And now that he’d accepted, he felt strange. There was a creeping sense that he had betrayed the people of Errold’s Grove in some way, and yet at the same time he resented the fact that he felt that way. What right had they to claim his loyalty? Why should he chain his fate to theirs?
There was guilt, too, a great deal of it, and he wasn’t at all sure what to do about it. What had happened to the folk of the village? He hadn’t made any real effort to find out. Surely he ought to at least do that. And no matter what Snowfire said, how could anyone be sure there was nothing that he could have done that would have saved Justyn? Maybe if he’d been beside his master on that bridge, the way any good apprentice would have been, the outcome would have been different. All right, so he didn’t have any real magic yet, but he’d learned a lot at the side of his parents, and maybe he would have been able to do something that would have saved them both. I could have jumped off the bridge when he set it afire, and dragged him along with me. I can swim, even if he couldn‘t. Or - His mind buzzed with a hundred absurd things he might have done, or could have done, or thought he could have done, and all of them just made him feel guiltier.
He became so engrossed in his thoughts that he didn’t realize that the horse had stopped eating and was sneaking through the forest at a fast, if furtive, walk, until he saw a landmark he recognized with a start. He knew then that they were getting far. too close to Errold’s Grove for comfort and made a grab for the reins.
But the horse was an older hand at this game than he was; with a flip of its head, it tossed the reins out of reach, and increased its pace. Darian didn’t have to be able to read its thoughts to know what they were - the beast had scented its herdmates, and it was going to get back to them by whatever means it took. The blacksmith had explained once why all the horses in the village were kept in a single herd; horses weren’t happy alone, and even though the Errold’s Grove “herd” wasn’t a breeding herd, the lack of a stallion was no impediment to the horses’ comfort in each other.
This horse probably felt the same about the rest of the horses he was used to being with, and no dim memory of mistreatment was going to overwhelm the urgent need on his part to get back to the safety of the herd. Darian considered trying to throw himself out of the saddle, but the horse was going faster now, and suddenly the ground seemed very far away to a boy who’d never done more than steal rides on the innkeeper’s old pony. With the horse moving, he didn’t know how to get himself out of the saddle and onto the ground without breaking something. So he just held grimly to the saddle, gritted his teeth against the jolting, and prayed that they wouldn’t run into any enemy sentries.
The trees cleared away up ahead, and Darian felt his heart stop with terror as he thought they were almost at the village. But the horse hesitated as the tree cover thinned, and Darian managed to seize the reins before the recalcitrant beast managed to bolt into the middle of town.
But then, Darian realized that the daylight ahead of them was not the daylight of the cleared fields. Somehow the horse had managed to come out of the forest at the top of the only bluff that overlooked the village. How it had managed that, Darian had no clue, but once he dismounted and led the horse cautiously to the edge of the bluff, he had as good a view of the village as if he’d been sitting in one of the trees.
But what he saw made his skin crawl, and filled him with the desperate feeling he had to do something, along with the knowledge that there was nothing he could do.
In the distant fields were people, people he recognized, toiling like beasts in the heat of midday. Hitched to plows like oxen were the biggest men of the village, sweating beneath the blows of a whip held in the hands of a stranger. Behind them, guiding the plows through the fields meant to be sown with late-ripening crops, were the women, who were also chained in their places. Others worked, chained at the waist in pairs, beneath the watchful eyes of more strangers. These men weren’t wearing the armor that Darian remembered, but he knew they must be the same men who had invaded the village.
As to why men were being used to pull the plows instead of oxen, well, the smell of roasting beef coming up the bluff certainly provided a reasonable explanation. There were no oxen now, and the horses had probably been confiscated to serve the army.
How many of the villagers had been recaptured? Enough, evidently, to provide field-slaves for their conquerors.
Darian found his hands clenched on his bow without any memory of reaching for it. He could sneak in closer, get a position up in one of the trees, and start picking off guards. They weren’t wearing armor; they’d be easy shots -
I could kill all the guards I see and they could escape, I could lead them to the Hawkbrothers -
Right. He could kill all the guards that he could see. How many more men were there that he couldn’t see? If they’d gotten to the point this quickly of killing and eating the oxen - tough meat at best -
Anger flooded him next, anger at the Hawkbrothers. Why hadn’t they told him the truth?
It faded as quickly as it came. They hadn’t told him, perhaps, because they didn’t know themselves. It was entirely possible that this was the first day the villagers had been put to work in the fields. Why should the enemy have put them out? It would have been more logical for them to take their captives away; sell them, perhaps, or put them to work in their own fields back in the northern mountains.
Unless, of course, they had decided to stay.
He couldn’t do anything here, and this was information that the Hawkbrothers didn’t have. He had to get back, as quickly as he could.
It’s not cowardice to go. I can’t do anything by myself, and Stariall and the rest need to know what’s happened here.
Carefully, he backed the horse into the heavier cover before he mounted. He considered his next move carefully. He hadn’t really been paying attention when the horse took off on its own. Somehow, if there were sentries (and there probably were) the horse had managed to thread its way past them without being spotted. So if he could retrace the horse’s path, he could do the same.
Finally, finally something he could do right! He felt a grin stretch his mouth, an expression that had not been on his lips since his parents died. If? Say rather, how quickly. The day he could not track a shod horse in the soft earth of the forest floor would be a day when he renounced his heritage and asked to be apprenticed to a clerk!
He had to cast around a bit before he found the clear trail; it had gotten a little muddled when he finally got control of the reins back from the stubborn beast. But once he found the trail, the rest was easy.
He soon saw how the horse had gotten up onto the bluff without his realizing it; the beast had wound a zigzag course up the slope, taking the ascent so gradually that he hadn’t known they were climbing. He was tempted to cut straight down, but reminded himself that the horse had managed to avoid the sentries this way; it wouldn’t be a good idea to take what appeared to be a shorter path only to run into one of the enemy.
The horse didn’t want to be ridden away from its mates, and fought him for a good long time, which didn’t make finding the path more difficult, but did take up more valuable time. It was sunset by the time that Darian got to a point where he was fairly certain that there were no enemies to watch out for. By then, the horse was tired enough to stop fighting, which was just as well, because Darian’s temper was frayed to a thin strand, and he was in no mood for further nonsense.