The people shuddered, looking at one another. “What a horrible place!” said the old man, and Phillida added, “No wonder you left there!”
“I only wonder that I didn’t leave it sooner.” Of course, Alea couldn’t have left her home planet until Gar invited her aboard his spaceship, but they didn’t need to know that. Reminder of obligation made her feel more prickly and she asked again. “So tell me what this Scarlet Company is.”
“Why, it’s a company of people who stop bullies from hurting peaceable people like us, of course,” said another man.
“Who are they?” Gar tried to hide the keenness of his interest. “Where can I find them?”
The whole crowd laughed at that, and one man said, “Why, everywhere and nowhere, peddler! No one’s ever seen a man or woman of the Scarlet Company—except the bosses whom they’ve killed, and those folk knew nothing of any others!”
“It’s secret, then?” Gar quavered.
“Secret as the stars in the daytime!” the old woman said. “You know they’re there, but you can’t ever see them. When the land grows dark, though, there they are to give you light and hope.”
“Lucky you are to have them,” Gar said.
“Aye, lucky unless you’ve tried to bully someone, or accused someone else falsely.” The old man looked at the others about him with a toothless grin; one or two flushed and looked away. “Me, I did that once. I was angry with a neighbor, so I marked a bit of bark against him and slipped it into the collection box on the common.” He shook his head ruefully, eyes gazing off into the past. “I found their reply on my doorstep and took it to the priest to read. They knew me for the liar I was and bade me give five jugs of ale to the next village feast.”
Gar frowned. “Who empties the collection boxes?”
“No one knows,” the old woman said. “No one’s ever seen—or if they have, they’ve been wise enough not to tell.”
“They guard their secret well,” Gar said with ill-disguised disgust.
“Very well,” the old man agreed, “and fools would we be to try to spy them out.”
They waved good-bye as they went down the road, then waved again—but as soon as they were out of the villagers’ hearing, Alea said, “Will you stop looking for the Scarlet Company now?”
“I make no promises,” Gar said, “but I certainly won’t stop looking for the government. I will say, though, that this is the first time in my life I’ve ever had to look for one. Usually the government comes looking for me.”
Suddenly, he bowed his head, clutching it with his right hand while he leaned on his staff with his left.
“What is it?” Alea cried. “Are you ill?”
“Thoughts,” Gar gasped, “panic…”
Alarmed, Alea turned her attention to the world of thought and the terror and pain almost drove her to her knees.
13
It was the massed fear of fifty people mixed with images of fire and blood, and throughout and above it reverberated shouted threats and gloating insults, brutal men exulting in the fear and pain they inspired.
“The young people,” Alea gasped, “the new village…”
“Malachi found them.” Gar straightened and turned back. “We must help them!” He strode away down the road.
Alea hurried to catch up.
They had only gone a mile when they saw a plume of smoke rising out of the distant mountain forest. Alea caught Gar’s arm with a cry of despair. In her mind, the image of fire consumed all others and terror drowned all emotions but pain.
“I can’t wait,” Gar snapped. “See if the villagers can lend you a horse.”
A loud report sounded next to her, like a stick breaking, only much louder. Alea turned to ask what he meant, but he was gone. She stared in fright for a moment, then felt anger rising. He had kept some mental power secret, hadn’t told her of it! She would make his ears ring for that.
First, though, she had to reach him—and had to go to the new village as fast as she possibly could. She started running.
They loaned her a horse—all of their horses, in fact, as well as their carts and. themselves, leaving only a few adults behind to care for the children. The riders galloped up the mountain road, sweeping Alea with them, leaving the slower carts and the people afoot to come as best they could. Even so, it was almost noon before they rode into the charred timbers that had been a village only a night before.
Alea stared around her at the emptiness of the smoking ashes, sick foreboding filling her. “Where is everyone?”
“Taken,” Shuba said, his mouth a grim line. “Stolen. Kidnapped, the men to be used as living shields against the arrows of the next village General Malachi means to take, and the women for … slavery.”
He didn’t have to tell Alea what that meant. She knew, and fury filled her. “Out upon this foul bandit! We might come in time to free the young ones!”
Then they heard the moan coming from the smoking ruins and the cursing that answered it. Alea slipped down from her saddle and ran around a heap of charred wood to find a jumble of timbers and Gar so smeared with ashes and soot that she wouldn’t have known him if it hadn’t been for his height, straining against the weight of a huge blackened timber.
Alea stared only a second, then whirled to the village men. “Help him! Throw those beams aside! Find whoever calls!” She turned back and ran to help Gar. The men were beside her on the instant, throwing timbers aside and using sticks to lever away those that were still smoking. In a hollow beneath them, they found a young man, dried blood caked on brow, shoulder, and tunic, covered with ashes but still alive. “Bless you, neighbors!” he groaned. “Are any … any of the others …?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Shuba said grimly, and led a party away to search while Alea knelt beside the youth to do what she could for his burns and wounds.
An hour later, they had scattered all the charred timbers and were covered with soot—but they had found two girls and four boys whom the raiders must have thought too badly wounded to survive. They weren’t far wrong—Alea and Gar worked frantically, she with her hands, he with his mind, closing slashed blood vessels, regrowing nerve tissue and burned skin. Gar prodded the bodies into making more blood as Alea trickled water past parched lips and over swollen tongues. The two worst injured died in their arms and Alea began to feel a sullen hatred toward General Malachi and his men.
So did three of the survivors; the fourth, a young man, only gazed off into space, his face empty. Alea focused her mind on his thoughts and shuddered when she found only a smooth, featureless blank. His mind had retreated into a corner of his brain and buried itself in memories of childhood, disconnected entirely from his body.
The two other young men and the young woman swore vengeance even as they groaned from the pain of their wounds.
“He has taken Felice!” one of the boys grated, then ground his teeth against the pain. When the spasm passed, he panted, “They mowed down Ethera and Genald, Hror and Venducci! They drove the rest like cattle—I saw blood from their swords, saw one strike Theria backhanded when she dared to rebuke him!”
“They fought like beasts,” the young woman said with deadly calm. “They laid about them with their clubs and knives and didn’t care whom they struck, or where. They threw torches into the longhouses and struck our friends down as they ran out to escape the flames.”
“There was nothing of fairness or rightness in the way they fought,” growled the other young man. “They kicked crotches and struck from behind—and this against people on foot when they were mounted! They are brutes, not men!”
“You gave as well as you could, Crel,” the young woman said, a little life coming into her voice. “I saw you standing over Eralie with your quarterstaff until that brute struck you down from behind.”