“I’m only an orphan.” With her head turned, and his lips pressed close to her ear, she could not see his expression. “I’m not worthy of your Flower Night.”

The twilight darkened, brushed by rose like fire along the western horizon. To the east, fires burned where the encampment sprawled, a place they were no longer welcome. Exiles all. Yet maybe none of that mattered. They had good green staves for new bows that could be traded; twin female lambs as well as not one lamb lost to wolves or mouth fever; Feder’s precious kur, on which he could sing for favor from the gods.

“Who is worthy?” she said to the heavens. “We’ll follow the gar-deer. We’ll ride to new pastures, somewhere they don’t know the Singer who cursed us. You’ll follow, and in a month or two Aunt will relent and let you back. Things will get better.”

She lay down in the grass and he lay beside her, and as she caressed him and he caressed her, the drumming of her heart quickened and the blood thrummed in her ears like galloping hooves. She unfastened the loops on his tunic and slid her hands beneath, tracing his muscled chest and smooth back. The small noises he made as she stroked him made her crazy; she could not hear or see anything, nothing but the presence of him pressed close against her and the warmth that spread through her body. She fumbled with the loops on her own tunic.

His hands gripped hers, crushing her fingers. She grunted with pain. He bent close.

“Listen.”

That drumming was not her heart.

“It’s a raid,” he added. “Stay down.”

“How can you—” She struggled, trying to sit up.

He rolled on top of her to pin her, with the tall grass still concealing them in a conspiracy with the falling of night. His whisper was harsh in her ear.

“How do you think my kin died? I was out looking for a lost lamb. I hid, but I heard it all.”

“Oh, gods,” she whispered.

Hooves drummed on the earth, felt through the soil. Orphan stayed on top of her, nothing of love or lust in his position, only desperation. He had heard what she must hear now.

The shing of steel drawn, shouts and screams, the hiss of flame, the wailing of children, the bleating of panicked sheep. The sounds shuddered the air until she could bear it no longer. She shoved him so hard he toppled sideways, and she sprang up to see a tent spurting flames as riders raced away into the night laughing and howling. Stars blazed above, fire below. She ran. Orphan overtook her and tackled her.

She screamed at him, “My mother’s in the tent!”

Swearing, he leaped up and ran with her.

It was too late.

In the ruins of the camp, Uncle Olig and Feder the Cripple lay dead, cut down despite being too old and too infirm to fight. Cowards! The tent burned, and Aunt had burned hands as they dragged her back from the flaming canvas while Mari sobbed.