And some of what makes you a man is gone from you. We have no time for this, my brother. Would not you kill a wolf if it would save my life?
I didn't need to answer that. 'The key is in that pouch,' I told Starling.
For a moment she just stared down at it. Then she stooped and fumbled the heavy iron key out of the leather pouch. I watched her fit it into the keyhole, now praying that I had not dented the mechanism too badly. She turned the key, jerked loose the hasp, and then lifted the bar from the door. As I came out she ordered me, 'Bring the blankets. You'll need them. The cold outside is fierce.'
As I snatched them up, I could feel the heat radiating from the back wall of my cell. I grabbed up my cloak and mittens. Smoke was beginning to slink in between the planks. We fled with the wolf at our heels.
No one took any notice of us outside. The fire was beyond battling. It held the town and raced wherever it willed. The people I saw were engaged in the selfish business of salvage and survival. A man trundled a barrow of possessions past us with no more than a warning look. I wondered if they were his. Down the street I could see a stable afire. Frantic grooms were dragging horses out but the screams of the panicked animals still within were shriller than the wind. With a tremendous crash a building across the street collapsed, wheezing hot air and ash toward us in a terrible sigh. The wind had spread the fire throughout all Moonseye. The fire sped from building to building, and the wind carried burning sparks and hot ash beyond the walls to the forest above. I wondered if even the deep snows would be enough to stop it. 'Come on!' Starling yelled angrily, and I realized I had been standing and gawking. Clutching the blankets, I followed her wordlessly. We ran through the winding streets of the burning town. She seemed to know the way.
We came to a crossroads. Some sort of struggle had taken place there. Four bodies sprawled in the street, all in Farrow colors. I paused, to stoop over a soldier and take the fallen woman's knife and the pouch at her belt.
We neared the gates of the town. Suddenly a wagon rattled up beside us. The two horses drawing it were mismatched and lathered. 'Get in!' someone shouted at us. Starling leaped into the wagon without hesitation.
'Kettle?' I asked, and 'Hurry up!' was her reply. I climbed in and the wolf leaped easily up beside me. She did not wait to see us settled but slapped the reins on the horses. The wagon plunged forward with a lurch.
Ahead of us were the gates. They were open and unmanned, swinging on their hinges in the wind from the fire. To one side I caught a glimpse of a sprawled body. Kettle did not even slow the team. We were through the gates without a backward glance, and rattling down the dark road, to join others fleeing the destruction with carts and barrows. Most seemed bound toward the few outlying homesteads to seek shelter for the night, but Kettle kept our horses moving. As the night about us grew-darker and folk fewer, Kettle stirred the horses to a faster clip. I peered ahead into the darkness.
I realized Starling was looking back behind us.. 'It was only supposed to be a diversion,' she said in an awestruck voice. I turned to look back.
An immense orange glow silhouetted the palisade of Moonseye in black. Sparks rose thick as swarming bees into the night sky above it. The roar of the flames was like storm winds. As we watched, a building caved in and another wave of sparks rose into the air.
'A diversion?' I peered at her through the darkness. 'You did all that? To free me?'
Starling shot me an amused glance. 'Sorry to disappoint you. No. Kettle and I came along for you, but that was not what this was about. Most of that is the work of Nik's family. Revenge against those who broke faith with them. They went in to find them and kill them. Then they left.' She shook her head. 'It's too complicated to explain it all right now, even, if I understood it. Evidently the King's Guard at Moonseye has been corrupt for years. They've been well paid to see nothing of the Holdfast smugglers. And the smugglers have seen to it that the men posted here enjoyed some of the better things in life. I gather that Captain Mark enjoyed the best of the profits. He was not alone, but neither was he generous about sharing.
'Then Burl was sent here. He knew nothing of the arrangement. He brought a huge influx of soldiers with him, and tried to impose military discipline here. Nik sold you to Mark. But when Nik was selling you to Mark, someone saw a chance to sell Mark and his arrangement to Burl. Burl saw a chance to take you, and clean up a ring of smugglers. But Nik Holdfast and his clan had paid well for safe passage for the pilgrims. Then the soldiers broke faith with them, and the Holdfast promise to the pilgrims was broken.' She shook her head. Her voice went tight. 'Some of the women were raped. One child died of the cold. One man will never walk again because he tried to protect his wife.' For a time, the only sounds were the noises of the wagon and the distant roaring of the fires. Her eyes were very black as she looked back at the burning town. 'You've heard of honor among thieves? Well, Nik and his men have avenged theirs.'
I was still staring back at the destruction of Moonseye. I cared not a whit for Burl and his Farrowmen. But there had been merchants there, and traders, families and homes. The flames were devouring them all. And Six Duchies soldiers had raped their captives as if they were lawless raiders instead of King's guards. Six Duchies soldiers, serving a Six Duchies king. I shook my head. 'Shrewd would have hanged them all.'
Starling cleared her throat. 'Don't blame yourself,' she told me. 'I learned long ago not to blame myself for evil done to me. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't even your fault. You were just the catalyst that started the chain of events.'
'Don't call me that,' I begged her. The wagon rumbled on, carrying us deeper into the night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN. Pursuit
THE PEACE BETWEEN the Six Duchies and the Mountain Kingdom was relatively new at the time of King Regal's reign. For decades, the Mountain Kingdom had controlled all trade through the passes with as tight a grip as the Six Duchies had on all trade on the Cold and Buck rivers. Trade and passage between the two regions had been capriciously managed by both powers, to the detriment of both. But during the reign of King Shrewd, mutually beneficial trade agreements were worked out between King-in-Waiting Chivalry of the Six Duchies and Prince Rurisk of the Mountains. The peace and prosperity of this arrangement was secured further when, over a decade later, the Mountain princess Kettricken became the bride of King-in-Waiting Verity. Upon the untimely death of her older brother, Rurisk, on the very eve of her wedding, Kettricken became the sole heir to the Mountain crown. Thus it appeared for a time that the Six Duchies and the Mountain Kingdom might share a monarch and eventually become one land.
Circumstances put all such hope to ruin, however. The Six Duchies were threatened from without by the Raiders, and torn within by the bickering of princes. King Shrewd was murdered, King-in-Waiting Verity disappeared while on a quest, and when Prince Regal claimed the throne for his own, his hatred for Kettricken was such that she felt obliged to flee to her native Mountains for the sake of her unborn child. Self-proclaimed 'King' Regal saw this somehow as a reneging on a promised surrender of territory. His initial endeavors to move troops into the Mountain Kingdom, ostensibly as 'guards' for trading caravans, were repulsed by the Mountain folk. His protestations and threats prompted the closing of the Mountain borders to Six Duchies trade. Thwarted, he embarked on a vigorous campaign of discrediting Queen Kettricken and building patriotic hostility toward the Mountain Kingdom. His eventual goal seemed obvious: to take, by force if necessary, the lands of the Mountain Kingdom as a Six Duchies province. It seemed a poor time for such a war and such a strategy. The lands he justly possessed were already under siege by an outside enemy, one he seemed unable or disinclined to defeat. No military force had ever conquered the Mountain Kingdom, and yet this was what he seemed intent upon doing. Why he so desperately desired to possess this territory was a question that initially baffled everyone.
The night was clear and cold. The bright moonlight was enough to show us where the road ran, but not more than that. For a time I simply sat in the wagon, listening to the crunching of the horses' hooves on the road and trying to absorb all that had happened. Starling took the blankets we had brought from my cell and shook them out. She gave me one and draped one across her own shoulders. She sat huddled and apart from me, looking out the back of the wagon. I sensed she wanted to be left alone. I watched the orange glow that had been Moonseye dwindle in the distance. After a time, my mind started working again.
'Kettle?' I called over my shoulder. 'Where are we going?'
'Away from Moonseye,' she said. I could hear the weariness in her voice.
Starling stirred and glanced at me. 'We thought you would know.'
'Where did the smugglers go?' I asked.
