all the rest. I remembered the blood and screaming and the smell of burning skin. I remembered it all and dreamed of worse things I could have done to them.
I never had the nightmares again. Sometimes I think of Alleg and I smile.
We made it to Levinshir the next day. Ell had come to her senses, but remained quiet and withdrawn. Still, things went more quickly now, especially as the girls decided they had recovered enough to take turns riding Greytail.
We covered six miles before we stopped at midday, with the girls becoming increasingly excited as they began to recognize parts of the countryside. The shape of hills in the distance. A crooked tree by the road.
But as we grew closer to Levinshir they grew quiet.
“It’s just over the rise there,” Krin said, getting down off the roan. “You ride from here, Ell.”
Ell looked from her, to me, to her feet. She shook her head.
I watched them. “Are the two of you okay?”
“My father’s going to kill me.” Krin’s voice was barely a whisper, her face full of serious fear.
“Your father will be one of the happiest men in the world tonight,” I said, then thought it best to be honest. “He might be angry too. But that’s only because he’s been scared out of his mind for the last eight days.”
Krin seemed slightly reassured, but Ell burst out crying. Krin put her arms around her, making gentle sounds.
“No one will marry me,” Ell sobbed. “I was going to marry Jason Waterson and help him run his store. He won’t marry me now. No one will.”
I looked up to Krin and saw the same fear reflected in her wet eyes. But Krin’s eyes were angry while Ell’s held nothing but despair.
“Any man who thinks that way is a fool,” I said, weighting my voice with all the conviction I could bring to bear. “And the two of you are too clever and too beautiful to be marrying fools.”
It seemed to calm Ell somewhat, her eyes turning up at me as if looking for something to believe.
“It’s the truth,” I said. “And none of this was your fault. Make sure you remember that for these next couple days.”
“I hate them!” Ell spat, surprising me with her sudden rage. “I hate men!” Her knuckles were white as she gripped Greytail’s reins. Her face twisted into a mask of anger. Krin put her arms around Ell, but when she looked at me I saw the sentiment reflected quietly in her dark eyes.
“You have every right to hate them,” I said, feeling more anger and helplessness than ever before in my life. “But I’m a man too. Not all of us are like that.”
We stayed there for a while, not more than a half-mile from town. We had a drink of water and a small bite to settle our nerves. And then I took them home.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-FIVE
Homecoming
Levinshir wasn’t a big town. Two hundred people lived there, maybe three if you counted the outlying farms. It was mealtime when we rode in, and the dirt road that split the town in half was empty and quiet. Ell told me her house was on the far side of town. I hoped to get the girls there without being seen. They were worn down and distraught. The last thing they needed was to face a mob of gossipy neighbors.
But it wasn’t meant to be. We were halfway through the town when I saw a flicker of movement in a window. A woman’s voice cried out, “
The women were the quickest, and inside a minute a dozen of them had formed a protective knot around the two girls, talking and crying and hugging each other. The girls didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps it was better this way. A warm welcome might do a lot to heal them.
The men held back, knowing they were useless in situations like this. Most watched from doorways or porches. Six or eight came down onto the street, moving slowly and eyeing up the situation. These were cautious men, farmers and friends of farmers. They knew the names of everyone within ten miles of their homes. There were no strangers in a town like Levinshir, except for me.
None of the men were close relatives to the girls. Even if they were, they knew they wouldn’t get near them for at least an hour, maybe as much as a day. So they let their wives and sisters take care of things. With nothing else to occupy them, their attention wandered briefly past the horses and settled onto me.
I motioned over a boy of ten or so. “Go tell the mayor his daughter’s back. Run!” He tore off in a cloud of road dust, his bare feet flying.
The men moved slowly closer to me, their natural suspicion of strangers made ten times worse by recent events. A boy of twelve or so wasn’t as cautious as the rest and came right up to me, eyeing my sword, my cloak.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Pete.”
“Can you ride a horse, Pete?”
He looked insulted. “S’nuf.”
“Do you know where the Walker farm is?”
He nodded. “ ’Bout north two miles by the millway.”
I stepped sideways and handed him the reins to the roan. “Go tell them their daughter’s home. Then let them use the horse to come back to town.”
He had a leg over the horse before I could offer him a hand up. I kept a hand on the reins long enough to shorten the stirrups so he wouldn’t kill himself on the way there.
“If you make it there and back without breaking your head or my horse’s leg, I’ll give you a penny,” I said.
“You’ll give me two,” he said.
I laughed. He wheeled the horse around and was gone.
The men had wandered closer in the meantime, gathering around me in a loose circle.
A tall, balding fellow with a scowl and a grizzled beard seemed to appoint himself leader. “So who’re you?” he asked, his tone speaking more clearly than his words,
“Kvothe,” I answered pleasantly. “And yourself?”
“Don’t know as that’s any of your business,” he growled. “What are you doing here?”
“God’s mother, Seth,” an older man said to him. “You don’t have the sense God gave a dog. That’s no way to talk to the . . .”
“Don’t give me any of your lip, Benjamin,” the scowling man bristled back. “We got a good right to know who he is.” He turned to me and took a few steps in front of everyone else. “You one of those trouper bastards what came through here?”
I shook my head and attempted to look harmless. “No.”
“I think you are. I think you look kinda like one of them Ruh. You got them eyes.” The men around him craned to get a better look at my face.
“God, Seth,” the old fellow chimed in again. “None of them had red hair. You remember hair like that. He ain’t one of ’em.”
“Why would I bring them back if I’d been one of the men who took them?” I pointed out.
His expression grew darker and he continued his slow advance. “You gettin’ smart with me, boy? Maybe you think all of us are stupid here? You think if you bring ’em back you’ll get a reward or maybe we won’t send anyone else out after you?” He was almost within arm’s reach of me now, scowling furiously.
I looked around and saw the same anger lurking in the faces of all the men who stood there. It was the sort of anger that comes to a slow boil inside the hearts of good men who want justice, and finding it out of their grasp, decide vengeance is the next best thing.
