1
The Hunt
BARG, THE HARVEST MASTER and butcher of the village of Plum, stood in the crisp light of early morning with a number of men, waiting to murder his friend the smith, the smith’s wife, and their two children.
Oh, none of them called it murder, but all knew that’s where this would lead. And what choice did they have?
The villagers had been joined by others in the district and divided into groups positioned around the smith’s. One group hid behind the miller’s. Another, the one lead by Barg, kept itself behind Galson’s barn. The third waited in small grove on the outskirts of the village.
The men with Barg stood for an hour, checking the buckles of what armor they had, wrestling with the shock of the matter, and waiting for the signal in silence. At first, a handful of the outsiders had boasted of what they’d do. “Mark me,” said a Mokaddian wearing the turquoise of the Vargon clan. His Vargon accent was plain, rolling his r’s much too long. “I will land one of the first five strokes.”
Barg cut off a handful of his hair with a knife to show his mourning for what was about to occur. “You’ll be one of the first five he guts.” He grasped another handful of hair and sawed through it.
“What do you know?” the Vargon said.
“I know that today I will help kill a man who saved my life.” He cast another clump of shorn hair to the ground. “The smith is a roaring lion. You had best beware.”
The Vargon said nothing in return, but what could he say? He was only trying to cover his fears. Sparrow the smith was a formidable warrior, and if the accusations against him were true, then it was certain some of those who had gathered today would die.
The approaching dawn silvered the fields and thatched roofs about the village and set the roosters to crowing. The cattle in the paddocks began to low. A stray dog outside the ale-wife’s barked at a snake trying to get to the tall grass. And down in the south field, a few straggling deer decided it was now time to leave the fields and find cover. The men knew their signal was only minutes away.
* * *
On the side of the village closest to the forest and Galson’s, the smith’s daughter, Sugar, stood in her barn feeding the family’s two horses and heard the jingle of a trap bell in the garden. The sound was followed by the panicked cry of a hare.
Nothing ever got away from one of Sugar’s traps. And from the sound of the ringing, this creature was big. All that commotion was sure to bring Midnight and Sky, her family’s dogs. She’d trained them to leave her game alone, but these two liked to bend the rules whenever they could. So Sugar put down the hay fork, and told Fancy, their mare, she’d return later. Sot, their draft horse, had already had his fill and had moved out to the watering trough. Then she picked up her smothering sack and stepped out of the barn and into the yard with her bare feet.
The village homes looked like fat ships floating amidst a sea of grain. But it was not a quiet sea. Da had flung both doors to the smithy open and stood at the forge hammering away at his work. Farmer Galson’s cattle bellowed. They were the noisiest bunch of cattle in the whole district. Sugar saw them bunched up at the far end of their paddock waiting for one of Galson’s grandsons to open the gate so they could go to the watering pond. But that was odd . . . someone should have led them out long ago.
Beyond the paddock gate stood the thatch-roofed homes for farmer Galson, his children, and his adult grandchildren. Almost a village all by itself. The soft yellow light of hearth fires still shone in many of the windows. Outside, one of the wives made her way back from the privy in a pale nightgown. She held a wailing babe on her hip.
The woman looked up, and Sugar waved across the field at her, but the woman did not wave back; instead, she dashed for her house. Maybe she hadn’t seen Sugar. But then again, maybe she had. Some of the Galsons thought they rode a lord’s high horse. And that included the boys who had begun to court her.
Sugar walked to the garden, opened the gate, and stepped under the arch of climbing rose. The lemony scent from its pink blooms lay heavy in the air. She walked along the shadowed rows of vegetables until she came to the peas and salad greens.
There she found a large hare, a black-tail that was going to make a fine breakfast.
It was easiest just to brain them with a stout stick, but she didn’t want to chance ruining the fur about the throat, so she readied the smothering sack and approached the animal. This part of the garden was still wet with yesterday’s watering and the soil stuck to the bottoms of her bare feet. When she got close, the hare began to kick in earnest.
It was a monster. Twelve pounds at least.
She threw the sack over it to protect her from its kicking and clawing and quickly held its hind and head quarters in place. It cried out in distress, but she kneeled on its side and pushed the air out of its lungs. She pushed until she knew she’d start breaking its ribs, then waited for it to suffocate.
The giant hare struggled underneath her for a minute or so and then lay very still. Sugar removed the snare noose from its leg. The hare felt dead, but she’d been tricked before. A number of years ago, before her moon cycles had come upon her, she’d picked up a hare and carried it into the house and laid it on the cutting stone. The whole time it had lain in her hands like a limp rag, but the second she began to cut, it jumped up, knocked the knife right out of her hand, flew off the table, and bolted out the open door, all to her father’s delight. She didn’t want a repeat, and so she continued to press this hare.
Across the paddocks the Galson’s dogs began to bark. They were joined by another group down by the Miller’s. The dogs would often bark this way when travelers passed through. Sugar looked up to see what was causing the commotion.
A wide line of men on the far side of Galson’s paddocks marched out from behind the barn. They marched in battle order with bows and spears, their helmets gleaming in the early morning light. Those with spears also carried shields painted with a grotesque boar’s head circled by a ring of orange. It was the mark of the Fir-Noy clan of Mokad.
It was not uncommon to see such things. All men, Mokaddian and Koramite, were required to regularly attend their clan musters. But something about this was not right.
She turned and saw another line coming up from the Miller’s.
Then she realized: these men were converging, but not on the practice field. No, they seemed on a direct course for her house.