The boy had a knife in his fist, the blade little more than a kitchen thing with a nicked edge and a handle wrapped in dirty cord. He held it before him as though he meant to fend off the whole victorious army with it. His face was pinched and white under a smear of soot, and one eye was swollen nearly shut. Behind him, a girl no more than six clutched his tunic with both hands, her pale brown hair tangled with leaves.
Thomas took one step toward them as the boy lifted the knife higher.
“Stay back.”
The voice was thin, but the courage in it was not.
Thomas stopped.
Hob, from beneath the tree, muttered, “Saints.”
Thomas crouched slowly, though every part of him ached. “What are your names?”
The boy’s chin trembled. He locked it hard. “Wat.”
“And hers?”
“My sister, Alyson.”
The little girl pressed her face into Wat’s back.
Thomas looked toward the smoke rising beyond the track. Not battlefield smoke. House smoke. Barn smoke. The king’s men had come through more than the field that day.
“Where are your mother and father?”
Wat’s mouth flattened. There was answer enough in that small, fierce silence.
Thomas held out his empty hand, palm up. “You are from Ashcombe?”
The boy hesitated. “From Lowmere.”
Close enough. Under Ashcombe’s shadow. Under Thomas’s protection, though he had done a poor job of proving it.
“You’ll come with me.”
Wat shook his head once. “No.”
Thomas would have admired the boy under other circumstances. At present, he was too tired to argue with a child armed with a cheese knife.
He unfastened his cloak and held it out. It had been fine wool once. Now it was torn, wet, and stained beyond saving. “Your sister is cold.”
Wat looked at the cloak. Then at Thomas. Then at Alyson, whose small teeth were chattering.
At last, slowly, he lowered the knife.
Thomas wrapped the cloak around both children, careful not to move too quickly. Alyson made a tiny sound when the warmth closed around her, and something in Thomas’s chest cracked in a place no physician could set.
He looked at Wat. “Keep the knife if it comforts you.”
The boy stared. “Truly?”
“Aye. But if you stick Hob with it, he’ll be cross.”
Hob grunted from the tree. “I will be more than cross.”
Alyson peered out from the cloak with round eyes.
For the first time since dawn, Thomas felt something almost like breath move through him. Not relief. Never that. But a thread. A thin one. Enough to pull on.
