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"Yes, but later that night we found the the sceattas they’d stolen from their dead co if they didn’t just kill the else"

"You think there’s no beast out there?" Hanso de s in the forest"

"You’re a fool!" Hanso spat, but he kept an eye on Rage and did not attereed with this assessood spear and a sarcastic tongue, enough to keep even the furious Hanso at bay He had the pride of youth and the reckless heart of a youngHe had gotten a woh to uivre," said Alain, noting how their gazes all leaped to hiuivre will do you no har as you do not injure it Leave it be, and it will hunt only in the forest Attack it, and you’ll find yourselves turned to stone"

"You’re as crazy as he is!" Hanso spat again, his anger turned easily from the one he could not control to a new object "Co at Alain as though at the beast itself, and with gru they shouldered their tools and set off back the way they had coered, studying the hounds "Those things bite?"

"They do, if they’re provoked They’ll defend themselves, that’s all Otherwise they’re as mild as sheep"

He snorted "A good tale! Who are you?"

"I’m called Alain I’m a traveler"

"So you said Where are you from?"

"Osna That’s west, at the coast It’s five or ten days’ walk fro I’ve been on the road ten or fifteen days since I left Lavas Holding"

"Never heard of it What are you going to Autun for? To join the , me and Mara ith you We know part of the way Not that we’ve ever been there, you understand Have you?"

"I’ve seen Autun, yes"

"They say it’s got sowall, to hold them in And a cathedral tower so tall that up at the top you can rake your fingers through the clouds They say it’s a holy place, where the old emperor died, the Salian one I can’t reht! Are you a learned h his own coarse stubble "Nay, you’ve got a bit of a beard You’d have to be clean shaven to be a churched "Bandits travel in wolf packs, and thieves skulk So ris of the carcass Alain had a bag woven of reeds slung over one shoulder, and into this he placed soh tendon strings

"Too bad you didn’t get any of the meat," said Atto "We could have roasted it Deer are hard to coo into the forest, not knoe’ll find there Can’t slaughter what livestock we have left, and even so we had a poor la season, no twins at all"

"This beast Has it killed your cattle and sheep?"

"It hasn’t coot those that wandered off No one’s brave enough to track it to its lair" He coughed out a laugh as he gestured toward the north "And I won’t be the one to find out! There’s rough land that way Deep forest Wolves, they say A lake, though I’ve not seen it, and a ravine That’s where it hides" He had thick lips, blue eyes, and a funny way of looking at other people, as if he didn’t want to like them "So they say They don’t really know They just talk and talk and do nothing but cos the village and the frost still corow and how it’ll be worse before it gets better"

"Perhaps they’re right Have you seen the sun since last autulanced heavenward, but there was nothing to see except the canopy of branches and the leaden silver of the sky "I’s will be better there"