But all work stopped when young Deke, the Watch-Boy, came pounding up the dirt street, arms and legs flailing, yelling that soldiers were coming —
— fast, on horseback —
— and lots of them.
The headman listened to Deke's breathless gasps of warning, his mind rolled with shock and confusion. Soldiers? he thought desperately. Why? Who would be sending soldiers? There's no reason for soldiers to come here!
"They — they — they're coming from Karse!" Deke gasped around his panting.
And that was not good news. Soldiers from Karse were often no better than bandits. As the leader of the village, his was the decision; he had to do something, and quickly.
It was too late to get the people out of the village. He'd protect what he could.
"Run as fast as you can, Deke, up where the wild apples grow," he said. "Tell Mikhal to hide the children, and you stay with 'em. Don't you come back. You tell him not to bring the younglings back till he thinks it's safe and the soldiers are long gone. You tell him to hide good, you understand? Like the time we was looking for him, and he didn't want to be found. You tell him — tell him — we don't want to know where they are." He grabbed the boy's shoulders, and shook him once, and Deke's eyes got even bigger.
"You understand?" he said fiercely. "You understand?"
The boy's chin quivered, his eyes so big they filled his face. He nodded, bobbing his head on his thin little neck.
"Good!" the headman let him go. "Now go! Run!"
Deke was off, pelting away as fast as he could go, fear adding to his speed. As he vanished, the headman heard the pounding of hooves, and turned to see the first of the soldiers riding into the village. He stepped out to meet them.
Mikhal was the oldest man in the village; no one knew exactly how old he was, and he didn't even know himself. He was the village teacher and had been for more than forty years. Not the kind of teacher the priests were, in the ways of books and classrooms, but in the things a youngling in a mountain village needed, the ways of the mountains, the wild things, and the goats. Today, he'd brought the children up here to pick the last of the wild apples, making a game of it, but making sure they learned as well, and not just the acts, but the reasons behind them. Seeing that they took only half the apples on the trees, and none at all from the ground telling them how the wild things, the ones that stayed awake for the winter, would need what they left.
But that lesson was shattered when Deke came pelting up the mountain path.
Mikhal listened carefully to Deke and saw the sense in the headman's orders. Calmly, methodically, and without any fuss, he gathered up the children, including the childlike butterfly, and led them away, down paths only he and the goats knew.
Then, down paths only he and the wild things knew. Only then did he tell them, in simple words they could understand, why he had hidden them away, and why they must stay hidden.
Even the wind shuddered away from the scream, a shriek of agony that went on and on forever before it finally died to a sobbing whimper. The headman's wife sagged back into the arms that held her firmly erect.
Baron Munn handed the hot iron back to the Captain of his Household Cavalry, and turned back to the headman. Four more men held him tightly, forcing him to kneel in the dirt but holding his head up by the hair so that he could not avoid watching.
"Now," the Baron said pleasantly. "Tell me where the girl is. No more lies. No sending my men off on wild-goat chases to look where she isn't."
"I don't know! I swear it!" the headman sobbed desperately. "I told old Mikhal to hide them all, and I don't know where he went! No one knows, no one can know, he's gone where only the wild things are! Please, by the gods, you must believe me!"
The man wept, great, racking sobs that shook his body.
"Oh, I do believe you," Munn said and smiled. "But one of these others may know what you don't."
He waved a hand at the villagers gathered under the swords of his men. They winced away.
"So, in case there is someone who knows, this entertainment jvill go on until I am certain that you are correct., And when your dear wife can bear no more, I shall choose someone else."
He signaled to his Captain, who handed him the iron, reheated to whiteness. "As pleasant a diversion as this is, my objective is still the same. I want the girl."
The headman's wife began to scream again, before the white-hot iron even touched her.
Hands on her ears, the girl crouched on her haunches, rocking back and forth. She tried to shut out everything, words, thoughts, all —
"They killed Headman Cracy an' his wife last night," Deke sobbed, his voice full of anguish. "Hurt 'em real bad. afore they killed 'em."
She knew that. She'd known that long before Deke learned it. She could still feel the pain that had sent her to huddle in the back of the cave, racked with agony she could not explain.
Deke hugged his skinny arms to his chest, pausing now and then to wipe his nose and eyes with the back of his hand.
"They started on my pap and mam this morning!" Deke continued, his face screwing up into a mask of grief and bewilderment.
She knew that, too. And she knew that Deke's momma was only heartbeats from that same darkness that had taken Momma Cracy and Headman Cracy.
"Why they like that, Mikhal?" the boy sobbed, finally flinging himself into Mikhal's arms. "Why they gotta hurt and kill people? We never done nothin'! Why they gotta hurt my mam and pap?"
Mikhal pulled the boy to him, holding him close to his chest in a sheltering embrace. While the boy sobbed, Mikhal cursed under his breath.
The girl knew why. Mikhal cursed himself for sending Deke to spy on the village. Mikhal thought he should have gone himself.
"It's 'cause they're bad, Deke," Mikhal murmured between curses. "It's 'cause they want what we got, an' just 'cause they life to hurt folks, an' this's a good excuse to make somebody hurt. None of it's our doin', Deke. None of it."
The old man kept his voice high enough for the other children to hear. He was a teacher; even in the midst terror, he would teach.
"Ain't none of it our fault," he said, and the girl felt his eyes probing the darkness, looking for her. "We just gotta get through this, an' make sure it don't happen again."
They hurled Momma Cracy an' Poppa Cracy, hurted 'em an' kilt 'em. The girl's thoughts were filled with con-fusion, terror, and anguish. They hurted 'em, but it's 'cause they want me. They gonna hurt Deke's momma an' poppa, they gonna hurt everybody till they get me!
She rocked back and forth, tears burning down her cheeks, trying to work out reasons and answers. But there were no reasons, and she had never hi her life touched minds like these. Mikhal was right. Mikhal was right.