“Shall I send a messenger back for more, Sir King?”

“No,” Kieri said. “I have a new courier service of King’s Squires. I’ll send one of them, and you can have one with you, to use as a messenger here in case of any emergency.”

As he wrote out the message for Aliam, he wondered if his first letters, sent even before the coronation, had reached any of their destinations yet. He still thought of travel times between the north and Valdaire.

Cortes Vonja, Aarenis

Arcolin led the cohort south, away from Cortes Vonja, on a narrow road bordered on either side by fields where young grain stood knee-high. As they approached the first village, they saw people running out of the houses to hide from them.

“Surely the Cortes Vonja militia told them we were coming,” Burek said. “They must know we aren’t brigands.”

“Unless the Cortes Vonja militia’s been robbing them,” Arcolin said. “Or someone else in uniform. I wonder if the brigands are uniformed and the militia commander just happened not to tell us.”

“Surely not.”

“Cortes Vonja had a bad reputation,” Arcolin said. “We’ll find out. I’ve been here before; if the village headman’s still around, he’ll recognize our colors and come talk to me.”

By the time they’d reached the little village square, an older man was hobbling toward them, leaning on a stick.

Arcolin held up his hand and the cohort halted. “Is it Maenthar, my old friend?” he called to the man.

“Is it really the Fox’s company, come to start the war again?” the man asked. “I am Maenthar, indeed. Friend? That depends.”

Arcolin dismounted. “And I am Arcolin, as you see. If it depends on me, we are friends still.” He reached out his hand. The man hesitated but finally reached forward and touched his fingers, then put his own to his chest and forehead; Arcolin did the same.

“I thought you must have died,” Maenthar said. “They said the Fox was gone forever, back over the mountains to the north, and we were forgotten.”

“Never forgotten,” Arcolin said. Something was seriously wrong here; Maenthar had always been friendly and open before. “Even if I had stayed north the rest of my life, I would not have forgotten you and yours.”

“Me alone, now,” Maenthar said. He spat, barely a polite distance from Arcolin’s boots. “Before you wake memories better left asleep, I will tell you. My family died—two sons taken by the Cortes Vonja militia and both died in battle, they told me. One killed here, with my wife and daughter, while I was away to the city, summoned to be told of the other deaths. I have no love for soldiers now, Captain, though I remember you gave us aid that time.”

“I’m sorry,” Arcolin said.

“And they say it’s because the Fox left and went north, and left the land aflame with war. War grows no grain. He started it; he should have ended it. Let the hungry eat, I say, and kill no more.”