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No dogs ca while after that Perhaps the Eika had given up hunting their hu in the ereener pastures But neither child dared climb the city walls to the parapet to see how ain they saw Eika walking those parapets, staring north toward the sea Now and again they heard the keening and howling of the dogs and, once, the screams of a human, whether man or woman they could not tell They kept to familiar haunts and stayed mostly in the little shed where Matthias had slept after he had been apprenticed to a currier the winter before the Eika attack Left behind, forgotten, in the confusion of the attack and the hopeless street-by-street defense of the city, he had had the wits to take refuge with his younger sister in the foul tannery pits when he saw the dogs hunting through the city That hy they had survived when so many others had died

But co in untended gardens for those half-grown vegetables that had fought past the weeds They learned to hunt rats, for there were rats aplenty in the es, fat ones well fed on dessicated corpses Anna found herself with a talent for stone throwing, too, and brought down seagulls and coeons and once a feral cat

Coht huleaned from a distant harvest

When one fine su quarter with slaves brought to work in the tannery, the two children fled to a loft and cowered behind tanned hides which had been hung to dry from the crossbeams When they heard voices, the creak and scrape of a body clireat beas, and with hiot hi to the bea with fear The stink of the tannery protected theer The trapdoor opened at the far end of the loft

Anna sucked down a sob when they heard the first whispery soft words—an Eika speaking a language they could not understand A dog yipped and growled outside As if in reply a hu pits—yelped in pain, then began screaain until at last, le Matthias bit his lip to keep fro out Anna’s eyes filled with tears that slipped down her cheeks; she grasped the wooden Circle of Unity that hung on a leather cord at her thin chest—her er around its smooth circle in silent prayer as she had seen her h this wordless prayer had not availed her ainst her final illness

Footsteps shuddered on the rungs A body scraped, halfitself up and over onto the loft floor A runted, a human sound, curt and yet faain, this tinizable if broken Wendish “How soon these is ready?”

“I will have to look them over” The man enunciated each word carefully “Most likely all are ready if they’ve been here since—” He broke off, then took a shuddering breath Had he witnessed that killing just now, or only listened to it, as they had? “Since spring”

“I count, these,” said the Eika “Before you come, I count these skins Less than I count come to me when they ready, I kill one slave for each skin less than I count I start with you”

“I understand,” said the man, but the children could not see him, could only hear, and what emotion they heard in his voice they could not interpret

“You bring to me when ready,” said the Eika The ladder creaked, and this tiht chime of mail as the Eika left the loft and climbed back doay, to wherever Eika hen they were not hunting and killing

Still the children clung there, praying the o away

But instead hethe them A loose plank creaked under his foot The quiet rustle of a hide sliding against another ress, and the huff and stir of leather-sodden air in the di outward from his movements, shifted and swirled about the death, for discovery would indeed mean death

Finally it was too er than Matthias The sound got out of her throat, like a puppy’s whiulp it back The man’s slow quiet ed in the gloom

“Who’s there?” the

Anna set her lips together, squeezed her eyes shut, and wept silently, free hand clutching the Circle Matthias groped for the knife at his belt, but he was afraid to pull it out of its sheath, for even that slight noise would surely give them away