“How close?”
“Less than an hour. They have found us.”
Ten
DARCY
The problemwith an hour was that it sounded like a decent amount of time. It wasn’t. An hour was sixty orderly minutes if you had clocks, roads, radios, trained crews, and people who understood exactly where to go when you shouted at them, whereas we had a forest full of frightened villagers, several cooking fires, too many children, several old people who couldn’t move quickly, one wounded man who insisted he wasn’t wounded, and a goat that had appeared from nowhere during the night and was currently eating someone’s cloak.
“Everyone make ready,” Wulfric called out as his voice carried across the clearing without effort.
People started gathering sacks, men reached for weapons, women lifted children, and boys helped wherever they were needed.
He turned to me, holding my gaze for the space of a heartbeat. Talk about bad timing.
I pointed toward the north trail. “I need the children, the injured, and anyone who can’t move quickly shifted to the second camp now, not when the fighting starts. Anya knows the route, and Godwin keeps the retreat path clear. No carts unlessthey’re already loaded and moving, and if something breaks, we leave it.”
By the look on his face, I knew he hated the last part. Three days ago, Wulfric might have argued over every sack of grain and iron pot, while a week ago he might have stood his people behind whatever wall happened to be nearest and called dying there honor, but now he only looked toward Godwin.
“You heard her.”
The old man gave one sharp nod, and then everything happened at once.
Wulfric took the fighters south and I took everyone else. It was, frankly, the worst division of labor in history, because his half involved swords while mine involved children, wounded people, livestock, and overlaid on top of everything else, fear.
“Head count!” I shouted.
Blank faces turned toward me.
“Count your people. Everyone who came with you, everyone sleeping beside you, everyone who was here this morning.”
Anya appeared from somewhere carrying a toddler on one hip and a sack over the opposite shoulder, her fair hair hidden beneath a linen veil that had already come half loose.
“How many came with the refugees last night?” I asked.
“Four and twenty.”
“Are they all here?”
Her expression changed.
“Find out now, and send every family north the moment you know no one is missing.”
I caught Wystan as he ran past with a bow nearly as tall as he was.
“No.”
He stopped so abruptly the boy behind him nearly crashed into his back. “My lord said every man who can fight?—”
“You’re thirteen.”
“I am nearly fourteen.” He clenched his jaw. “I can shoot.”
“I know, and you can also run, which makes you far more useful to me as a messenger.”
His eyes narrowed, because every thirteen-year-old boy in every century believed running messages was beneath them while being stabbed was the natural next step into manhood.
“Between me, Wulfric, Godwin, and the north path,” I said. “Nothing else, and you do not become a hero today.”
