She helped Brice stand, and he placed an arm around her shoulder for support. She took him to the farm where thankfully, no more dogs attacked. She started to kick open the cabin door but relented enough to lift the bar and push. Inside she expected to find the wife of the older man, but nobody was there. Only two filthy sleeping pallets. She sat Brice on a three-legged stool and went in search of other people.
There were none, but she paused at the henhouse and gathered eight eggs. She carried them to the fireplace. An empty blackened pot hung from a swingarm. She tossed kindling into the opening and a few chunks of split wood on top, ignoring the tinder, iron, and flint. She cast a small flame and watched it take.
The cabin was square, a few steps in any direction, the single room used for all purposes like most farms. The corner closest to the fireplace held six rows of shelves containing bowls of dried foods and other items for cooking. Surprisingly, to Prin, the cabin was fairly clean and dry. From the outside, it appeared older and not in good repair.
The inside of the cabin was much nicer than the outside. It meant the owner didn’t wish to advertise to people on the road that he possessed enough for them to steal from him.
“How long will they be stupid?” Brice asked, his thumb jerking in the direction of the two farmers.
“All their lives, I suspect. But if you’re talking about how long the spell will last, all night. By sunup, they’ll be wondering what happened, but they will still be stupid.”
“Very funny.”
“I don’t want to stay in here tonight. Now I’m going to fill a bucket with cold water to soak your ankle.”
“You’d rather sleep in a drafty barn than in here?”
She slammed the door on the way out without answering. A wooden bucket stood beside the door, and a well-worn path took her to the creek where rocks lined the edge and gave her a place to scoop the water. She trudged back to the cabin while cursing the owners for not digging a well closer to the house.
“I’ll scramble eggs with I get back. I’m going to explore the farm.”
Brice snarled, “Looking for things to steal from these good people?”
She spun on him. “If you must know, I’m looking for chores that must be done, like milking a cow, or if any animals are penned up and need to feed. But, since you’re being snarky and rude after he set his dogs on us, I consider anything I find, mine. He can come try to take it back if he wants a beating.”
Brice had his foot soaking in the bucket, but his head jerked up at her words. “You think he let the dogs attack us on purpose?”
She paused, then said in all seriousness. “I think that if I look hard enough, I’ll find evidence we were not the first people his dogs attacked.”
“By evidence, you mean bones or graves.”
“Look around, Brice. This farm is too small to support two men this well. The same with the garden and the fact no crops grow here. The ground is too dry and rocky. Only a few animals, but not enough to live off, and they probably bought the goats and sheep with money stolen or taken as bribes for passage on the path. The way those dogs attacked was not an accident.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“I saw someone watching from inside the cabin. They never ran out to stop the dogs, but they had to hear them. Yes, I’m sure.” She slammed the door a second time—and it felt good.
She found several depressions in the ground behind the second barn, eight of them, some looking older than others. At one time, the ground had been flat, but as people in graves decayed, the shallow graves sank into depressions and revealed where the unmarked graves were. Unmarked. That was the key. Innocent travelers who passed this lonely way and found themselves attacked by dogs, then they either paid the farmers or were killed, and their belongings were stolen.
She glanced up the slope where the two men sat, the younger still admiring his toes. They created another problem. It was clear they robbed people, killed others, and stole from more. She would be gone by morning. But they would remain to harm more people, but it wasn’t in her to do what she felt was needed—which was to slit their throats and leave them for the wild pigs to eat.
But leaving them alive made her responsible for people they would kill in the future.
What she could do was to take from them as they took from others. Not their lives, but perhaps their livelihood. The first barn held tools, rope, three wagons, harnesses, and spare wheels. She would burn it.
Prin headed for the second barn and found it stocked with hay and feed for winter, all grown elsewhere and brought here. It would also burn.
The third barn, smaller and more of an outbuilding, was filled with hammers, saws, shovels, and tools of every sort. Few farms could afford ironwork like she saw. Honest farmers did more bartering of crops and labor, and they had little hard coin to spend on products from a blacksmith. What hung on the walls of the outbuilding was worth a small fortune. But only the wood frame of the building would burn, leaving the tools only requiring new handles.
She carried armloads of tools from the building to the barn filled with hay until she had moved nearly all the tools, and even the wooden boxes of nails. A hot fire would ruin the temper on the iron and hopefully make it so soft the tools would bend at the touch and be worthless.
A good, hot fire from the buildings would run the sheep and goats off, she hoped, run them so far away the two men would never locate all of them. She would also turn the chickens loose. The henhouse would burn along with the outhouse. When she finished, only ashes would remain on the farm and not many of them.
She stormed back into the cabin.
“What’s wrong?” Brice asked, sitting alert and ready to leap to his feet at the sight of her.
“Calm down, I’m just angry.”
“You found other victims, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Now I have two idiots sitting on the path, and I don’t know what to do with them when the magic spell wears off. I can’t kill them, but I can’t let them go so they can do the same to others as they tried with us, or worse.”
“You’re already acting like a Queen.” Brice’s smile reassured her.
“I’m going to use another of the forget spells on them in the morning, then burn the farm. I will destroy every building, run off their stock, and if any two bricks remain one on top of another I’ll kick them over.”
“Remind me to never make you angry, Prin.” There wasn’t a trace of humor in his tone.
She scowled at him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They slept in the barn on fresh-cut hay. Before sunrise, Prin woke and climbed to where both men were sleeping on the path. She was pleased no animals had drug them off during the night, then decided that if one had, she wouldn’t have been too upset.
She stood and watched them for a time, one snoring and one drooling in the dirt, but felt little pity. Her fingers located another of the grapes enchanted with the spell to forget all, and placed it on the ground between them. Remembering the shallow graves of innocent travelers behind the barn, she used her heel to grind the grape until she felt it pop, then held her breath until she was several steps away and the air dissipated the mist.
Her mind no longer felt cluttered and angry. Instead of waking Brice and getting an early start, she crawled back under her blanket and fell into a restful sleep. When the sun rose, so did they. Brice’s swore his ankle had healed. She thought he lied, but kept it to herself and would remain watchful. They would stop for the day if he began to limp.