“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Arcolin said. “But it was just those few words.”

“I think you’re right,” Harak said. “And I don’t like it. This Korryn you speak of—” His yeoman-marshal came into the main part of the grange, drying his hands on a towel. “Wait a moment,” he said to Arcolin. And to his yeoman-marshal, “Eddin—we need water, a lot of it, and towels. And bring the relic over here, if you would.”

Eddin, Arcolin was glad to see, was no youngster, but a steady-looking man who might be thirty or so. “Yes, Marshal,” he said, going first to a niche in the far wall and coming back with a small knife—a stone blade in a wooden haft. Then he was off at a jog, buckets hung on a pole across his shoulders, to the well down the street.

“Now tell me,” the Marshal said. He had laid the little knife on Stammel’s forehead and put his hands on Stammel’s shoulders.

“Korryn was a recruit we had years ago—” Arcolin began. He repeated what Stammel had told him.

“Tell me about the attack.”

Arcolin related it in as much detail as he could; Eddin came in with the water in the midst of that.

“Stop a bit,” Harak said. “I want to keep contact with him, but we must get this blood off him. You all must strip him, and then wash him of all this. I will hold his head; we’ll wash that last, when I can hold his shoulders.”

During that bloody business, Arcolin held his tongue. They unbuckled the belts that held Stammel to the plank, unfastened his clothes, peeled them back, and then, with the help of the Marshal and yeoman-marshal, turned him side to side to get them off without having to cut them. Under the clothes, much less blood, but Stammel’s skin was flushed as if with sunburn and hot to the touch. His muscles still trembled; his eyes were still open and blank, the whites blood-red. They washed him, front and back, careful to clean off every smear of blood.

“Now his head,” the Marshal said. “Eddin, place the relic on his breastbone, right over the heart, and do you take your place across from me.” Without ever taking his hands completely off Stammel, the Marshal moved to his heart-hand side, and Eddin to the other; they knelt, heedless of the bloody water on the stone floor. Arcolin took a clean towel and bathed Stammel’s face, his hair, cleaning the blood out of his ears, the crease at the back of his neck. The bruises from Korryn’s grip showed dark against the red of his skin. “Be sure to get the blood off the plank,” the Marshal said. “We’re going to move him to the platform when he’s clean.”

Arcolin wanted to ask why, but instead wiped the plank with a fresh towel.

“Good. Now—we all go to the platform. Slowly, so that Eddin and I can keep our hands on him. You, Captain, keep your hand on his forehead as they carry the plank.”