Full Circle (13 page)

“My lord Thegan is sure they will,” Leof said, but he had private doubts. “I’ll ride out with the first squad. There are reports
of Travellers in Pigeonvale. We’ll start there.”

Pigeonvale was half an hour’s ride away. The weather was threatening rain, and Leof wondered if they’d be able to get the
hay in safely this year. There was never a good time to go to battle, but the weeks between spring sowing and the hay harvest
were best — the oath men could concentrate on their duties instead of worrying about their families being left hungry over
winter.

A mile out of the village, Hodge, who was riding at point, put up a hand to signal a stop where the road widened into a camping
place near a stream. There was a small tent there next to the ashes of last night’s fire, and a handcart, the kind Travellers
often used.

“Gather them in, sergeant,” Leof said.

Hodge nodded to one of the oath men and he dismounted and went over to the tent. He was a young one, green as grass, and only
in this detail because he was good with horses. Scarf, they called him, because he always wore a brown scarf around his neck.
The men joked that his mother had knitted it for him to keep her darling safe from fever, but he said it was a gift from his
sweetheart. Leof smiled, remembering the look on his face as he’d said it — a mixture of pride and embarrassment.

Scarf called out, “Ho, Travellers!” in a voice meant to sound full and stern, but which came out squeaky with nerves. He flushed
and bent down to the tent opening, shouting, “Out here now!” to cover his discomfiture.

Then he went still and turned, retching into the stream, vomit and tears mingling on his face. Leof jumped down from Thistle
and strode to the tent. He didn’t want to know what was in there, but had to.

Two bodies, a man and a woman, in their mid-years by the beginnings of grey in their hair. Stabbed, throats cut. A terrible
smell from where their bowels had loosened as they died. The flies were all over their staring eyes. But nothing had been
taken — all their meagre belongings were around them, cooking pots, tinderbox, food… This was murder, not banditry.

He felt a cold anger take him over, and motioned Hodge to come and look.

Turning away from the tent, the sergeant’s face was unreadable, but he went over to Scarf and patted him on the shoulders.
The man had stopped vomiting and was washing his face in the stream.

“Come,” Leof said. “Let us talk to the people of Pigeonvale.”

“We can’t just leave them there.” Scarf said, pointing to the tent.

Hodge looked at him pityingly. “Lad, they’re dead. No harm’s going to come to them now. We’ll get a burial detail out here
from the village.”

Scarf climbed back on his horse with unsteady legs. The other men clustered around him, keen to find out what had been in
the tent and telling them gave him back a little of his dignity.

“Ride on,” Leof said.

Pigeonvale was shuttered and barricaded. They rode into the market square — an open space more dirt than grass, which barely
deserved the name of square — and immediately people came flooding out of their houses, clamouring for help. There were only
twenty or so — it was a small, poor village.

“My lord, my lord, are they coming, the ghosts?” a man called.

“We got rid of the Travellers, lord. The ghosts are a plot of those dark-haired bastards,” a woman yelled.

Leof held up a hand for silence. “You got rid of the Travellers?”

“Aye, my lord,” the woman said proudly. “When we heard from Lord Thegan’s man that the ghosts were sparing Travellers, we
killed them!”

“Stuck ’em like pigs,” another man said. “They didn’t even fight.”

Leof felt ice travel through his veins. Thegan had seeded this. Deliberately. Knowing that murders would result. Used the
information to get the rumours started so that Travellers would be under threat and come to the fort willingly. To save himself
time, and trouble. And it would, the cold trained officer’s part of his mind confirmed. It would make things much easier.

“My lord Thegan’s man told you that?” he asked.

“Aye, my lord, one of his own officers.”

“My lord Wil, it was,” an older man said. “Him what comes from over Bonhill way.”

“You did wrong,” Leof said. “My lord does not wish Travellers killed.” He was amazed that he could keep his voice steady.
“Lord Thegan wishes all Travellers to come to the fort at Sendat, where they will be safe.”

The older man grinned. “Ah, that’s right. My lord Thegan wants to do the job himself, eh? Well, there’s a few left. Cherry
and her boys have shut themselves in and we couldn’t get to them, and there’s a farmhand over at Esher’s place with a head
as dark as night on him, though he swears he’s one of us.”

“Aye, and that woman down near Barleydale,” a young woman said eagerly. “She’s a red-head, but she’s got dark eyes, and you
know there’s always Traveller blood with dark eyes. She’s got two girls, too.”

“Take a list down, sergeant,” Leof said, and he rode away, no longer able to listen. He had studied old battles, old campaigns.
Humans would sacrifice anyone, especially strangers, to save their own. Nothing more ruthless existed than a man — or woman
— with children to protect and someone weak to kill.

And he knew, too, the fury that rose against the victim precisely because he was weak. Leof had felt it himself, in battle,
when an enemy couldn’t protect himself. When fighting turned to slaughter anger filled you, made you implacable, as though
the enemy’s weakness was an insult. He had never understood that, but he had felt it, and now he recognised it in the eyes
of these people. They hated the Travellers even more than they had yesterday, because they had been easy to kill.

“Cherry and her boys” turned out to be the local candlemaker, living in a respectable house on the outskirts of the village.
The house, like all the others, was shuttered and barred.

Hodge banged on the door and shouted, “Warlord’s men, mistress! Here to take you and your boys to safety at the warlord’s
fort.”

There was a scuffling behind the door and then a woman’s voice: “Why would the warlord protect
us
?”

A good question, Leof thought bleakly.

“You pay your taxes, don’t you?” Hodge asked. “Warlords don’t like people who pay taxes being killed off.”

Leof frowned at that, but the cynicism of the answer was reassuring to the woman, and she opened the door slowly, her three
boys craning to see from behind her.

“Gather up whatever food you’ve got, and some blankets and clothes, too,” Hodge said. “We won’t wait long.”

His impatience also reassured her. She nodded and vanished into the house, calling out instructions to the boys, and reappeared
a few minutes later with bundles and bags, while the eldest boy, about twelve years, trundled a handcart around from the back
yard where the candles were made. The handcart had a couple of dozen candles in the bottom, and the woman looked shyly up
at Leof.

“It may be the lady would like some extra candles?” she asked.

He smiled warmly at her. “I’m sure she would, with so many people coming to the fort. That was well thought of.”

Cherry bobbed her head and dumped the food and blankets on top of the candles, more cheerful now she felt that she wasn’t
going empty-handed. That she could prove her respectability.

Leof suspected that the respectable and the not-so-respectable would be lumped together in Thegan’s mind. “Let’s go, sergeant,”
he said, and they rode off to “near Barleyvale” where the red-headed woman lived with her family.

It went on like that all day.

They came across the remnants of other massacres: a family of four cut down on the road and left on the verge for the crows;
an old man garotted in a parody of a warlord’s execution, and hung up from a tree as the warlord hung criminals in the gibbet;
a house that had been fired and still stank of burnt meat. Scarf puked each time, and Leof found himself feeling grateful
to the boy for expressing simple human revulsion, as he could not, being the officer.

He had to remain in control of himself, although his anger rose higher as the day went on and they heard more reports about
“my lord’s officer” spreading the news about the ghosts sparing Traveller lives.

His own messengers did their job thoroughly. By the end of the day as soon as they rode into a town the inhabitants were ready,
either with a group of stony-faced Travellers surrounded by guards with pitchforks and scythes, or with directions to where
the “black-haired bastards” had barricaded themselves in. At least the messengers had stopped the slaughter. But across the
Domain, Leof estimated, hundreds would have been killed.

They turned for home at noon with a band of about sixty Travellers, a mixture of small families and singles, most with handcarts
or backpacks full of food and clothing.

“To Sendat, sergeant,” Leof ordered, and he rode at the back of the group so the dust from Thistle’s hooves wouldn’t get in
their eyes. It was a long boring ride, and it gave him far too much time to think about Thegan, and Wil, and what was going
to happen to the Travellers when they reached the fort.

But what could he do? There was nowhere else to take them, and they were definitely not safe where they were. At least in
the fort they had a chance. He lashed himself with blame. He should have killed the enchanter when he had the chance, before
Thegan’s troops arrived in Bonhill, when it was just him and the enchanter up on the hill. If he had borrowed a bow from the
town, he could have shot him without even the wind wraiths being alerted. If he had been quicker in the farmyard he could
have slit his throat before the wraiths rescued him.

Unbidden, the image of Sorn’s face rose in his mind, smiling at him, and he felt comforted. She would not blame him, and she
would tell him not to blame himself. But although he kept his face calm, as befitted an officer, he felt that he wanted to
ride home crying like a baby.

They arrived back at Sendat late, in the dark, long after the evening meal. Leof left the settling of the Travellers in the
barn to Alston and Hodge, and went straight to Thegan’s workroom.

“Leof,” Thegan greeted him. “Good. How many did you bring in?”

“Sixty-two,” Leof said, walking into the warlord’s workroom. He stood looking straight at Thegan, unsure what to say. “There
were massacres,” he managed finally. “Murders. All over the Domain.”

Thegan nodded. “Yes.”

That was all. But it wasn’t enough.

“Wil spread the news about the ghosts protecting Travellers.”

Thegan was looking at him strangely, a small smile curling the corners of his mouth. “On my orders,” he confirmed, and he
sat back in his chair, waiting for Leof’s response.

“Why, my lord?”

“Difficult times call for difficult measures,” he said. “Of course it would be better if we didn’t have to take this action.
On the other hand, the Travellers have always been a weakness in the Domain’s defence. And in the future, they would have
been a weakness in the defence of Actonsland.”

Actonsland. The united country Thegan was trying to create. With him as its overlord. He was still planning for the long term
— and wasn’t that what you wanted in a warlord? Someone who thought ahead, who took pains to ensure the future of his people?

“You think they would join the enchanter?” Leof asked, feeling deflated. Thegan was as logical as always.

“Of course they will, as soon as they understand what he’s trying to do. The young men, at the very least. The hot heads.
The kind who end up in the gibbet.”

He smiled, not the miraculous smile, nor the one that invited you to join his select group of friends, but a kind smile, the
sort of smile Leof might have given Scarf.

Leof was so tired that he couldn’t think properly.

“You did your duty,” Thegan said, absently, as he looked back at the map spread out on his table. “Now go and eat, and rest.
There will be more to do tomorrow.”

Leof was almost persuaded that Thegan had done what he had to do — the right thing, the reasonable thing — and then he walked
back into the hall, looking for food, as he had been ordered, and saw Sorn.

She was standing at the door to the kitchen, her little dog Fortune hiding in her skirts as he always did. She was discussing
something with the cook. She looked up and he was shocked by how drawn her face looked, how pale. Her eyes were desperate.

He went towards her without thinking, but halfway across the room he realised how fast he was walking, and slowed so that
the men and serving girls gathered around the tables wouldn’t notice. He had been ordered to get food. He was following orders,
he told himself. But his heart was beating uncomfortably fast and he was angry at whatever, whoever, had put that fear into
her eyes.

“My lady,” he said, and bowed, as etiquette demanded.

She bowed back, eyes down. “My lord Leof.” She looked up to the cook. “My lord is hungry. Get him food.”

“Yes, my lady,” the man said, and he raced back to the kitchen, leaving them, for the moment, in a pocket of silence.

“Are you all right?” he asked. It was breaking their rule of never saying anything personal in public, but he had to know
what had brought that look of grief, of anger, he wasn’t sure what it was.

“Is it true?” she asked in a low voice. “Is it true that my lord sent Wil out to spread a rumour that the ghosts protect Travellers?”

“Not a rumour. The truth.”

She looked up sharply and met his eyes. “And that makes it all right? To connive at the murder of innocents?”

It was as though she had turned a picture the right side up, so that he could see it all clearly, recognise his lord’s scheme
for what it was. “No,” he replied. “That does not make it all right. But for now, the Travellers are safer here.”

“We must make sure they stay safe,” she said, low and insistent.

He nodded.

They stood, quietly, until the cook returned with a tray of food, pretending to the world, even to each other, that they had
not just committed themselves to treachery — he against his sworn lord, she against her husband.