“They burned it.”
More people appeared on the road. Ten. Twenty. Too many to count.
Wulfric looked south. “How many are coming?”
The boy’s mother reached us, tears cutting clean tracks through the soot on her face.
“All of us,” she said as behind her, the road filled with the displaced.
Nine
DARCY
By sunrise,the forest camp had become a village. The refugees who’d arrived the night before had brought four children, two old men, six women, a lame dog, three cooking pots, one handcart with a broken wheel, and a black grumpy chicken Hild immediately declared inferior to every chicken she’d ever known.
No one had asked Hild, but this hadn’t discouraged her from sharing her opinion. In my own time, she would have been one of those older women who dyed their hair purple, wore outlandish outfits, said what was on their mind, and basically scared the crap out of everyone.
“I can tell by the feet,” she said, holding the bird under one arm.
“What’s wrong with its feet?”
“They are much too narrow.”
I looked at the chicken. “I’m going to be honest. I’ve reached the limit of my poultry expertise.”
Hild sniffed. “A woman should know her chickens.”
“Why?”
“So men cannot cheat her.”
“Cheat her with chickens?”
“About anything.”
There was a logic buried in there somewhere, though it was early and I hadn’t had anything to drink except a cup of thin, watery ale.
The forest camp stretched through a broad clearing ringed with oak and beech, hidden from the nearest path by a thick swath of woodland. What had been orderly yesterday was now overcrowded, smoky, noisy. I had to step over two sleeping children, a basket of onions, and several sleeping people before reaching the central fire.
At some point during the night, the new arrivals had been given blankets and spaces beneath the hastily constructed rough lean-tos. Families shifted closer together without being asked. Anya had taken in a woman with a baby. Godwin had surrendered his dry sleeping place to one of the old men and then spent half the night complaining about the root beneath his own blanket.
I knew this because Godwin had told everyone. Repeatedly.
By now I knew who snored, who stole blankets, who slept curled in a ball, and who could somehow occupy enough ground for three people despite weighing less than a sack of barley. I knew Gilda drank her ale warm and Hild wanted hers cold, which seemed optimistic given the absence of refrigeration and a long walk to the nearest stream. Osric cheated at dice. Edwin cheated worse. Both brothers complained bitterly when the other won.
And Wystan avoided unpleasant jobs by appearing deeply interested in whatever I was doing.
“Go help Leofric with the water barrels,” I said.
His face fell. “I am helping you.”
“You’re watching me eat breakfast.”
He stood up straight. “I am keeping guard.”
“Against what?”
He looked at the oat cake in my hand. “That.”
