But the soldiers hadn’t left yet, leaving him nothing to do, and that frightened him. She might see how lazy he was and forget what she’d said. He needed to get to those fields, somehow. Though it was probably already too late. The dung wouldn’t even be cured by the time the rains and snows came, and they had nowhere dry to store it except for one blockhouse and that was full of drying brush and sheaves of bark.

He hadn’t eaten yet today. He scanned the high grasses, switch in hand. He’d taken to hunting jump-mice, and if he caught a few he would make a small fire from twigs and grasses, roast the fur off them and finally put something in his aching belly.

Distant motion caught his eye and he looked up to see a half-dozen soldiers coming out from the village, up on the keep road. They were riding at a slow canter, unevenly. As he watched, he saw one loosen the sword in the scabbard at her side. The effort almost toppled her from the saddle and the others laughed upon seeing that, the sound drifting up to where Wreneck stood.

The Lady didn’t like visitors. There was nothing to feed them.

If he ran, he might reach the house in time, to at least warn her. Switch still in one hand, he set off at a lumbering run. He had been clumsy all his life, not like Orfantal, who was like a jackrabbit under the shadow of an owl or a hawk. His knees sometimes knocked together when he ran and that was painful, and the work shoes he had been given were too big, driving his toes hard forward with each stride, and at any moment one of them might fly off.

His breath ached in his chest and he could feel how hot the effort was making him, but on he ran, stumbling once when a foot struck a sunken stone in the grasses. Slowly, he realized that he would not make it in time. The horses were on the climb already.

She might well hide. Pretend to not be there, sending Jinia out to say that her mistress was away, or maybe unwell, and they would leave. She would tell them to visit on another day, maybe in a week or so. So, he was running for nothing. Jinia was smart and besides, he loved her, though she teased him all the time for being slow and stupid, when she was neither and older besides.

At nights, under his blanket, he made himself wet thinking about Jinia, like pee but not pee, wishing she didn’t tease him and wishing that he was let in the house so that he could see more of her and she wouldn’t always complain that he stank of horse shit. If he could be let in the house she might one day fall in love with him and when he was older, as old as she was, they could get married and have children and he would name one Orfantal. If it was a boy, of course.