Arvid and Regar dragged their captives back toward the wagon; the other men broke and fled to the huts around the small square. Regar threw his to the ground and sat on him. Arvid forced his to his knees, keeping the knife pressure on him.

“Both hands on your head,” he said. “If you move, I’ll stick you.” The man complied. Keeping the point of the knife at the man’s neck, Arvid fished a thong out of his pocket with the other hand. No more arrows came while he and Regar finished with their captives—one hand tied behind to a choke-thong at the neck. That worried Arvid. Where was the archer? Creeping around to take them in the flank?

“Who’s shooting?” he asked the headman.

The man paled even more. “I can’t tell!”

“You’d rather die?” Even as he said it, the man’s answer suggested a more serious problem. “Someone’s here—not your people. Did they take the animals?”

The man nodded, lips pressed tight.

“How many?”

“I can’t—”

“They’ll kill us all if you don’t. I can save us if you do.”

“They left two,” the man said. Tears streaked his face now. “I can’t—”

“Say more. Fine.” Arvid looked around. Two archers could shoot them where they crouched now, beside the wagon, one to either flank. Or they could be waiting to see if the villagers revealed anything about them. Two archers—only part of “they”—and the stories about last year’s campaigns in Vonja … It didn’t take a soldier to put that together. The town was an ambush, and an ambush aimed at Fox Company. They’d be lucky to get out alive.

Unless he could convince the watchers he had nothing to do with Arcolin but as a hireling and not one valuable to Fox Company.

“So you’re telling me I wasted a whole day on a fool’s errand? That Fox Company sent me here as some kind of joke? Damn them all, I say!” Loud enough to be heard through the vill. “They promised me a nis when I brought the animals back, and now I’ll get nothing!”

He stood up, skin prickling with awareness of danger. “Come on, Sim,” he said to Regar, giving him the first name he could think of. “Those bastards in Fox Company set us up, and for all we know it’s them shot the arrow. They can go hungry until winter for all I care. This is what we get for trying to make an honest day’s wage with mercenary scum.”

Regar, for a wonder, followed his lead. “I told you yesterday—”