Page 123 (1/1)

Scarred John and Captain Frigo had set up a carpenter’s shop with their iron adze and axes Over the weeks they had developed an astonishing parade of customers The iron tools and swords fascinated the Ashioi Liudbold had once spent a pair of years apprenticing in a smithy, and he was soon carted away to the toils of their captor’s furnaces At first, Anna supposed they had slaughtered him or tortured hi sleeker and fatter Most recently, he had arrived for his visit acconant

Theodore the archer also had discovered an easy camaraderie with the locals They admired his skill with the bow; he, like the other men, admired the easyher, seduced by the flesh, but Anna could not blame them She had ret it Why should they? They could never go back to Darre, because they had betrayed their queen

She cried again, just a little, thinking of Thie she could do would bring the in her headlong rush to ireat uncle, the bold and handso out in the courtyard, on a sturinding doood nails One of the soldiers trotted over to hiot up, and aate Another arden a pair of soldiers fussed aarded the basket at her feet with irritation The rushes the Ashioi used for baskets cut her fingers and were too stiff to plait easily So as they looked at her licking her bleeding fingers, and she had a terrible feeling that she wasthe thenored her, and, in truth, no young Ashioitheir own half naked women She was no use at all, not here and not anywhere In Gent they had long since forgotten her, no doubt Who ain, hot and angry It was getting tireso and she worried about herself, lost and drifting in a place that would never be her home She had a body but she felt as if her soul had come unmoored and left her trapped in a husk The constant dusty haze kicked up byher away until eventually she would dissolve into nothing

If only there would come a miracle

"Whsst! Anna!" Scarred John sauntered up "There’s an oldafter you Says he needs a servant to help hirinned easily as he eyed her halfbaskets plaited by the Ashioi hung from the rafters of their huts, both beautiful and useful as she could never be "Captain says you o You’re no use to us now the lady princess has sca her noble relatives" He snorted derisively "Likes them better than her own kind! Not that she’s really like us"

He wore , but he’d abandoned his worn boots in favor of the sandals favored by the Ashioi He shaved like a churchman, as all the soldiers did now, because the women liked it better Ashioi o," she said

"Even an old man would be better than none, unless you have a sweetheart at horinned, tooff He would not protect her None of theht about fighting them, but she kneas hopeless She possessed a leather pack with a spare tunic and belt and her boots tucked away together with a comb and a precious silver spoon, now tarnished, but hers These and other oddhted her to the world froht just float away into the air without an anchor She slung it over her back and plodded--in Ashioi sandals, because to wear closed boots in this cliate She was a husk, nothing ht be torn up and discarded, but she could no longer be hurt

At first she did not see hiSpotted Leopard and Buzzard and Falcon He produced, from a small basket, a number of stones and tokens, the kind the Ashioi used when they exchanged goods Ashioi guards as well as Captain Frigo took a share, and then they all turned their backs in the way of folk refusing further responsibility