Borenson didn’t hate the squatters. There were wars and rumors of wars all across Rofehavan. But he couldn’t allow them to stay on his land, either.
He whirled and crept toward the tree.
It’s probably nothing, he thought. Probably just some rangit or a sleepy old burrow bear.
Rangits were large rabbitlike creatures that fed on grass. They often sought shade during the heat of the day.
A burrow bear was a gentle beast that ate grass and vegetables. It had no fear of mankind whatsoever, and if Borenson found one, he’d be able to walk right up to it and scratch its head.
He went to the tree, swatted aside the long trailing fronds, and stepped beneath the canopy.
There was a burrow bear—its carcass sitting upon a spit, just waiting for someone to light a fire beneath it.
Inside the shadowed enclosure, entire families squatted: mothers, fathers, children—lots of young children between the ages of three and six. There couldn’t have been fewer than twenty people in all.
They crouched, the children with wide eyes and dirty faces peering up at him in terror. The stench of poverty was thick on them.
Borenson’s hand went to his dagger. He couldn’t be too careful around such people. Squatters had attacked farmers before. The road to Sand Hollow had been treacherous all summer.
He half-expected someone to try to creep up on him from behind. Borenson was vastly outnumbered, but he was an expert with the dagger. Though he was old, if it came to a fight, he would gut them to a man.
One little girl who could not have been eight pleaded, “Please, sir, don’t hurt us!”
Borenson glanced at one of the fathers. He was a young man in his mid-twenties with a wife and three little children clinging to him for protection.
By the powers, what can I do? Borenson wondered. He hated to throw them off his property, but he couldn’t afford to let them remain, thieving.
If he’d had the money, he’d have hired the men to work. But he couldn’t support these people.
He said, “I thought it was the borrowbirds that ate my cherries, fool that I am.”
“Please, sir,” the young man apologized. “We didn’t steal anything.”
Borenson shook his head. “So, you’ve just been hunkering down here in my fields, drinking my water and helping get rid of the excess burrow bears?”
Back in the shadows Borenson spotted a young man clinging to a pretty lass. His jaw dropped as he recognized his youngest son, Draken, holding some girl as skinny as a doe.
Draken was only fifteen. For weeks now he had been shucking his chores, going “hunting” each afternoon. Borenson had imagined that it was wanderlust. Now he saw that it was only common lust.
“Draken?” Sir Borenson demanded. Immediately he knew what had happened. Draken was hiding this girl, hiding her whole family.
“It’s true, Father,” Draken said. “They didn’t steal the cherries. They’ve been living off of wild mushrooms and garlic and trout from the river, what ever they could get—but they didn’t eat from our crops!”
Borenson doubted that. Even if these folks spared his crops, he lived on the borders of a small town called Sweetgrass. Surely the neighbors would be missing something.
Draken was clutching his girl with great familiarity, a slim little thing with a narrow waist and hair as yellow as sunlight. Borenson knew that romance was involved, but one glance at the poor clothing of the squatters, the desperation in their faces, and he knew that they were not the caliber of people that he would want in his family.
Draken had been trained in the Gwardeen to be a skyrider, patrolling Landesfallen on the backs of giant graaks. Borenson himself had taught Draken the use of the bow and ax. Draken was warrior-born, a young man of great discipline, not some oaf of a farm boy to sow his seed in the first pretty girl who was willing.
“I thought I taught you better,” Borenson growled in disgust. “The same discipline that a man uses on the battlefield, he should use in bed.”
“Father,” Draken said protectively, leaping to his feet, “she’s to be my wife!”
“Funny,” Borenson said. “No one told me or your mother of a wedding. . . . You’ll not sleep with this tart.”
“I was trying to think of how to tell you—”
Borenson didn’t want to hear Draken’s excuses. He glared at the squatters, and then dismissed them. “You’ll be off my property in five minutes.” He let them imagine the penalty for failure.
“Father,” Draken said fiercely. “They’re good people—from Mystarria. This is Baron Owen Walkin and his family—his wife Greta, his daughter Rain, his sons and their kin.”
Borenson knew the Walkin name. He’d even met a Baron Walkin twenty years ago, an elderly man of good report. The Walkins had been staunch supporters of the king and came from a long line of stout warriors. But these starvelings looked nothing like warriors. There was no muscle on them. The patriarch of the family looked to be at least ten years Borenson’s junior, a thin man with a widow’s peak and fiery red hair.
Could times really be so hard in Mystarria, Borenson wondered, to turn true men into starvelings? If all that he heard was true, the barbaric warlords of Internook had invaded the coasts after the death of the Earth King.
Ten years back, Borenson’s family had been among the very first wave of refugees from Mystarria. He was out of touch with his homeland.
But the latest rumors said that the new overlords were harsh on their vassals, demanding outlandish taxes, abusing women.
Those who back-talked or stood up to the abuse would find themselves burned out of their homes—or worse.
As a baron loyal to the Earth King, Walkin and his kin would have been singled out for retribution.
Borenson suddenly realized just how desperate these people really might be.
“I . . .” Draken fumbled. “Rain here will be a good wife!”
Rain. Borenson made a mental note. His own wife Myrrima was a wizardess who served Water. Borenson thought it no coincidence that his son would fall for a girl named Rain.
He sought for words to voice his disappointment, and one of the poor folk in the group—the matriarch Greta—warned, “Beware what you say about my daughter. She loves your son. You’ll be eating your words for the rest of your life!”
What a confounded mess, Borenson thought. He dared not let these people stay on his land, yet he couldn’t in good conscience send them off.
If he sent them off, they’d have to make their way into the interior of Landesfallen, into the desert. Even if they found a place to homestead, it was too late to plant crops. The Walkin family had come a long way—just to starve.
Outside in the orchard, Erin called, “Father, I need another bucket!”
“Where are you, Father?” Sage called.
That’s when he was struck.
Something hit Borenson—harder than he’d ever been hit in his life. The blow seemed to land on the back of his head and then continue on through his whole body, rattling every fiber of his being.
White lights flashed in his eyes and a roaring filled his ears. He tried to turn and glance behind him, but he saw no one as he fell. He hit the ground and struggled to cling to consciousness, but he felt as if he’d been bashed by a reaver’s glory hammer.
He heard the squatters all cry out in alarm, and then he was spinning, spinning . . .
Borenson had a dream unlike any other. He dreamt that he was a man, a giant on a world different from his own, and in the space of a heartbeat this man’s life flashed before his eyes.
Borenson dreamt of simple things—a heavy-boned wife whose face was not quite human, for she had horny nubs upon her temples and heavy jaws, and canine teeth that were far too large. Yet he loved her as if she were beautiful, for she bore him stout sons who were destined to be warriors.
In his dream, he was a warrior himself—Aaath Ulber, the leader of the High Guard, the king’s elite forces. His name was a title that meant Berserker Prime, or Greatest of All Berserkers, and like his wife, he was not quite human, for his people had been breeding warriors for two hundred generations, and he was the culmination of their efforts.