8 
THE VILLAGERS
Emerick was snoring, thanks to Wimarca’s most recent sleeping draught. The old healer sat on her stool by the fire.
“I’m glad you are here, child,” Wimarca said. “Tig tells me I have a legend in my hut. But do you know what pleases me most? Not that you are a legend, but that you are a friend—to Tig. That lad has not many friends in this village.”
“I don’t know why no one’s been good to him,” Drest said. “He’s one of my greatest friends in all the world.” She paused. “But you’ve been good. He told me how you protected him when he first came to this village.”
“A witch’s son inspires fear by his very presence. He cannot help it, and small-minded people cannot help their reactions. But it is not easy being different, and Tig is very different from other lads.”
“Is it not a fine thing to be different from what people expect of you?” Drest shrugged.
Wimarca’s old face creased in a smile. “It is good for this village to see that one such as you calls Tig your friend.”
The healer stood and wandered to a large wooden chest, in the corner of her hut. There she knelt, opened the lid, and began to sort past weavings and linens and parchment tied with string. Then she removed a long sword-belt, worn with age and use, but oiled so that the leather shone. Beside it, Wimarca placed a long leather sheath covered with intricate whirls. When she took away her hand, Drest saw a hilt.
“Is that really a sword?” Drest murmured, unable to take her eyes from the plain square pommel, nicked and worn with battle, above the leather-wrapped grip. “Where did you get it?”
“From a fallen castle man. Yes, in the days long past when your father defended this village. I don’t know what fancy made me take this weapon, but I did, and have kept it to call to me when its time was right. And its time is now, and its place is at your hip.”
The belt was soft in Drest’s hands, the leather a quality she had never touched before. She strapped it over her hips and slipped the scabbard with its sword into the loops. The sudden familiar weight against her leg made her chest lighten.
Drest drew the sword. It was large and heavy, a sword for a fighting man, like her last sword Borawyn had been. “Has it a name?”
“It may have had one in its distant past, but let me name it now as Tig would: Call this sword Tancored. Do you know who that is?”
Drest shook her head.
“Tancored is a fae in one of the Seelie legends of these parts. She teaches heroes to be their true selves.”
Drest slipped the sword back into its scabbard. Tancored. That name felt right.
It was completely dark as Drest drifted into the woods. The farmers were stationed around the hut and on the path, and it was time for her to speak to them and show them that she was their friend and not just her father’s daughter.
Still, she was nervous; she had spoken to few villagers but Tig’s family, and was not entirely sure how she should address the others. Gruffly, repeating Grimbol’s orders? Thanking them for their willingness to serve? Neither seemed natural.
Drest drew up to the spot by a cluster of rowan bushes where her father had set the nearest guard. But the bearded farmer whom Grimbol had put in place was no longer there. Had he taken a break? She stayed for a few minutes, listening, then walked on soundlessly to the second spot: a place by a stone near the path.
It too was empty.
Frowning, Drest darted on to the third spot, then the fourth. No villagers were guarding as they had been when Grimbol had left. There were none in the woods, nor on the path, nor in the fields.
Scowling now, Drest ran up toward the mill, past the stream, which was silent in the night, its sluice closed. She hoped that Arnulf would remember all she had done for Tig and see her as his foster son’s friend and not as Grimbol’s child, for she would have to rely on his word to make the farmers obey.
If they would listen to him.
Drest slipped up to the mill’s back door, the one she had entered when she had first come to Phearsham Ridge, but hesitated. There was shouting inside, a booming noise, and not just from a handful of men.
I thought you said they were your friends, sneered Uwen’s voice.
Drest crept in and put her hand on the door leading into the big room. Careful not to make a sound, she pushed open the door a crack—and stopped.
A mob of villagers and a roar of voices filled the room. Men, women, young and old, crowded within.
Drest caught her breath. It was like the mob in Soggyweald that had come to watch the witch Merewen burn.
“Quiet!” Arnulf’s word cut through the noise.
The voices subsided into rumbling.
“I don’t like having the lord here either,” Arnulf said. “And no, we’re not fit to guard him. But if we refuse, we’ll have Grimbol’s wrath to bear.”
“Why not send his lord to another village?” The young bearded farmer whom Grimbol had placed in the spot by the rowan bushes raised his hand. “Send him to Soggyweald and make him their problem.”
The woman beside him—small, with a long dark braid and a dark-haired child in her arms—elbowed his ribs. “That’s a fool’s notion, Hodge. Refuse the Mad Wolf of the North? You might as well battle fire with your hands.”
A chorus of women’s voices agreed.
“Or give him back to the castle!” called another voice. “We’d be rewarded for that, surely.”
“We’d be slaughtered for that!”
“I think it’s all a lie,” Hodge called. “Who says that the castle wants to kill its own lord? Grimbol, that’s who. Because he wants us to risk our lives holding that sniveling, sorry lord hostage for him!”
More voices—men and women together—were chorusing their agreement. The noise was rising into a mindless pitch.
“You don’t know the truth of it!”
The new voice cut through the rest: Torold. Drest saw him through the crack. A wan boy swathed in bandages leaned against him: his brother Colum.
“I spoke to Lord Faintree,” the blacksmith roared, “and this is what he said: Every one of Grimbol’s words is true. His uncle wants the lord dead so he can have the castle for himself, and if we want—”
“So let his uncle have him!” an old woman interrupted.
“Is Grimbol going to order us to gain back the lord’s castle for him?” shouted a man.
“He’d better not!” cried Hodge. “You may die for your lord if that’s your wish, Torold, but I’m not fighting for him, nor for the Mad Wolf!”
“And why do you obey Grimbol’s whim, Torold, when his wee beast of a lass did that to your brother?” called someone else.
Drest backed away from the door. Her hand closed over the square pommel of her new sword.
“I obey Lord Faintree, not the Mad Wolf!” bellowed Torold. “I know and honor the man who rules us! My lord says that Grimbol’s lass is his guard—”
“And our curse!”
Someone laughed.
“You wouldn’t laugh if you’d ever seen her fight!” shouted a thin, sharp voice: Tig’s. “Do you have any idea how many times she’s saved everyone’s life—including all of yours?”
“I say we grab the Wolf’s lass and her rotten lord and bury them in the midden! Who’s with me?” Hodge’s voice rang out.
Another loud roar, the voices joining.
Drest retreated into the night.
The villagers were like wasps in a nest that had been struck: angry, unthinking, and dangerous.
What could she do? She would have to take Emerick into the woods and hide, constantly moving, as if she were her father.
But Emerick was not well enough to flee.
Drest shook her head. She would have to face the villagers. She had done so at Soggyweald, alone, only now Tig was on her side, and Torold too, somehow. And Arnulf, she was sure, would object to anyone who sought to harm her, and Wyneck and Idony would do the same. She’d have to find a way to win over the rest.
Or you could slay them, as Da would, said Gobin’s casual voice.
Drest crept back inside the small room. The roar of the crowd was down to a murmur.
She put her eye to the crack—
—and saw the door on the other end of the room open. A tall figure in a dark brown cloak and hood slipped in.
“I beg your pardon,” said the man in a pleasant, gentle voice. “Have I interrupted something?”
Drest’s brow furrowed. The voice was familiar. She tried to think back to the people she’d met in her journey before but could not place him.
“I’ve stopped by, if I may, for a bite to eat. And to ask how safe is the road ahead. There are rumors everywhere about the Mad Wolf.”
Drest knew that voice now.
It was the knight who had chased her, the one who’d spoken about the price on her head.