With an effort, Joss found his voice. “Lehit, send a couple of your guards and ask members of the families who are missing children to come out here.”

Two were sent. Lehit stayed, scratching her chin, while the heavyset woman jumped into the pit. The children shrank away from her, but she crouched and began talking in a singsong voice, telling the tale of the Swift Horse, a familiar and soothing bedtime story that every child knew by heart. She didn’t look at them or try to engage them; she just talked.

Joss moved back from the edge of the pit. In the clearing, the guardsmen were dragging the bodies to one side, while the older man and Pash knelt beside the wounded pair, stanching and binding.

“Bad enough to kidnap children,” said Lehit in a low voice. “But we all hear such stories, when a family becomes desperate without young ones to carry on the line. But to brutalize them in such a manner, and them not even having celebrated their Youth’s Crown to be of age! While meanwhile, the Devourer gives freely to any person willing to walk through Her gate. How could any decent person choose this over what the gods have ordained?”

The familiar throb of a headache was beginning to build. Joss rubbed his eyes. “They’d not been here long. It doesn’t smell bad enough.”

Lehit leaned close. She’d had a bit of rice wine; its sour brack perfumed the air briefly. “How did you know this camp was here? That these youths were part of the enemy’s army? We’re so overwhelmed with all the folk up in the haven that we’d never have known. I sent out a few patrols to search for the missing children, but . . . how did you guess?”

He thought of his dream. “A reeve asks questions when things don’t look right.”

“That other reeve didn’t ask. Seems to me you’ve better sight than most.”

He shrugged.

Pash walked over, wiping his hands on a bit of torn cloth. “Best we carry the wounded and the young ones back to the haven quickly, for a miasma dwells in this place that would corrupt the healthiest man.” He glanced toward the pit.

The woman’s voice drifted up, the tale unfolding in a soothing patter of words. The other guardsmen waited in silence.

“How did you know, Reeve?” Pash asked Joss. “We’d have never found them if you hadn’t guessed. Them so young to be so foul. Sheh! It’s beyond my understanding.”

Joss remembered words spoken twenty years ago. He still heard Marit’s voice as though she was speaking into his ear. “ ‘Make them ashamed of themselves and they will not betray you,’ ” he said, “ ‘because they will know they have stepped outside the boundaries and made themselves outcast by their deeds.’ ”

“As the captain’s wife said in the Tale of Fortune,” mused Pash, shaking his head. “True enough words. Thank the gods I kept my good daughters close beside me.”