start a panic, and forewarning, beyond burning the house, would do the folk ofDavon Dinnishire little good. 'But are we to risk the chance that I am right? The woman is dead, and her husband and children-'
'Husband's been dead two years now,' Laird Dinnishire explained. 'Killed in a powrie fight.'
'Then the children must be taken in elsewhere. Burn the house to its foundation, and then you, and another one or two you can trust, must go and clear the remains of the house and of the dead woman.'
Laird Dinnishire stared at him.
'I beg of you, Laird Dinnishire,' Francis said solemnly.
'Ye'll keep them goblins off us? ' the man asked.
Francis nodded, then went back and gathered up his brethren; and out they went, on the hunt for goblins.
As soon as they reached the trees beyond the farms immediately surrounding Davon Dinnishire, Francis set the group into a defensive formation. Not wanting to diminish his own magical energies any more than he already had done with his efforts in healing the injured townsfolk, he gave the finest hematite to Brother Julius and bade the monk to spirit-walk to search for the goblins.
Julius was dumfounded. He had attempted only one spirit-walk in his years at St.-Mere-Abelle, and that had not gone well-the monk unintentionally had tried to inhabit the body of another nearby student. 'I am not so good at such a task,' he admitted. Francis nodded, for he understood well the man's trepidation. Markwart, Avelyn, and Jilseponie had all taken gemstone use to a higher level, where such feats as spirit-walking seemed almost routine. Francis, too, had learned much in his days beside the Father Abbot, and he had forgotten how daunting spirit- walking could be. And how dangerous. He took back the gemstone, then, regretting that he would be using even more of his magical energies, and set off out of body, rushing through the trees, across the small river, and over the wide bluffs.
He found the goblin band almost immediately and counted their number at only thirty. He stayed with them only a few seconds, to get a feel for their organization and readiness, then headed back, taking a circuitous route, which confirmed his suspicions that the rest of the group-another score, perhaps-was spread out among the trees.
'They have done well in choosing and setting up their encampment,' Francis explained when he returned to his brethren. Before the details of the terrain were lost from his memory, he bent down and sketched out a rough map in the dirt. 'We'll not get anywhere close to the goblins without being noticed.'
'Let us turn for St.-Mere-Abelle, then,' Brother Julius started to say, but Francis cut him short with an angry glare.
'We need not go to them,' Francis went on. 'I doubt that they expect any trouble from the townsfolk-it seems more reasonable that they believe the people of Davon Dinnishire will await the next attack from behind the walls of their village. To get back there, the goblins will likely take this route.' He indicated the fairly obvious path on his map. 'Let us prepare a section of that same path for their march.'
The monks headed out at once, coming to a stretch of wide-limbed maples, with a clear and easily traveled path beneath that Francis reasoned the goblins would take, not expecting any ambush. Francis took a good, long look at the area. Never had he been much of a tactician, but rather more of a political animal.
'If I may, Master Francis,' said Brother Julius, apparently noting that the man was at a loss. 'We put everyone up in the trees, except you, who will travel to the far end with the graphite. Those of us carrying crossbows will arm the weapons.' He glanced around and nodded, for more than half the monks did carry crossbows. 'The rest will
