Arcolin raised his voice. “If anyone is hiding here: Your former headman is under sentence in Cortes Vonja for aiding the brigands who did this to you. You have no safety here while the brigands prosper; you should go to the city, or a village where you have relatives.”

No one answered, but he was sure there were listening ears, whether villagers or brigands.

“Do we follow them?” Burek asked.

“Not where they want us to,” Arcolin said. “They’ve had plenty of time to set up a good ambush on land they know far better than we do. We’ll go on south and then cut east where I hope they won’t see us doing it. But we will bury these bodies and make sure the village well’s clean. Someday people will live here again.” He looked at the sky. “If we do all that, we might as well camp in the village tonight.”

By nightfall the dead had been decently buried, and timbers and stones from the ruined cottages arranged in a barrier to protect a perimeter around the remaining buildings. Arcolin insisted on checking inside each of the cottages. “Not for survivors,” he explained to Burek. “For brigands waiting to attack us.” They found neither people nor food.

Somewhat to Arcolin’s surprise, they were not attacked that night, and made an early start the next morning without incident. They passed through the village where they had found the merchant and his wagons before; the headwoman grinned at them and waved as they approached.

“We have one friend,” Burek said.

“As long as we bring gifts,” Arcolin said. “You ride on; I’m going to talk to her.”

“I knew you’d come back,” she said, when he reined in beside her and dismounted. “What did them in the city do to that fellow with the wagons?”

“The merchant? Threw him out of the Guild. Confiscated his wagons and his merchandise.”

“Them brigands is mean, angry folk,” the woman said.

“Angry?”

“Yesternoon, it was, when they come riding down the road like a pride of princes. Smelled of smoke and death; I had all my people hidden. Said they was hunting the one as told the Fox army—they mean you—how to find their supplies.” She grinned wider. “I told ’em you didn’t need anyone’s help; you’d done no more than walk past the wagons and you knew about the false floors.”

“Did they find the gifts?”

She shook her head. “Gifts, my lord? I never saw no gifts, nor did anyone else. Nobody gives us gifts; the tax man takes away and so do them villains, I told ’em so. They looked in my house, walked in like they owned it, but o’ course I have nothing of theirs.” She leaned close. “We had full bellies that night, my lord, all the mush even the childer could stuff down, and our hogs had the rest. Wasn’t a single extra grain here when they searched, nor anything but what they expected. And it was good warning you gave us, not to store any. They was looking for that red southern grain in our jars—stirred every one and found only what we grow here, wheat and spelt.”