The Warded Man

With more than a hundred hands, the men doubled their efforts, half of them continuing to dig as the others descended upon the only salvageable structure left in the Cluster: Brine Cutter’s house. Selia led Brine away, somehow supporting the giant man as he stumbled, while the men cleared the rubble and began hauling new stones. A few took out warding kits and began to paint fresh wards while children made thatch. The house would be restored by nightfall.

Arlen was partnered with Cobie Fisher in hauling wood. The children had amassed a sizable pile, though it was only a fraction of what had been lost. Cobie was a tall, thickly built boy with dark curls and hairy arms. He was popular among the other children, but it was popularity built at others’ expense. Few children cared to weather his insults, and fewer still his beatings.

Cobie had tortured Arlen for years, and the other children had gone along. Jeph’s farm was the northernmost in the Brook, far from where the children tended to gather in Town Square, and Arlen spent most of his free time wandering the Brook by himself. Sacrificing him to Cobie’s wrath seemed a fair trade to most children.

Whenever Arlen went fishing, or passed by Fishing Hole on the way to Town Square, Cobie and his friends seemed to hear about it, and were waiting in the same spot on his way home. Sometimes they just called him names, or pushed him, but other times he came home bloody and bruised, and his mother shouted at him for fighting.

Finally, Arlen had enough. He left a stout stick hidden in that spot, and the next time Cobie and his friends pounced, Arlen pretended to run, only to produce the weapon as if from thin air and come back swinging.

Cobie was the first one struck, a hard blow that left him crying in the dirt with blood running from his ear. Willum received a broken finger, and Gart walked with a limp for over a week. It had done nothing to improve Arlen’s popularity among the other children, and Arlen’s father had caned him, but the other boys never bothered him again. Even now, Cobie gave him a wide berth and flinched if Arlen made a sudden move, even though he was bigger by far.

“Survivors!” Bil Baker called suddenly, standing by a collapsed house at the edge of the Cluster. “I can hear them trapped in the root cellar!”

Immediately, everyone dropped what they were doing and rushed over. Clearing the rubble would take too long, so the men began to dig, bending their backs with silent fervor. Soon after, they broke through the side of the cellar, and began hauling out the survivors. They were filthy and terrified, but all were very much alive. Three women, six children, and one man.

“Uncle Cholie!” Arlen cried, and his mother was there in an instant, cradling her brother, who stumbled drunkenly. Arlen ran to them, ducking under his other arm to steady him.

“Cholie, what are you doing here?” Silvy asked. Cholie seldom left his workshop in Town Square. Arlen’s mother had told the tale a thousand times of how she and her brother had run the farrier’s shop together before Jeph began breaking his horses’ shoes on purpose for a reason to come court.

“Came to court Ana Cutter,” Cholie mumbled. He pulled at his hair, having already torn whole clumps free. “We’d just opened the bolt-hole when they came through the wards …” His knees buckled, pulling Arlen and Silvy down with his weight. Kneeling in the dirt, he wept.

Arlen looked at the other survivors. Ana Cutter wasn’t among them. His throat tightened as the children passed. He knew every one of them; their families, what their houses were like inside and out, their animals’ names. They met his eyes for a second as they went by, and in that moment, he lived the attack through their eyes. He saw himself shoved into a cramped hole in the ground while those unable to fit turned to face the corelings and the fire. Suddenly he started gasping, unable to stop until Jeph slapped him on the back and brought him to his senses.

They were finishing a cold midday meal when a horn sounded on the far side of the Brook.

“Not two in one day?” Silvy gasped, covering her mouth.

“Bah,” Selia grunted. “At midday? Use your head, girl!”

“Then what …?”

Selia ignored her, rising to fetch a horn blower to signal back. Keven Marsh had his horn ready, as the folks from Soggy Marsh always did. It was easy to get separated in the marshes, and no one wanted to be wandering lost when the swamp demons rose. Keven’s cheeks inflated like a frog’s chin as he blew a series of notes.

“Messenger horn,” Coran Marsh advised Silvy. A graybeard, he was Speaker for Soggy Marsh and Keven’s father. “They prob’ly saw the smoke. Keven’s telling ’em what’s happened and where everyone is.”

“A Messenger in spring?” Arlen asked. “I thought they come in the fall after harvest. We only finished planting this past moon!”

“Messenger never came last fall,” Coran said, spitting foamy brown juice from the root he was chewing through the gap of his missing teeth. “We been worried sumpin’ happened. Thought we might not have a Messenger bring salt till next fall. Or maybe that the corelings got the Free Cities and we’s cut off.”

“The corelings could never get the Free Cities,” Arlen said.

“Arlen, shush your mouth!” Silvy hissed. “He’s your elder!”

“Let the boy speak,” Coran said. “Ever bin to a free city, boy?” he asked Arlen.

“No,” Arlen admitted.

“Ever know anyone who had?”

“No,” Arlen said again.

“So what makes you such an expert?” Coran asked. “Ent no one been to one ’cept the Messengers. They’re the only ones what brave the night to go so far. Who’s to say the Free Cities ent just places like the Brook? If the corelings can get us, they can get them, too.”

“Old Hog is from the Free Cities,” Arlen said. Rusco Hog was the richest man in the Brook. He ran the general store, which was the crux of all commerce in Tibbet’s Brook.

“Ay,” Coran said, “an’ old Hog told me years ago that one trip was enough for him. He meant to go back after a few years, but said it wasn’t worth the risk. So you ask him if the Free Cities are any safer than anywhere else.”

Arlen didn’t want to believe it. There had to be safe places in the world. But again the image of himself being thrown into the cellar flashed across his mind, and he knew that nowhere was truly safe at night.

The Messenger arrived an hour later. He was a tall man in his early thirties, with cropped brown hair and a short, thick beard. Draped about his broad shoulders was a shirt of metal links, and he wore a long dark cloak with thick leather breeches and boots. His mare was a sleek brown courser. Strapped to the horse’s saddle was a harness holding a number of different spears. His face was grim as he approached, but his shoulders were high and proud. He scanned the crowd and spotted the Speaker easily as she stood giving orders. He turned his horse toward her.

Riding a few paces behind on a heavily laden cart pulled by a pair of dark brown mollies was the Jongleur. His clothes were a brightly colored patchwork, and he had a lute resting on the bench next to him. His hair was a color Arlen had never seen before, like a pale carrot, and his skin was so fair it seemed the sun had never touched it. His shoulders slumped, and he looked thoroughly exhausted.

There was always a Jongleur with the annual Messenger. To the children, and some of the adults, the Jongleur was the more important of the two. For as long as Arlen could remember, it had been the same man, gray-haired but spry and full of cheer. This new one was younger, and he seemed sullen. Children ran to him immediately, and the young Jongleur perked up, the frustration melting from his face so quickly Arlen began to doubt it was ever there. In an instant, the Jongleur was off the cart and spinning his colored balls into the air as the children cheered.