There came in a line, dressed in wooden slave collars, a bundle of children: four infants, eight of toddling age, seven very young, and one older girl of nine or ten years of age who looked glassy-eyed with shock, staring only straight ahead. They looked nothing like the Bright One, having a different complexion and broader features and black hair more like to that of the Ashioi than Liathano’s mass of fire-gold hair. They were not handsome children, not like those of her kind, but they were very young and there were so many in that one group. After so long in exile, she was still astonished by the sight of children.

“Brought you no captives?” asked the blood knives. “No warriors taken in honorable combat?”

Cat Mask shrugged. “The adults we killed were not warriors. It was too much trouble to bring them, so we killed them.” He looked at his companions, and they shared winks and nods. ‘And we were very hungry, so we ate them.”

Everyone laughed, since it was disgusting to think of eating a stranger, and one with sour flesh, at that.

“We thought it worthwhile to bring these children. A bundle plus two.”

“I only count a bundle,” said the eldest of the blood knives.

“Oh, that’s right,” remarked Cat Mask, scratching his chin. “When we came through High-Hill we met with Lizard Mask’s sister, who has settled there. She just lost her little son to the coughing sickness, so she took a pair of little boys thinking that, if she raised them, she might forget her grief over the other one.”

“Very well,” said the blood knives. ‘A bundle will be enough. But you who raid into the lands beyond the White Road must bring us strong captives as tribute for the gods.”

“If we can find any!” said Cat Mask with another laugh. “They looked pretty scrawny and weak. We had to fatten these little ones up on goat’s milk.”

“It is their blood we need,” said the blood knives, “not their flesh.”

They stepped forward to take the children, but before they could lay hands on them White Feather pushed past them and scooped up one of the toddlers.

“I claim this one for mine, to raise as my own!”

Her voice was loud, and her tone harsh, and the child hiccuped and sniveled into the growing silence as the blood knives opened and closed their hands and folk pressed forward to see what was going on.

Before three breaths had passed, a man with the delicate frame of an exile stepped out of the crowd and pulled an infant out of the arms of one of the mask warriors. ‘And I claim this one, to replace the child my wife could never have.”

‘And I!” said a woman, coming forward to put her hands on one of the little walking ones. “For I lost my child and my husband when the Pale Dogs raided our settlement, just before the shadows fell over us. I want this child to raise.”