Kesh drew his own sword, but before he could step into the fray, Bai slipped around the other side of the building, climbed over the trough, and raised an arm. She flicked her hand. A blade winked. The man with the axe staggered, fell forward onto his face with a knife lodged in his back. The other man yelped, and the reeve broke inside his guard and twisted the staff out of his hands.

“Down! Put your hands out to the side!”

The man dropped to his knees, ripping at one sleeve, clapping a hand over his mouth as if stifling a scream.

The reeve slapped his shoulder with the flat of his blade. “On your face! Hands out where I can see them!”

Bai nudged the axeman with a foot, yanked out the knife, and rolled him over. “He’s dead.” She turned back to the reeve, who stood over the prisoner. “Kill that one, too.”

“He’s surrendered to my authority. We are not judges, or Guardians, to render a verdict. He must be taken to trial at the assizes.”

She shrugged. “Do you mean us to escort him and feed him the entire way? He’ll eat our food, and try to kill us. It’s a cursed long walk back to Olossi, I’ll have you know. I haven’t the luxury of eagle’s wings to take me in two days what a earth-bound person must walk in ten.”

“It’s the law,” the reeve said.

“I agree with Bai,” said Kesh. “Bad enough we have to keep watch for these bandits, but to have to nurse one along who just tried to kill us. . . . The hells! How many were hiding here?”

“Five.”

“Where are the other three?”

The prisoner shuddered, seemed about to push himself up. Bai’s intent gaze fixed on him, but the reeve placed a foot on the back of the prostrate man to hold him down.

Bai wiped her knife’s blade clean on the dead man’s tunic, then opened the pouch the man wore at his belt and tossed its contents onto the ground beyond the pooling blood. “Vey. A spoon. A needle with thread. A razor for shaving. Flint. Not much to show for himself.”

“They abandoned their supplies when they fled Olossi,” said the reeve.

She laughed, a startling sound. “It’s a story good enough for the tales. The few against the many. Oil of naya, and rags set alight. Eagles swooping down from the sky.”

Kesh was still staring at the dead man. He’d seen death in plenty, walking the roads as a merchant’s factor. There are many ways to die, and in time all people do die, even if Beltak’s priests talked of a garden where believers dwelled after death on this earth. That place had sounded a better fate than the hells that greeted most folk, but Kesh wasn’t sure he believed in hells or gardens. Certainly the sight of a dead man, and a prisoner lying so still as if pretending to be dead, made his stomach hurt. The reeve looked angry. Bai glanced toward the path.