Hunters & Heretics (I)

They ghosted by the edges of a town they barely knew, Ma'Tocha and her guard. The light of Boraz was too dim to see, and Silenz's silver orb lay shy below the white-capped looming mountains in the east. With one faint moon to light their stealthy way they skirted by the homes unseen, along the muted byways, grief-bound doors shut tight against the recent tragedy.

In better days she had been welcomed here, to hunt a pack of monstrous hares last spring. For her work she had received a single silver coin. And then, from every humble home, on wide wood platters borne on women's heads, smelling of all the good things to eat in this part of the world, and with it kegs of ale brought up and broken open, they brought a banquet to lay before Ma'Tocha like a queen. There was no gratitude in all the world more honest than a goodly feast.

A village was saved, a feast shared, a silver coin given. A true disciple's joy was made of simple pleasures.

But now Ma'Tocha and her bulwarks, severed from their holy church and holy powers, were hunted exiles in a hostile land. They had been moving south to join with Nexus and regain her prayers, when they chanced to overhear an evil rumor, whispered at anxious tables over furtive cups: the church had tasked a priest with hunting innocents. He was loose among the farmlands, taking lives.

In time they found the local burial ground, east and uphill from the sleeping commons. By lantern light, they found two small and freshly piled mounds, topped with straw. It was tradition to plant wildflowers over children's graves, and seeds needed some protection. There was no marking stone, no name or epitaph. Beside the children's plot lay another, not fresh but new enough for heartbreak to linger. "Mary. Beloved Wife and Mother." read the headstone.

She had followed rumors, one hamlet to the next, one bonfire to the next, to arrive in this poor grieving place. She was two days behind the murdering priest. At least.

Ma heard footsteps, a farmer's weary plod, kept from sleep by raw and recent loss.

"Who are you," said the voice behind her, bubbling with anger, "why are you here? Come to look at your handiwork? Are you proud of yourselves? What more can you take from a village that has nothing!"

"We're not Enclave," she told him, turning around. She let the lantern show her face. "Not anymore."

"Heretics," he breathed, "it's Ma'Tocha!"

"If Enclave is murdering children, shouldn't we all be heretics?"

The farmer gave a bitter laugh but said nothing.

"Can we join you in your vigil?" Ma produced a wineskin, and her bulwark searched their packs for dried food and cheese. "I'd like to hear about the children. The ones they took from you."

"Didn't come up here to weep or talk," said the farmer, "the tears are all used up. Words are empty." He hadn't washed or slept in days, not since it happened. He motioned at the graves with a blackened clay jug. "I came to join them. What's a farm, without family? What's a life worth, lived alone Nothing. That's what."

Ma'Tocha sat by the graves and patted the ground next to her. "They'll wait for you. Time has no meaning where they are. What were their names?"

The farmer did not move to sit or leave. "Yara and Brynn."

"How old were they? What were they like?"

"They were ten and eleven." And then, quieter, "they were a damned handful." He dropped to his knees before the graves, his black jug beside him. "Beautiful girls, like their mother. When they weren't covered from hair to heel in grime."

Ma's three fighters, two men and a woman, sat too and began to pass around the wine and food. The wine was weak stuff, better to quench one's thirst than get one drunk. The farmer took a long pull and passed it on.

"The same day Yara learned to walk, she slipped under the fence and escaped. Took us all day to find her, way down at the creek. She was sitting in the shallows trying to catch fish, with those tiny hands! When Brynn learned to walk she followed her big sister everywhere. The pair of them grew up in the hills. I chased those girls, uphill and downriver, for the best years of my life. They were such bright but difficult things. Every night I'd bring them home, dirty as hounds, showing off the game they snared and things they'd gathered. They'd take a bath and be the prettiest little girls for dinner. Mary made dresses for them, when she was with us, and for an evening you could believe they were sweet, polite little girls."

He paused for a while as he ate without pleasure, his eyes far away as the absent moons.

"They weren't farm girls, that's for sure. My neighbor John tried to troth his son to my Yara. The families had a meet about it and, let me tell you, it went bad. When it was Yara's turn to give her thoughts, she said it would be all right if she could hunt and fish and walk the hills all day, and didn't have to do any cleaning or cooking or work on the farm. To which John's son replied, 'you'll do as a wife should and make my meals and clean my house and be a good farm wife like my mother.' And Yara said she wouldn't, and Brynn said she'd like to see the boy make Yara do those things, and the boy said Brynn should keep her foolish mouth shut."

"Oh dear," said Ma'Tocha with a laugh, and her bulwark joined in. "What happened next?"

"Exactly what you think. And worse. First Yara punches the boy in his mouth for calling Brynn a fool, then Brynn punches him in his mouth for trying to make Yara into 'a boring farm wife'. The boy is bleeding and crying, and his mother is furious. She starts calling them animals, so my girls stripped off their dresses, right there in front of everyone, and went running off in their shifts. They headed straight for the hills and didn't come down for a week.

"They could have stayed up there forever. They had a little hut up there, I helped them build it. I had to get the village elders' promise never to force them to marry before my girls would come down. They were prepared to live their lives as wildlings before they'd part over a boy.

"Oh, but they were sweet in their own way. If you were sick they brought you herbs. If meat was scarce, you would find a fresh rabbit on your doorstep in the evening. If an animal went missing or wouldn't come home, my girls would fetch it for you. They were wild things, but they were strong and kind too."

Now came the hard part. Softly, Ma'Tocha asked, "what happened to them?"

His eyes, already sunk with sleeplessness, grew fearsome and deep. "Soldiers, from Unity City. They had a priest with them, in some fancy robes with a silver cloth around his neck."

"Did he say his name? What did he look like?"

"He said his name but I don't remember it. What did I care about lofty churchmen? He had mousy whiskers, black eyes, a thin tail, kind of fat. He gave a speech about how they were looking for heretics, and if we had nothing to hide then we had nothing to be afraid of. They gathered us in the square and he said a prayer and he held up this thing. It looked like a piece of wood, but it started to shine with a light I'd never seen, waves of silver and other colors. It was beautiful, at first.

"I turned to my girls, to ask them what they thought, and they were glowing with the same light. I thought it was a miracle. Then soldiers came and grabbed them both. They were afraid and crying. I tried to get to them but other soldiers held me back. The priest said they had to be burned to appease Olyon."

Ma made an angry grunt.

"Animals," said one of her bulwark.

"Savage fuckers," agreed the farmer, "but my girls were fierce. Brynn stole a soldier's dirk right out of his belt and stuck him with it. The soldiers were so shocked they didn't see Yara steal the other soldier's knife and try to kill the priest with it. She almost had him too, but he was wearing brigandine. What kind of priest goes around armored? You should have seen the look of terror on his face, a great man of the church pissing himself because of my little Yara."

He drank deeply from the wineskin. "Didn't last, though. Soldiers surrounded them and cut them down with swords. Hacked them to bloody pieces. I shouted myself hoarse, but I couldn't do anything. Every swing threw blood everywhere. The square was wet with their blood, and I couldn't do anything. Half the town had my daughters' blood on them, but nobody did anything. Those monsters killed my children and laughed about it after, and I did nothing!

"And I thought, the next thing that happens is they kill and burn the whole village, but our elder steps in and thanks the priest for 'cleansing our village of evil'. Fuckers think they did us a favor. They demanded offerings for their 'holy service'. We don't keep much silver in the village, but our elder gave them the run of the storehouse. They took all they could carry."

The grieving man spat his words. "They killed my girls and we paid them. Can you believe that? All I could do for them was bury them. What a useless father I turned out to be."

"Maybe not so useless," Ma'Tocha told him. "You're here now, to tell their story to someone who can stop those monsters. That's something. Do you know which way they went?"

"South," pointed the farmer, "along the hilltop road. You can see the villages from up there. I bet they visit them all." He reached for the jug he had set aside. "Now leave me in peace."

Ma'Tocha stalled him with a hand on the black jar. "I know what it's like to yearn for the dead," Ma'Tocha told him, "how they must call to you. But there is something you can do for them, but only while you're still alive."

The farmer doubted her. "Is there?"

"Enclave stripped me of my disciple powers but they can't take away my skills. I'm going to hunt down these child murderers and take their lives. I'm going to take away their holy relic and give it to someone who will spread light instead of darkness. But I could use a guide, someone who knows the nearby villages and who knows these hills. Who could be better than the man who chased Yara and Brynn, uphill and downriver?"

Ma'Tocha gave that a moment to sink in, until the farmer's head lifted. The anger was still in him, would always be in him, but reason was coming back to him.

"You would have to leave tonight," she told him, "and you might not return for weeks. It's dangerous and you could die. Are you any good with weapons?"

"I'm a fair hand with a bow," he said, "and all I have to come back to is right here." He put his hand on the ground between the two mounds of earth. "It won't matter to anyone living if I don't return."

"What's your name?"

"Harrence," he said, "husband to Mary, father to Yara and Brynn."

"What do you say, Harrence? Postpone your final journey. Help us get justice, for Yara and Brynn and all the children they have killed and may yet kill."

Harrence looked at the three longing graves, head cocked as if listening. "They say I should guide you, to protect the others."

❖ ❖ ❖

The hilltop road wasn't a road at all but a firebreak separating the settled lands on Dace's frontier from wild forests and mountains to the east. Every village kept their section of the road and nearby ground clear with grazing animals and the occasional axe. In summer between the planting and the harvest they hauled whatever materials their local lords gave them uphill and laid it down wherever the dirt was showing or plants were coming through. It was a confusion of river gravel, quarry shards, cut stone, broken brick, and whatever else that was cheap from year to year.

The firebreak made a poor road for wagons, but traveling by foot or appalon was pleasant enough. East of the road, the central mountains loomed over travelers in their awesome snow-capped heights. To the west, the richest farmlands in Dace fell away in quilted fields and pastures, spaced by stone fences and prairie strips. Two hundred kilometers of road bordered such villages, one after the other, each one spreading its skirts of cultivated land. Seasonal rains often made the more direct low roads suddenly impassable, but the hilltop road was always reliable.

Harrence knew the paths that paralleled the hilltop road, on the east unpopulated side, where they could travel and not be seen. He knew where to find water, forage, and easy fishing. He directed Ma'Tocha where to climb so she could look down onto a village on the west side.

Harrence knew these things because Brynn and Yara knew them. Unseen by anyone but him, they raced ahead faster than the appalons, disappeared into tall grass or stands of trees to emerge unexpected, to wave him over to a clear brook or a sheltered nook where the party could rest. Harrence had trod the ground before, usually in winter when the village allowed him a hunt for extra meat, but his silent spectral daughters knew the east woods far better.

On the third day, Ma'Tocha was on her belly using her little telescope to surveil the latest hamlet. The wondrous device of brass and glass brought far things near. The ex-disciple claimed it was neither an ancient device nor a blessed one, that it was a simple machine. It had been a gift from Dean Garsharp, who had got it from Brother Phillip the Heretic, who had built it using his knowledge about light.

She had found what they had feared and hoped for: a cluster of small houses splayed around a single main street, under a cloud of nearly white smoke. At the center of the smoke, in a rough-paved courtyard that lay before a tiny chapel whose blue dome had turned to near-black from neglect, there was the black stain of a bonfire spent.

Ma'Tocha took her time examining the village.

"They're celebrating," she said at last. "They're holed up in the headman's house. They should be good and drunk by nightfall."

"Oh man," whined Dash, "not again."

"Yes, again." Ma was smiling. "This is a job for Trina."

Dash grunted. He was the bulwark with a puffy tail and long ears. "Trina is so exhausting. Do we have to?"

"Definitely. We're outnumbered, and we have no prayers. We need to know who gave their orders, and if any more fragments are in Enclave's hands. Besides," grinned Ma, "Trina's fun."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Who's Trina?" Harrence had learned all the fighters' names, and the names of their appalons, and none of them were Trina.

"I'm Trina," said Dash morosely.

"Mystical Songstress," said Marlowe, with more excitement.

"Such a beautiful singing voice," added Callie.

"Such a beautiful woman," Ma'Tocha said.

Harrence took in the thin man's fine features and graceful arms. "Are you flexural?"

"No," Dash said through gritted teeth, "but sometimes I pretend. The dresses aren't so bad, but the attention gets to be too much. Especially from the kinds of people we do this with. Mistress, are you sure we can handle this without prayers? There's twenty of them and only four of us." Dash had deliberately not counted Harrence.

"There's only eight of them," she said, swinging the tube over the village. "They sent the rest ahead to prepare the next villages."

Harrence remembered the day armed men came to his village and demanded they all gather the next day for a special announcement by a priest from the church. "That's what they did to us. The priest didn't want to wait for everyone to come in from the fields."

Ma'tocha put her eye against the telescope's lens. "What we need is a place to lay low until evening. Somewhere we can prepare."

"There's a place back the way we came," offered Harrence. His girls were already running back that way, their laughter silent, waving to hurry him along.

The party backtracked until Harrence found a telltale marker, a few stones stacked to knee height painted white, with a barely perceptible foot trail that led east.

"Was a time people lived on both sides of the hilltop road," he informed his party. "There's ruins of big houses down here if you know where to look, meant for important people. They made a game of it, finding all these old estates."

The trail led off the ridge, deep into the shadow of the mountains, among tall pines in a muted world carpeted with needles. The trail crisscrossed with game paths, growing strong and then weak again, until it neared a fine rushing creek. A goodly manor had stood nearby but all that was left was a foundation and a first course of stone. Trees struggled up through the center of the house.

The space between the creek and house was paved in flagstones sent askew by roots and weather, with a firepit at its center and sawed stumps cast around for chairs. The stumps were in various stages of decay. It was peaceful there, hidden by the forest yet open to the sky, the sounds of the creek ringing against the stones and pines, while appalons knelt on the bank to drink their fill.

Yara was walking on the ruined wall with her arms held out for balance. Brynn was behind her. Harrence stifled the impulse to yell at them to be careful. They couldn't be hurt anymore, not when their bodies were so far away.

"It's bath time everyone!" Clothes came off and they bathed in the creek, without any modesty whatsoever. Harrence was given his own bar of soap, fine stuff that smelled faintly of honey and flowers, and told to wash twice. The water downstream from him turned a murky brown.

He could hear his Mary scolding him. "Farmer or not, you don't have to enjoy your dirt like a futobel!" He washed, then dug the dirt from under his nails and scrubbed all the creases where it liked to hide. Then he washed again, and made sure to work the soap deep into his wild hair and mighty sideburns.

Marlowe tossed him a towel and bade him to sit on one of the decaying stumps. From her saddlebags, she brought forth tools wrapped in leather cases: scissors and razors and combs, a mirror made of polished silver, a box of little jars of paint along with brushes and sponges of mysterious use and shape.

Harrence eyed the girl-things with suspicion and a twinge of fear. "You aren't going to put me in a skirt, are you? I'd make a hideous woman." He sat on the improvised stool wearing naught but a towel over his lap.

Marlowe laughed and attacked his head with a wide-toothed comb. "I wouldn't dream of it. You're more attractive as a man. Or you will be when we're done." She worked on him, naked under the towel she kept wrapped around herself. Married or not, her clean scent and thriving body should have prompted a reaction from Harrence's own yet all he could think of was his dead Mary. There was also the matter of his dead girls, who sat on the ground nearby and observed his grooming with fascinated expressions.

A lot of his hair fell to the ground. Then came the straight razor, which Marlow used to define borders on his facial hair. She worked something astringent into selected parts of his head, then sat near him to wait.

I've come along on this journey, he realized, without knowing the first thing about what's going on. All because they promised I could get justice for them. I have no skills to offer a disciple except finding this place. What am I even doing here?

Part of his brain had gotten stuck, like livestock in deep mud, but it was starting to move again.

"Can I ask some questions?" he said out loud.

"Of course," said Marlowe, looking to the sky, "we have some time. Ask away."

"What is a fragment, and why did it make my daughters glow like that? And why did that make them heretics? Why did they have to die even though they never said a word against the church? What did they do wrong?"

"It's not because of anything they did, I promise you. Have you ever heard about Nexus, or Phillip the Younger before those men came to your village?" Harrence shook his head. Those names meant nothing to him, except they had something to do with why his girls were buried.

"A fragment of sun is a holy artifact. Its light can counter the darkness that surrounds the worst monsters. It reveals lies and inspires hope. It also awakens latent talent for the Spiritual Arts. That's why it made your children glow: it was calling them to become disciples."

"My girls? We've never had anything like that in our families. We're just … farmers." He looked down at Brynn and Yara and remembered their restless escapades. Even dead they weren't easy to tie down.

"And that," interrupted Marlowe, "is exactly the problem." She slipped on her undergarments under the towel, then tossed it aside to don a kirtle laced tightly up one side. She was thirty-ish and handsome, and if it weren't for the tone of her limbs he'd never guess she was a trained warrior.

"Nations depend on disciples to keep monsters under control. To get disciples, they pay Enclave. Enclave anoints disciples from the First Families. The First Families control all senior posts in the church, including Leadership. And Leadership dispatches disciples to the nations.

"Then, along comes Brother Phillip. A boy of unknown parentage. Peerless in the arts. Inventive. Likable. And he starts telling everyone disciples can come from anywhere. He sets up a school to recruit and train them. That's how Nexus started."

"So this Phillip guy stirred their pot, threatened their power," said Harrence, "threatened their money. This is his fault. If he hadn't messed with them, the church wouldn't be on a rampage."

Ma'Tocha joined them, dressed in kirtle and fine boots, and began to braid Marlowe's hair with ribbons. "Nexus disciples are out in the world hunting monsters. Enclave is hunting children. That should be enough to tell you who is right and who is wrong."

"Aren't you an Enclave disciple, Ma'Tocha? If they're so bad, why are you one of them?"

"They threw me out," she said pointedly, "and every other practitioner who wouldn't put Leadership before their duty to Olyon."

Marlowe added, "We were on our way to meet up with Brother Phillip so he could restore Ma's powers, but we couldn't leave Dace without looking into this. We're sorry about your girls, but Brother Phillip isn't the one to blame."

Later, as the sun neared the horizon, Ma'Tocha sat next to him. "Harrence, if you come with us tonight you will face the men who killed your girls. I need to know you won't do anything violent or insulting without my permission. All of our lives depend on it. Swear it before the sun."

She took a short wooden dowel from the inside of one sleeve and gave the ends a twist. From a seam, like peeking through a cracked door to view a room of infinite light, waves came pouring out in silver, white, blue and other colors, filling their camp with a mantle of divine presence. Where the light touched him Harrence felt exposed, like skin was not enough to repel the eternal eyes that surely watched them all.

If he lied, the light would know. If he wanted to go along with Ma'Tocha and not be left behind to watch the appalons then he had to have resolve. He mustn't spoil their plans. He would have to trust the ex-disciple's judgment.

If those were the conditions for getting justice for his family, then that was what he would have to do. He cast about for his girls but they weren't in the camp at the moment. Perhaps they'd gone ahead.

"I'll do as you say, and not take any action against those men until you tell me to. I'll be as polite as I know how. I'll even smile at them if I have to. Just promise me you'll try to get justice for my family."

The light remained steady, which everyone took as a sign his promises were true.

Ma snapped the lantern shut to hide the fragment's light. "We leave in an hour," she told Marlowe, "see that he's ready."

Marlowe had him rinse off in the creek and sat him down again. She selected a fistful of face paints and brushes from her boxes.

"Wait! I thought you said you weren't going to make me look like a woman!"

"Don't worry," she laughed, "the men in Kashmar wear color on their faces all the time. We want to be sure they can't recognize you." She spread fine powders over his eyes and touched his lips with a stick daubed in red. He made different faces as she worked, which he learned was something people did when they put on makeup. When she was done with him, she held up the silver mirror so he could see himself.

"I don't recognize myself," he said in awe, "who is this fancy man? I don't know if I can pretend to be Kashmari. I've never even met one."

"You won't have to pretend. Don't volunteer anything about yourself. If they ask, tell them the truth: you're a farmer. We hired you to carry things and watch the animals. We dressed you like a Kashmari because it's fashionable, and you haven't yet made peace with it. If they laugh at you it's a good sign. It means they believe you."

The thought they might be playing an elaborate joke on him stung his pride. But he had to admit, the fellow in the mirror was quite something to look at. The lines of his side-hairs were clean and dramatic, and the streaks of light color made him look distinguished. The red eyelids were a warning, and Marlowe had done something to thin his lips into a crueler line.

He scowled into the mirror and his expression barely changed. It was a good face for walking among the enemy.

"Callie will dress you. Now hurry up!"

❖ ❖ ❖

By the time the sun touched the west horizon, Mystical Songstress Trina and her crew of four (three sisters and their doubtfully Kashmari hireling) had invited themselves to the soldiers' celebration. "Trina" (Dash) had a surprisingly high singing voice. She sang and shimmied for the soldiers as they clapped to the music. "Young Sister" (Marlowe) played nickleharp, a stringed instrument she laid across her knees and bowed with one hand while she worked the frets with the other. "Youngest Sister" (Callie) played flute. Both of the younger fighters sang harmonies at times. Ma'Tocha played "Oldest Sister", and kept an eye on the men to ensure they didn't get too free with her traveling family.

The act was surprisingly good.

And Harrence? He had two tiny cymbals, one in each hand. When Trina pointed at him he struck them together with exaggerated motions for tiny ting!, and the soldiers would laugh.

> There once was a girl from Morilart,

>

> Who turned kissing the boys into an art.

>

> When she was done,

>

> And had all her fun,

>

> She kicked the poor lads in their soft parts. [ting!]

>

>  

>

> Along came the knight from Molise,

>

> In armor of bronze and cerise.

>

> She tried the same trick,

>

> She gave him the kick,

>

> And broke her leg bone on his codpiece! [ting!]

Hilarious noise erupted from the room.

I'm clowning for the people who killed my family, he thought.

On the way into town, he had seen the blackened skeleton in the square, on its knees amidst a pile of ash and dismally smoking coals, a man who had been lit by the fragment. A man they had burned. A man who had been special and never known until the day soldiers came to his village to kill him for it. Harrence wanted to tie the soldiers down and see them burn.

When the song was mercifully over Marlowe set a new mood with her nickleharp while the remaining women mixed with the soldiers. The food was whatever the villagers could cook on short notice, the drink was small beer. Mouths ate, drank, and bragged while the locals stayed away in droves. Only the headman was there, seated next to the priest, watching over the assembly with sickened eyes.

With his mood so dangerous, and so many weapons near the hands of trained soldiers, Harrence didn't dare interact with the heretic-hunters. He filled jugs and carried plates, and avoided talking to anyone.

"Defender of Pure Faith!" Callie had seated herself near the priest to flatter him. "That's a grand title! How long have you been doing that?"

"Not long." The priest belched politely. "It's a new, elite position. There are only six of us entrusted with this holy task. We're blessed to be of service to Olyon."

Callie sipped beer from a cup she held with two hands. The gesture made her look small. "That doesn't sound like enough people to protect the whole country."

"Dace is just the start." The priest's eyes had wandered from Callie's face to her chest. "We'll cleanse all of Tenobre one day. You'll see, my dear! Leadership knows what they're doing. They put the most zealous in charge."

Harrence took the empty pitcher from their table and left Callie to her interrogations. Six teams, all hunting innocents. Six priests with fragments to find potential competitors to Enclave. One hundred twenty soldiers.

"You! Kashmari! Our pitchers are empty!" Only eight soldiers remained in town, just as Ma'Tocha had counted, so one of the long tables in the headman's meeting room was enough to seat them all. They didn't act like horrible people. There was some rough joking but no violence, and there weren't any bloodthirsty accounts of what they had done that day. They seemed like men anywhere having a drink after a good day's work.

Some of them talked about their families. This one had a wife and children of his own. That one had a girl he'd left behind, but he doubted she'd wait for him. Another had a father who was ill.

Did Ma'Tocha mean to kill them all?

The doubt had barely formed in Harrence's mind when, on the table where a centerpiece should be, the Burnt Man from the square appeared with a suddenness that could only be attributed to the otherworldly. His head inched up to face his blackened skull at Harrence, charred flesh crackling like dry leaves. Empty sockets. Black cracked and ragged teeth. No breath. Residual heat bled from its bones into the mugs of beer.

Harrence's heart beat once. Then again. He blinked, and the Burned Man was gone. His breath was back, as was all the noise of the room.

"Kashmari!" It was Ma'Tocha, calling him to the kitchen. He went, carrying all the pitchers.

The ex-disciple pulled him aside to where the keg was. "May I use this?" She held his little jug in her hand, the one he had kept hidden in his scarce baggage. The bottle that could give him peace. He had pressed the berries as dead Brynn had shown him, mixed the juice with milk of scarlet thistle and rind of bitterest lime, then seasoned it with bark from a rare and valuable spice tree collected illicitly at night. A few pinches of pickling agent catalyzed the drink into deadly poison. A dip would make you drowse. A draft would make you dead.

Brynn straddled the keg like a horse and smiled at him in approval. Yara rode the barrel behind her and kicked her legs back and forth. The potion wasn't meant for him. It was for them. Harrence took the jug from Ma'Tocha and broke the waxen seal. He emptied it equally into the three pitchers. One by one, he topped them with beer under the glad eyes of his daughters.

"I'll take these," said Ma, "you get the door and take up your post."

Harrence went out the front double doors and, using a thong of monster leather, tied the handles firmly together. It wouldn't stop soldiers determined to escape, but it would slow them down while they were forced to break the doors or saw their way through tough leather. He went around to a side door of the gathering room and did the same. That left the kitchen door, which opened to a small herb garden. Harrence hoisted himself to the low roof over the kitchen, where he found his bow and quiver right where he'd left it. The broad points had been replaced with wicked-looking bodkins, hardened by a disciple's arts but not blessed.

The music started up again, muted through the kitchen roof, a famous drinking song that required a pull after each verse. Harrence's heart was beating like anything, harder than hammers, faster than bees' wings. He knelt on the roof and waited, breathing through the thunder in his chest.

The change in mood began with a sudden, startled silence. The music stopped. Something made of clay was dashed to the ground and broken. Silence turned to alarm, alarm became panic, panic rushed the doors but was too weak on drugged beer to break them down. One man thought to try the side door, and then the kitchen. The headman stumbled into the garden, fell over his own feet, and cracked his head painfully against the planters. He was of no concern to Harrence. Ma'Tocha said he could live, that he was helpless to stop the hunters as the rest of the village. Harrence stayed his hand.

The second man to enter the garden was in worse shape than the first. He left the house reeling, tripped over the sprawling headman and sprawled himself out on the garden path with a pained ooph. He was so much like a wounded deer, Harrence didn't hesitate to fly an arrow at his back. The bronze bodkin point was heavy and the shaft entered him low, at the kidneys, deep enough to bleed him but not enough to run him through. The armor was doing its job. His quarry tried to stand but was too poisoned and wounded to stay on his feet. He fell twice more. Harrence lined up his next arrow more carefully, and this time the shaft nailed the soldier's head to the ground.

Nobody else tried to escape that way. Harrence waited until the house was silent and climbed down. Carefully, so as not to disturb the dead any more than necessary, he pulled the arrows from the soldier's body. Good bronze was costly. Bronze that was hard enough to pierce armor was twice as dear.

Dash (still dressed as Trina) came through the kitchen door, clapped Harrence on the shoulder to see him in one piece, and gave the dead soldier a quick search. A few small articles found their way into his skirt pockets. Then, all traces of feminine bearing gone, he grabbed headman by his collar and dragged him inside, half-awake, meekly struggling.

"Bring the appalons around," he told Harrence in passing, "we won't be staying long. And take theirs while you're at it."

It took time to bring the mounts around to the front of the headman's house. The only mount belonging to the heretic-hunters was the Priest's, and she didn't want to come. Harrence had to lure her out with generous offerings of apple. By the time he had them ready to go, Ma'Tocha had the priest tied up like a sack of vegetables, and draped him over the appalon's back. They put the town behind them to make a straight line for the hilltop road.

Harrence got one look into the meeting room, a long look. The headman was asleep in the head chair, head lolling and mouth snoring.

Everyone else in the room was dead.