The village huddled without rhyme or reason in the bow curve of a fast, clear stream. The trees had been cleared to a hundred yards from the outlying huts and the ground there was thick with stumps, reclaimed by fern and briar and nettle. Around the corner of the stream Michael could glimpse other clearings green with pasture and dotted with animals. A haze of woodsmoke hung over the place, blue and grey, and from a midden there rose the steaming scent of dung and carrion.
The buildings were wattle and daub or wood logs chinked with mud from the stream bank. They were roofed with turf and tree bark, their doors animal skins weighted with stones.
One building was different, however. Built of squared planks and roofed with shingles, the church stood on a small rise to the north of the rest of the village, and beside it was a finer, larger hut that must belong to the priest. There were crosses on the church's gables, coloured glass in the tiny windows, and the brass glint of a bell in the stubby tower that was not even as high as the surrounding trees.
The village seemed quiet, the menfolk out in the tiny fields, perhaps, or hunting in the forest. Children played by the stream dressed in undyed linen and wool, barefoot and grubby, and a small group of women was drawing water and talking some tongue that carried strangely in the stillness. Others worked on tall looms that sat under leantos close to their huts, or scraped at small vegetable gardens with crude hoes. An old man was smoking a clay pipe in the beaten dirt before one house, spitting contentedly now and then and kicking out when a foraging pig came too near.
Pigs, chickens and dogs roamed freely, mingling with the children. They were scrawny creatures on the whole, the pigs half wild, the chickens thin and fierce and the dogs lean creatures that looked scant generations away from wolves.
The village was surrounded by a rough palisade of sharpened stakes, sometimes with a gap of as much as a foot between them. It straggled along the eaves of the outlying huts and crossed the river, ending in a crude gate which was hanging open on leather hinges. It was unguarded. The place was peaceful, sleepy.
'Nice as pie,' Mirkady whispered with relish.
'But where are the men?' Cat wondered.
A burst of distant shouting gave them their answer. Its source was hidden from them by the curve of the woods, Michael saw the women at the stream pause and straighten. One shook her head.
'Something's going on,' he said, the curiosity kindling in him.
'Nothing to do with us,' Mirkady told him. 'See the grey gelding in the pen behind the church? That's ours, the one we're after. A noble beast indeed, but inside hallowed ground, alas. I cannot enter. It is your own wits you must rely on from here on.'
'Listen,' Cat said, ignoring him.
Hoofbeats, and a surf of voices. Mirkady's eyes brightened.
'Trouble. Now is the time—'
A crowd of people both horsed and afoot came into viewat.the far end of the village. A pair at the front seemed to be tripping and stumbling as they came... no, they were being shoved from behind. One tall, bald figure in a brown habit was waving his arms. He shouted something about devil worshippers, savages.
'I can understand what they're saying,' Michael breathed. Neither Cat nor Mirkady seemed to have heard him.
'One of the Brothers,' Mirkady spat, making the word into a curse. His twig-like fingers jabbed out hornwise at the approaching throng.
There were shouted words, which this time Michael did not understand. His comprehension ebbed and flowed. He was aware that the language being spoken was strange. He could feel the unknown quality of the words in his head, but here and there they burst clearlit into his mind like cloud-broken sunlight.
The villagers plashed across the stream in a mass. There were at least three or four dozen of them, and the tall priest stayed at the forefront all the while. The objects of their invective were two ragged and barbarous looking figures who were tripped up in the stream and fell with an explosion of spray.They were tied, Michael realized, arms bound tightly to their sides.
They were fox men.
'So the priest has taken offence at some tribes people,' Mirkady murmured. His eyes glittered like wet jade. 'What will it be? Drowning, burning, or a mere beating?'
The horsemen thrashed through the stream and bent in their saddles to drag the two fox men out of the water and on to the other bank. The pair lay there struggling feebly. There was blood on their faces, and one had lost his headdress.
They were not frightening any more, but seemed oddly vulnerable, like mistreated scarecrows. They were a long way from the terrifying shadows of Michael's past.
'Why are they doing this?' he asked. Instinctively he sided with the underdogs.
'They have no love for the tribes, do the baldheaded Brothers of the Wood,' Mirkady said. 'And the tribes fear them for their cross-magic that keeps the Wyrim at bay. Sometimes there is a slight, real or imagined: an insult, or a theft maybe. They have different ideas about the rights and wrongs of things, the tribes and the villagers. Then this happens. The fox men will be lucky to see another dawn.'