“Sir King, you must withdraw,” Arian said. “You have no weapon to deal with a daskdraudigs, and I have but the one daskin arrow.”

Kieri obeyed, joining Aliam and his family across the field from the compound. “It’s definitely a daskdraudigs,” he said then. “And they think it was lured here.”

“Something Achrya left?” Estil asked.

“No doubt,” Aliam said. “Thank all the gods you came to visit, Kieri.”

“Indeed,” Kieri said, watching across the field. The rangers reappeared, one on the roof of the house and one on the forecourt’s wall. He saw them draw their bows, the streaking flight of arrows. Then the monster moved. The ranger on the house roof staggered and fell as the south wall of the house heaved up and sideways, breaking roof-beams like twigs and sending slates down in a rattling cascade.

Estil and the other women gathered the children into a knot, closing them in and comforting those who began to cry. Aliam’s soldiers looked to him, but he held them back. “Can’t fight that with swords,” he said. “They know what they’re doing, the rangers. But be ready to move back if we need to.”

The monster’s other end, the south stable wall, rose and came down on the rest of the stable with an impact that shook the ground where Kieri stood, then rose again and crashed into the front wall, barely missing the ranger standing on it; the shock of the impact knocked him off the wall, and he landed on the ground just outside. The ranger on the roof rolled down the slope of a sound portion into a chimney, scrambled up, and shot again and again, immobilizing that end of the monster. The other ranger, slower to rise, barely missed being hit by falling stones as the other end struck the front wall again, but his arrows flew true, and soon that end as well was immobilized.

Was the danger over? Kieri held up his hand to still the excited clamor of voices around him. It still felt … wrong. Whatever had drawn the daskdraudigs was still there.

The two rangers, arrows ready, clearly thought the same thing, though the monster was motionless now. Paks had said rockserpents died, became once more inert stone, safe. Was there another one? Or some other menace?

He looked at the forest behind them. The forest taig held nothing of evil; it was alert, wary, but not hostile. Whatever evil he felt was centered there, in the ruins of Aliam’s house. That made sense, with Achrya’s visit, if the Webmistress set the lure that brought the daskdraudigs. But why did he feel evil still near if the daskdraudigs had died?

Aliam’s people set up a camp and had food cooking before full dark. Halveric troops laid out a perimeter, set sentries. The two rangers near the house came one by one for supper but then went back near the walls to keep watch on the daskdraudigs, they said.

Shortly before dark, four more rangers arrived with Estilla.