The Hob's Bargain

had pulled a shutter loose from a window; it had fallen to the ground since the last time I’d been here a few weeks ago. The garden fence had developed a decided lean, and I could smell the polecat who’d taken possession of the barn. The farm had kept me sane after my family had died; it hurt to reward it with such neglect. The raiders’ presence tonight was a further indignity.
    In the months since I’d come back from Auberg, I’d gathered quite a bit of experience watching raiders from the shadows, but it wasn’t the same as seeing them here, in my home. I leaned into the roughness of the barn wood. Having something solid against my back helped me stay still. Daisy the cow no longer smelled bad—something had come up here a couple of weeks ago and eaten most of her.
    The group of raiders I’d come upon was small—only three that I could see—though I suspected there was another one hidden near the thicket just east of the house. Something had frightened a sleeping bird out of the gorse bush anyway. If I’d seen them before they were so close, I would have avoided them. But they’d come just as I was leaving. There was no sense risking their seeing me by moving about, so I settled down to wait.
    There weren’t enough men to make a real raiding party—this bunch was probably out scavenging. Since they were doing it at night, they were probably scrounging without permission. Two of the men entered the cottage with a torch, leaving the third on guard just outside the door. I don’t know what the one by the gorse bush was doing.
    The men were on foot, so their camp might not be too far away—something that would interest Koret. Although we’d found the remains of a number of overnight camping places, no one had been able to pinpoint their main camp. If they had a camp outside the range of our usual patrols, it would explain why we hadn’t been able to find them. Kith felt their camp would be some distance from where they attacked, so we’d concentrated our searches in the western slopes. Maybe they weren’t as smart as Kith thought they were.
    As I sat musing over possible nearby camping sights, I noticed movement in the darkness. It wasn’t in the gorse bush, but I thought it might be the same man. I resisted the urge to move to a better location, knowing any movement might give my position away as easily as it had let me see the fourth raider.
    A shadow moved near the cottage, and the man on guard disappeared into it without a sound. I stiffened at my post. Whoever it was had moved with amazing swiftness.
    One of the men in the cottage cried out, and then the peace of the night dissolved in wild cries and…the sounds of an animal feeding.
    It wasn’t any of their fellow raiders attacking them, not unless they’d taken to cannibalism. I thought of the thing that had attacked me on the Hob. I’d told Merewich about it, and Koret as well, but no one had seen anything out of the ordinary since.
    Well, maybe they’d take out the raiders and leave us alone. My caution increased by the ache that still troubled my arm, I concentrated on being very quiet and stayed in my place until long after the sounds had died away, leaving only crickets and frogs in their wake. Dawn crept out slowly, and in the early morning light, I walked to the cottage and surveyed the area.
    The ground, dark with blood, was torn up in front of the door. A few paces away a sword lay in its sheath. Inside the house there was little more: enough blood to prove both men had died, their weapons, and a well-chewed shoe. I wondered if it had tasted bad.
    I started up the trail to the upper field, passing a dark stain where the fourth man had stood lookout. As I came to a switch in the trail, I heard a man cough. Quietly, heart pounding, I darted under the boughs of an evergreen, realizing only after I was there that it was the same tree I’d hidden in the day Daryn died.
    I crouched motionless in Caulem’s trousers and tunic, staring at a hole that was developing in the trousers’ knee. It seemed to take a lifetime for the two raiders to move past my hiding place. As soon as they were gone, I dusted off my hands and set off parallel to the trail at a steady trot.
    When I reached the field where Daryn and Father had been killed, I slowed to a walk. I hadn’t actually seen it since that day. The plow was gone, but even without it I could