“I did not ask you to.”
I looked at Wulfric. “No one ever does, and yet I speak sense.”
This time the almost-smile touched his eyes. Briefly, then it vanished, tucked away wherever he kept such things.
“You will give your warning before the council,” he said. “You will answer what is asked. Until we know what you are, you will be guarded.”
“What I am is wet, hungry, and extremely tired of being pointed at.”
The boy’s ears turned scarlet.
Wulfric looked at him. “Wystan, lower the spear before you skewer our guest with your trembling.”
“I was not trembling.”
The woman beside him made a soft, disbelieving sound.
“Guest,” Leofric said. “Is that what we call strays now?”
“If she bites, we shall amend it,” Wulfric said.
I laughed. I didn’t mean to, but the sound escaped cracked and rusty, startling me more than anyone else. I hadn’t laughed properly in months. Not since Brian.
The thought struck hard enough to steal the air from my chest. Then the little girl hiding behind the woman’s skirts smiled at me, and for one second the ache loosened.
Wulfric gestured toward the village.
“Come.”
I followed him down the slope as the mud sucked at my boots with every step, and every person in Ashford turned to stare.
I couldn’t blame them. I was a soaking wet woman in strange clothes arriving alone from the direction of an invading army. I’d have stared too.
Up close, the village was louder than it had looked from the hill. Axes struck wood. Chickens complained. Someone hammered metal. A baby wailed inside one of the houses.
The air smelled of woodsmoke, ale, damp earth, dung, baking bread, wet wool, and people who lived in a world without deodorant.
Underneath it all lay fear. Sharp. Familiar.
A woman passed carrying a basket of flat loaves and stared at me so hard she nearly stepped on a chicken. The chicken objected loudly. The goat followed us at a distance, still judging.
“Your animal dislikes me,” I said.
Wulfric glanced back.
“The goat dislikes all equally. Do not take it to heart.”
The meeting house stood near the center of the village, larger than the cottages around it but still smaller than the engine bay back at the station. Smoke leaked from a hole in the roof.
Inside, shadows clung to low timber beams. Rushes covered the packed-earth floor. A central hearth burned low, and the smoke rose toward the roof opening, changed its mind halfway there, and went directly into my eyes instead.
Benches lined the walls. Someone had set out a clay jug of ale beside a round brown loaf and a wedge of cheese that looked hard enough to repair the masonry.
So this was a war council. I’d always wondered what one looked like.
Wulfric motioned me forward as every gaze in the room fastened on me.
My pulse kicked once, hard. Panic later. Survive now.
