The Warded Man

hurts still in need of mending, bones to set and wounds to sew, not to mention forcing her potions down dozens of unconscious throats.
    Given time, she was confident she could drive the flux off. Perhaps a few had progressed too far, and would remain sickly or pass, but most of her children would recover.
    If they made it through the night.
    She called the volunteers together, distributing medicine and instructing them on what to expect and do when the wounded from outside began to come.
    Rojer watched Leesha and the others work, feeling cowardly as he tuned his fiddle. Inside, he knew the Warded Man was right: that he should work to his strengths, as Arrick had always said. But that did not make hiding behind stone walls while others stood fast feel any braver.
    Not long ago, the thought of putting down his fiddle to pick up a tool had been abhorrent, but he had grown tired of hiding while others died for him.
    If he lived to tell it, he imagined “The Battle of Cutter’s Hollow” would be a tale that outlived his children’s children. But what of his own part? Playing the fiddle from hiding was a deed hardly worth a line, let alone a verse.

CHAPTER 31
THE BATTLE OF CUTTER’S HOLLOW
332 AR

    AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE SQUARE stood the cutters. Chopping trees and hauling lumber had left most of them thick of arm and broad of shoulder, but some, like Yon Gray, were well past their prime, and others, like Ren’s son Linder, had not yet grown into their full strength. They stood clustered in one of the portable circles, gripping the wet hafts of their axes as the sky darkened.
    Behind the cutters, the Hollow’s three fattest cows had been staked in the center of the square. Having consumed Leesha’s drugged meal, they slumbered deeply on their feet.
    Behind the cows was the largest circle. Those within could not match the raw muscle of the cutters, but they had greater numbers. Nearly half of them were women, some as young as fifteen. They stood grimly alongside their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. Merrem, Dug the butcher’s burly wife, held a warded cleaver, and looked well ready to use it.
    Behind them lay the covered pit, and then the third circle, directly before the great doors of the Holy House, where Stefny and the others too old or frail to run about the muddy square stood fast with long spears.
    Each one was armed with a warded weapon. Some, those with the shortest reach, also carried round bucklers made from barrel lids, painted with wards of forbiddance. The Warded Man had made only one of those, but the others had copied it well enough.
    At the edge of the day pen’s fence, behind the wardposts,stood the artillery, children barely in their teens, armed with bows and slings. A few adults had been given one of the precious thundersticks, or one of Benn’s thin flasks, stuffed with a soaked rag. Young children held lanterns, hooded against the rain, to light the weapons. Those who had refused to fight huddled with the animals under the shelter behind them, which shielded Bruna’s festival flamework from the rain.
    More than a few, like Ande, had gone back on their promise to fight, accepting the scorn of their fellows as they hid behind the wards. As the Warded Man rode through the square astride Twilight Dancer, he saw others looking toward the pen longingly, fear etched on their faces.
    There were screams as the corelings rose, and many took a step backward, their resolve faltering. Terror threatened to defeat the Hollowers before the battle even began. A few tips from the Warded Man on where and how to strike were meager against the weight of a lifetime of fear.
    The Warded Man noticed Benn shaking. One of his pant legs was soaked and clinging to his twitching thigh, and not from the rain. He dismounted and stood before the glassblower.
    “Why are you out here, Benn?” he asked, raising his voice so others could hear.
    “M-my d-daughters,” Benn said, nodding back toward the Holy House. It looked as if the spear he held was going to vibrate right out of his hands.
    The Warded Man nodded. Most of the Hollowers were there to protect their loved ones lying helpless in the Holy House. If not, they would all be in the pen. He gestured to the corelings materializing in the square. “You fear them?” he asked, louder still.
    “Y-yes,” Benn managed, tears mixing with the rain on his cheeks. A glance showed others nodding as well.
    The Warded Man stripped off his robes. None of the people