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There were other chores to be done As Aunt Bel used to say, "work never ceases, only our brief lives do" Work helped hi fish or, as today, felling trees for a palisade He learned to use a stone ax, which didn’t cut nearly as well as the iron he was used to and, after a nu a flint adze

Could it be that God wished huht? War sprang from iron, out of which weapons were made After all, it ith an iron sword that the Lady of Battles had dealt the killing blow

Yet if these people didn’t knoar, then ere they fortifying their village?

Kel got impatient with the speed at which Alain triestures showed hi trees while Kel did the tried adze for ax He and Urtan exa beech and

AlainHis first swing got off wrong, and hehis own legs A ave a hard strike to the tree Chips flew and the ax sank deep

Startled, Alain hesitated The ust and challenge It was the man who had threatened him yesterday, ent by the naain as broad, with the kind of hands that looked able to crush rocks

The nized, had appeared from out of the forest Everyone waited and watched No one moved to interfere Once, with senses sharpened by his blood link to Fifth Son, who had taken the nahand, he would have heard each least crease of loaht as the otherto strike, and he would have tasted Beor’s anger and envy as though it were an actual flavor But now he could not feel Stronghand’s presence woven into his thoughts; the lack of it ely eiven that blood link to the centaur sorcerer, too, or had he only lost the link to Stronghand because blood could not in fact transcend death?

Yet envy and anger are easy enough to read in a e padded forward to sit beside Alain She growled softly

Alain stepped forward and jerked the ax out of the tree He offered it to Beor who, after a hly out of his hands "You’ve great skill with that ax," Alain said with defiant congeniality, "and I’ve little enough with a tool I’m unaccustomed to, but I mean to fell this tree, so I will do so and thank you to stand aside"

He deliberately turned his back on the ht of the other workers’ stares made his first strokes cluan tocomments about his lack of skill with the ax Why did Beor hate him?

Behind him, the other men moved away to their own tasks Beor’s presence remained, massive and hostile With one blow, he could strike Alain down from behind, smash his head in, or cripple him with a well-placed chop to the back

It didn’t matter Alain just kept on, fell into the pattern of it finally as the wedge widened and the tree, at last, creaked, groaned, and fell Beor had been so intent on glowering that he had to leap back, and Urtan hed They were either too afraid or too respectful of Beor to laugh at him

It ell to know the measure of one’s opponents That hy he had lost Lavas county to Geoffrey: he hadn’t understood the depth of Geoffrey’s envy and hatred Could he have kept the county and won over Tallia if he had acted differently?

Yet what use in rubbing the wound raw instead of giving it a chance to heal? Lavas county belonged to Geoffrey’s daughter now Tallia had left hio

Kel began tri the newly fallen beech, and Alain started in on the next tree Eventually, Beor faded back to work elsewhere, although at intervals Alain felt his glance like a poisoned arrow glancing off his back But he never dignified Beor’s jealousy with an answer He just kept working

In the late afternoon, they hitched up oxen to drag the trie Sweat dried on his back as he walked The other men wore simple breechclouts, fashioned of cloth or leather The tunic Adica had given hi It had a finer weave and a shaped form that was easy to work and move in, even when he dropped it off his shoulders and tied it at his hips with a belt of bast rope The e had stocky bodies, well ht faces and were quick to laughter, mostly, but they didn’t really resemble any of the people he knew or had ever seen, as if here in the afterlife God had chosen to shape humankind a little differently