finishing off a wild pig.
Joss trotted over to them, but it was too late. Gani lay with body slack and blood leaking from his mouth. 'I thought we were going to capture them.'
The two militiamen — one a heavyset young woman and the other an older man — had fury etched in their expressions. Both spat on the corpse before turning to Joss.
'You'll see,' said the woman. She tested her right leg, then groped at her right knee.
'How bad?' asked her companion.
'Eh. It'll bruise, but nothing was cut. Now I understand why the holy ones ordered their spirits buried. Fah!' She spat again, wiped her mouth, and kicked the corpse.
'Here, now!' Joss hadn't yet sheathed his sword.
'We'll lay offerings at the Thunderer's altar so his blood doesn't corrupt us,' added the woman. 'Come on.' She limped back toward the trees. Joss and the other man followed.
The settlers in this region had left the rank of ancient ironwood alone, but the woodland behind it showed all the signs of being second-growth, trees and shrubs sprouting where once a mature stand of forest had stood. His companions hacked a way through. He pushed past bushes whose crests waved above his head. His feet squelched on debris soaked by the rains.
A tiny campsite had been cut out of the middle of a particularly
labyrinthine architecture of interlaced tranceberry bushes. It was wider than he expected, although still in shadow from the foliage all around it, and covered with a carpet of recently downed branches and the mulch of last year's leaf litter. In this small clearing, eleven ordinands lay dead and two militiamen were wounded. Lehit had her back to him; she was hectoring some poor soul. She saw him, and limped over.
'What happened?' he asked. 'I thought you wanted to capture them.'
Shock showed in the way she stared at him, as if she could not comprehend words. She shook her head, but was only trying to get strands of hair out of her eyes. She brushed them away with the back of a bloody hand. 'Once we suspected they were here, it was easy to track them. We crept in on three sides, and attacked just as we said. They wouldn't surrender. Once they saw they'd lost and that they couldn't escape, they fought to make us kill them, or killed themselves rather than be taken prisoner.'
'A frightening sense of purpose. That lad crawled at me with two arrows stuck in his back. He meant to kill me.'
'Yet none of that is the worst you'll see.' She gestured, and he walked with her over to a sliver of an opening in the pipe-brush.
They had dug a pit into the ground, deep enough that a tall man standing upright could barely touch the rim with outstretched arms. The walls of the pit were slimy with moist soil, worms, and bugs, and the stink of excrement and urine was strong in the depths. Into this pit they had flung children. One was a headless corpse, still dressed in the ragged remains of an everyday short tunic now smeared with dirt and spattered with blood. The rest were alive, staring up fearfully. He counted twelve.
'Are these the missing children?' he asked Lehit, feeling sick. 'Do any of you recognize them? Here, let's get them out of here.'
They were too afraid to reach up their hands to be pulled free. They didn't know the guardsmen, and it quickly became apparent some had been raped. Coming out of the pit might bring a new round of horrors. One boy began to cry and, after a moment in which they watched the stunned and horrified guardsmen for their reaction and saw that nothing was to happen to the crying boy, the rest began to weep as well.
With an effort, Joss found his voice. 'Lehit, send a couple of your guards and ask members of the families who are missing children to come out here.'
Two were sent. Lehit stayed, scratching her chin, while the heavy-set woman jumped into the pit. The children shrank away from her, but she crouched and began talking in a singsong voice, telling the tale of the Swift Horse, a familiar and soothing bedtime story that every child knew by heart. She didn't look at them or try to engage them; she just talked.
Joss moved back from the edge of the pit. In the clearing, the guardsmen were dragging the bodies to one side, while the older man and Pash knelt beside the wounded pair, stanching and binding.
'Bad enough to kidnap children,' said Lehit in a low voice. 'But we all hear such stories, when a family becomes desperate without young ones to carry on the line. But to brutalize them in such a manner, and them not even having celebrated their Youth's Crown to be of age! While meanwhile, the Devourer gives freely to any person willing to walk through Her gate. How could any decent person choose this over what the gods have ordained?'
The familiar throb of a headache was beginning to build. Joss rubbed his eyes. 'They'd not been here long. It doesn't smell bad enough.'
Lehit leaned close. She'd had a bit of rice wine; its sour brack perfumed the air briefly. 'How did you know this camp was here? That these youths were part of the enemy's army? We're so overwhelmed with all the folk up in the haven that we'd never have known. I sent out a few patrols to search for the missing children, but… how did you guess?'
He thought of his dream. 'A reeve asks questions when things don't look right.'
'That other reeve didn't ask. Seems to me you've better sight than most.'
He shrugged.
Pash walked over, wiping his hands on a bit of torn cloth. 'Best we carry the wounded and the young ones back to the haven quickly, for a miasma dwells in this place that would corrupt the healthiest man.' He glanced toward the pit.
The woman's voice drifted up, the tale unfolding in a soothing patter of words. The other guardsmen waited in silence.
'How did you know, Reeve?' Pash asked Joss. 'We'd have never found them if you hadn't guessed. Them so young to be so foul. Sheh! It's beyond my understanding.'
Joss remembered words spoken twenty years ago. He still heard
Marit's voice as though she was speaking into his ear. ' 'Make them
ashamed of themselves and they will not betray you,'' he said,
'because they will know they have stepped outside the boundaries
and made themselves outcast by their deeds.''
'As the captain's wife said in the Tale of Fortune,' mused Pash, shaking his head. 'True enough words. Thank the gods I kept my good daughters close beside me.'
'No wonder the temples want their spirits buried,' said Lehit. 'Such corruption must be crushed beneath earth and never allowed to rise. We'll bury them in the very pit they dug. Then we'll lay offerings on the Thunderer's altar so their blood doesn't corrupt us.'
In the pit, the young guardsman's voice flowed on. She'd gotten to one of the funny episodes, the encounter of the horse's ass of a merchant and the horse's ass itself, complete with a steaming pile of horse manure always calculated to amuse a child of a certain age, and sure enough there came a tiny childish chuckle, a sound so unexpected that Joss thought he might have dreamed it. Branches snapped, and a pair of young men loped into the clearing with their bare arms scratched up and their faces sweaty.
'We checked all around, Captain, but we saw no evidence that anyone got away.'
Lehit nodded. 'Good work. No doubt once they'd murdered the reeve, they meant to run. Yet with the children, as well? It makes no sense. They'd be a burden to them. And that poor child — the hells! what do you suppose happened to its head? Why did they want to murder the marshal of Argent Hall?'
'Because we killed the one who came before me, who we have reason to believe was set in place by those commanding the northern army.'
'Will you be going back to Argent Hall, then? The hall might be the safest place for you, now you know they're stalking you.'
Argent Hall awaited, and he had plenty to do there. 'Not yet. There's one last task I must accomplish out here. One last person to track down.'
Scar was well rested and eager to go. Where the hills shouldered into the plain there were plenty of thermals. They rose, and glided far above the Soha Hills. This range was rugged although not high. Many a narrow valley and densely wooded vale offered shelter to fleeing men. Twice he saw cadres of Qin soldiers on the road,
