Or it’s a State park, he thought dryly. And protecting stream banks from trampling and erosion makes excellent sense. Though . . . I do remember Dad complaining about how hard it was to enforce regulations like that. Maybe it’s easier for people to defer to a Lady who drives a chariot pulled by snow-white deer through their dreams than to bend their necks to a rule in a book written by a bureaucrat far away.

Of course, you can just kill anyone who breaks your rules. I know someone who thinks like that . . .

“Somethin’ on your mind, Fred?” Virginia said softly, under the clop of hooves and creak of saddle leather.

“I was thinking about home, honey,” he said. “My mother and sisters, trapped there with . . . him.”

“We’ll see to that,” she said stoutly.

He took a deep breath. Don’t flinch, he told himself. And in the meantime it was a fair day in pretty country, riding a good horse past orchards and fields, with the fir-sap smell of the mountains that reared westward coming on the warm breeze. And he was young, and the woman he loved rode at his side, and he was going to set his people free.

The prisoner-of-war camp was a mile south across flat open land; close enough to the town to be convenient, but beyond the ring of crofts worked by people living within the walls and equally far from the nearest farming dun. It was shaggy rough pasture and clumps of burgeoning young forest in normal times, with low wooded hills beyond. The camp was rows of tents, or rough barracks built of poles, wattle-and-daub, and salvage goods from nearby ruins. A board trestle brought in water from a spring, and a few more substantial buildings had been run up to serve as an infirmary, cookhouse and bathhouse; there were piles of boards from the sawmills near Sutterdown, ready to be turned into weather-tight winter quarters. Neatly tilled vegetable gardens surrounded it all, and he could smell that it was well policed, just turned earth and woodsmoke and the warm scents of vegetation with no reek of unwashed bodies or overfull latrines.

Rudi reined in, and gave a slight sideways inclination of the head to indicate that Fred and Virginia should ride in first. There was a fence around the camp, but no wall; it was a marker rather than a barrier, and the two-score of Clan warriors with spear and bow looked relaxed enough, like the pack of big shaggy hunting dogs at their feet. A parade ground was already crowded; most of the seven hundred men here had been taken near Dayton, back in March.

Frederick shivered a little. He’d heard about that. A CUT Seeker had been with them. And Juniper Mackenzie had been there too . . .

“Ten-hut!” a sergeant barked as they rode up.