“RYSHA, YOU HAVE TO STAY WITH ESSEY! It's dangerous!” Daryd had left Essey in the grassy enclosure within the walls, now crowded with other horses. Everywhere there were foreign soldiers, shouting orders, mustering horses by the enclosure's stream for a drink, searching for feed. There were clusters of prisoners, stacks of weapons and armour, and the occasional dead body—although mostly the fighting had not spread this deeply into town.
“I want to see Mama and Papa!” Rysha shouted at him, very upset.
“Rysha, no!” Daryd was so frustrated, and so scared. How could he explain to a little girl? How could he make her see without terrifying her? “Look, there's bad men all through the town, it's not safe for you! Stay here with Essey where there are good men to look after you…”
“No, no, no!” Rysha yelled, her eyes tearing up. “I want to see Mama and Papa! I'll go without you, I will!”
Daryd knew it was no idle threat—cautious Rysha did not make threats unless she meant it. He gritted his teeth. “Okay…come on.”
He took her hand and ducked through the timber fence. The town looked so achingly familiar…and yet so different. Timber houses, and some stone ones, to either side of narrow, paved streets. Many gardens were damaged, fences destroyed, fruit trees stripped of their bounty. Some houses were missing windows…and he saw with shock as they rounded a corner that where Yuan Wenys's house had stood, there now lay a crumbled, charred ruin.
Rysha gasped. “Yuan Wenys is going to be so angry!” Daryd pulled her aside as some soldiers came running up the path. Down some steps, Daryd saw a pair of boots sticking out from the bushes surrounding the house of Yuan Fershyn. He pulled Rysha on quickly, but Rysha spared the body barely a glance. “Daryd, where is Yuan Wenys?”
“I don't know, Rysha.” Daryd tried to keep the fear from his voice. “I think he'll be in the valley, Mama and Papa too.”
“Why can't they be here?” Rysha protested, as if about to cry once more. “I want to see them now!”
Oh please, please, please don't let them be here, Daryd wished at the spirits, harder than he had ever wished anything before in his life. Please let them have escaped.
The stream that ran through the heart of Ymoth was crowded with soldiers, some walking, some resting, some drinking from waterskins. Daryd wondered why they weren't drinking from the stream like Papa always did when he returned from the training hall across the little bridge. Grasping Rysha's hand more tightly, he half-ran along the streamside, past the front verandahs of familiar wooden houses, past Mrs. Karnysh's berry bushes, past the old tree that leaned out over the stream. The swinging rope still dangled above the water. He'd thought he was so brave the first time he'd swung on that rope. But now he realised that he hadn't truly known what bravery was.
And then it was there, their house by the stream bend with a good view over the main wall, and a glimpse of the wide Yumynis beyond. The fruit trees were bare, but the yard seemed intact…Rysha dragged at him, desperately, but he refused to release her hand. There were a pair of soldiers sitting on the verandah, helmets in hand, looking sweaty and tired.
“Mama!” Rysha cried as they leapt the stair and pushed in the front door. “Mama! Papa!” The front room was a mess, the table overturned, chairs broken. Mama's kitchen pots were smashed, the contents of shelves strewn across the floor. Papa's swords were missing from their wall rack, however, and most of the pots and pans were too. Mama and Papa must have taken them, Daryd thought with a surge of unspeakable relief. They must have taken what they could and headed for the valley. The men would have defended the bridge and bought time for the women and children. More warriors would have come from the valley to help—he'd heard his father talking about it with other men before, all the plans they'd made in case of attack. Surely that was where they all were now.
They searched the rest of the house and the rear yard, but found only ransacked rooms and torn vegetable plots. When they returned to the main room, Rysha was in speechless tears. “I told you, Rysha, they've gone to the wall!” Daryd insisted. “They'll be safe there. It's good they're not here, it wasn't safe here.”
He looked up, realising the two soldiers had followed them into the main room. One was Goeren-yai, with long hair and tattoos, the other short-haired with a Verenthane medallion. Both looked concerned. The Verenthane asked him a question, indicating the house around them. “This is your house?” he seemed to be asking.
“Aye, this is our house,” Daryd replied, helplessly. Had all the other villagers escaped also? All his aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces? Smyt the blacksmith? Agry the farmer's son, who was a bit funny in the head, and his right arm didn't work properly, but who was always cheerful and smiling when Daryd went to market to buy vegetables for Mama's cooking? Old Mrs. Calwyn and her many rabbits? He didn't know, he just didn't know…
The two soldiers exchanged grim looks. The Goeren-yai said something else, beckoning Daryd to come. Something in his manner was very serious and his gesture was not that of an adult to a child, but more the invitation of one man to another. The Verenthane soldier came and scooped up Rysha, who cried on his shoulder, having lost all fear of Verenthanes somewhere along the ride, especially after long days in the company of Princess Sofy. Daryd went with the Goeren-yai soldier, who led him from the house, the other man following close behind with Rysha.
They walked downstream, past soldiers and the broken debris that had been the streamside market stall. The stream, Daryd noticed, was red. Men must have died in the water, further uphill. When they reached the main gate in the defensive wall, Daryd could barely recognise it. The training hall, which had stood beside the gate, was a pile of ash and charred timbers. The big trees that had surrounded the hall, and shaded it beneath wide branches on a summer's day, were strangely scarred, the bark torn in a series of half-circular cuts. And there were big iron nails driven into the trunks, with chains dangling from them.
On the other side of the gate, also against the big wall, the stables and adjoining barn still stood. Some soldiers had gathered there, standing about some limp things on the ground. Daryd's soldier escort led him that way. Some of the other soldiers saw, and stood aside for him.
They were bodies, Daryd saw. Mostly naked, dirty and bloody. He stood over the nearest, barely recognising it as a person. It had tattoos and dirty, long hair. Suddenly he recognised the grass-spirit tattoo spiralling up the right arm. It was Farmer Tangryn. Or rather, it had been Farmer Tangryn. Farmer Tangryn had been a strong man, but the corpse's ribs were showing. And he didn't smell. There were scars on his wrists where they'd bound him. And a stab wound through the ribs. Probably they'd killed all the prisoners as soon as the attack began.
Daryd was amazed at how calm he was. Everything seemed surreal. All the soldiers were looking at him with grim expectation. They knew what this was. Well, Daryd thought, so did he. He'd heard the stories of the Catastrophe, since as far back as he could remember. He knew what the Hadryn did to Udalyn prisoners.
There were five other bodies. Three he could not recognise. Two were Mrs. Castyl, who lived nearer the upper slope, and old Yuan Angy, who still liked to spear fish in the river shallows on a warm day, despite his years. No more, it seemed.
Daryd turned back toward the pile of ashes that had been the training hall. Men were sifting through the rubble, poking with swords. Even now, a man found something metal and examined it—a ring, Daryd thought. He stepped across to a comrade and dropped the ring in an upturned helmet that man carried. Soon another man found something else and did the same. Then another man found a further object and picked it up, reverently. He carried it from the ashes, as his fellow searchers made spirit signs or holy signs, and placed it on the ground, where it formed the latest in a long line of similar objects. Human skulls. There were at least twenty. The northerners hadn't just burned the training hall, they'd put people in it first.
Still…Ymoth and its surrounding region had close to two thousand. This here was just twenty-five people, maybe thirty. Surely most of them had escaped. Surely these were just the unlucky few who had been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. His gaze shifted back to the big tree. He knew what the scars were now—whip marks. His people would have been chained to that tree, tortured and mutilated, until…until what? What could they have told their torturers? There was no great wealth hidden around Ymoth. As for the valley's defences, well…they hadn't changed much since the last time the Hadryn attacked a hundred years ago. What could the northerners possibly have gained by doing such things to his people?
Soldiers pushed a man forward, arms twisted behind his back. The prisoner had the blond hair of many northerners—a man in his thirties, but no company soldier. He wore good, arm-length chainmail, heavy boots and hard leather leggings, but his surcoat bore the crest of a noble house. A nobleman. Daryd had heard of them, too. Strange ways, the Verenthanes had, to place one man above another by birth. Master Jaryd was a nobleman too, he'd gathered. But Master Jaryd would never give the orders that this man had given.
The soldiers yelled questions at the nobleman and hit him, pointing to the bodies. The northerner snarled in contempt. Said something, shortly, and spat near the bodies. One of the soldiers raised his weapon in fury, but another stopped him. Took his own sword and offered it to Daryd. Daryd looked at the sword. At the cold, hateful northern face. At the bodies on the ground and the ashpile by the wall.
Then he strode forward, ignoring the offered sword, and drew his knife instead. Soldiers forced the northerner to his knees. Daryd stepped to one side, as he'd once seen Udalyn warriors do to a captured Hadryn raider. Then he cut the man's throat with a single, hard slash. Blood spurted and flowed. Soldiers held the man up, then let him collapse. He kicked and spluttered, then went limp.
Daryd stared down at the corpse. It had been so easy. He'd always imagined it would be harder than that. He felt no elation, no surge of satisfied revenge. Yet he felt no regret, either. If there were more northerners present, he'd have killed them too. He'd seen what they'd done to his people, and he now knew for certain what it would mean, in this battle, for his people to lose. Killing was easy. Living, it seemed, was the hard part.
He wiped his knife on the back of his victim, and sheathed it. Men regarded him with hard, thoughtful eyes. When he walked to the ashpile, to view the remains of villagers he'd once known, no man moved to accompany him, or guide him, or pat him on the head. His Wakening remained many years away, yet his blade had tasted the blood of enemies. He was not yet a man, but today, Daryd Yuvenar was no longer a child.