Arcadia II

This is how his education began:

Twelve of them skulked downslope through the thick dark, threading a maze of naked beech, boulders big as oxen, ferns painted by hoarfrost. Dwlf picked their path on deer-ways that wound and wandered, Amidash was the vigil at their back. Two other children and three women went with them, but it was the five men who seemed more afraid. They carried only hardtack and some dried venison, blankets, and spears.

In the day they would have reached the soft bice grass of the mead in an hour, but their progress was deliberate and chary. A twist of ankle would have been grave. Often they stopped to crouch and listen and watch for other feet and other eyes in the wood.

So the sky was lighting as they got level ground. The men whispered: "Do we go back?" "Twenty tents..." "Yes." "No. We must be quick." "They will mark us!" "The camp sleeps, and I see no watch." "It must be now."

They went along the forest edge in a sly hurry, until a stir of motion in the camp across the mead unnerved them, and they retreated up through the trees. Dwlf made their tracks to wend and allowed no rest. At low noon six men dressed in hard leather caught up. The fighting was short, too many were exhausted. Dwlf was stabbed through his left leg. Two other men of the cloh were slain, and then it was over. Amidash had vanished. The women and the other children fled, two gave chase.

He didn't know what to do, so he did nothing.

Their hands were tied and their shirts stripped. Down to the camp they were took, Dwlf and Barro and Clovis and him, but they met no others from the cloh. Then he saw the smoke, thick and black as the night had been, creeping down from the divide, as they had done.

The camp was breaking. The four of them lay or knelt in the wet grass, while four of the leathered men spoke over them in some coarse southron tongue. All carried forged swords belted in tooled scabbards, their boots were weathered and drab. Dwlf's throat was cut. The other three were made to bear provisions, and roped in a line.

They left, marching north.