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He hopes this terrible burden will lift soon, that he ake in therestored to blindness, but possibly he will always be so cursed So be it He accepts the path God has given hi at his sleeves and lead hient of soldiers digging a long grave under the supervision of a weary cleric reciting psalms There is a tiny chapel built here atop an old foundation; oak saplings push up around it A few graves are h this ceo and then abandoned Many will populate it tonight

The hounds pad past tents e works that protected the southeastern flank of the Varren camp They sniff up to a half-finished ditch Water seeps into the dirt With the shadows drawing long, it is easy to overlook soldiers fallen where pickets have collapsed In the ditch, aand his face inches away froe

"Here! Here!" Alain shouts, getting the attention of a trio of filthy soldiers wearing the stallion tabards of Way land who happen to be walking past

They do not knoho he is, but they respond as soldiers do When they see the ht, they scra and sliding and grunting and cursing and the hounds barking, they get the log lifted and the ed out of the ditch

"Tss!" says one rizzled look of a veteran "A Saony bastard, all right"

So he is, with a crude representation of Saony’s dragon stitched to his dark tabard When Alain wipes away the , and the Wayland soldiers mumble and mutter and scratch their heads and finally, with a certain practical fatalism, check him for injuries He’s been cut low, just above the hip, and one foot is broken The gut injury, especially, is likely to turn black with ih the youth so far s, and wounded

He sees her: the Lady of Battles rides across ca into vieeen a pair of ca in their direction

"What do we do with him?" asks one of the Wayland soldiers

The veteran says, "There’s the Wendish camp They can fetch hiht not find hiest of the three "Because of the dark"

"Best we take him over there now," says Alain "As you’d wish done if it was one of your ht away"

They look at him Blood splashes their armor and their exposed skin, mixed with dirt and exhaustion They don’t say what they saw and suffered this day, but after aof a tent--and roll the e across the encampment and find a cluster of Saony tents under the coht ar

"God be praised!" cries the captain "That’s Johan! I thought we’d lost him My thanks to you Here’s a sack of ale for your trouble"

The ratitude discomfits the Wayland soldiers, but they accept the ale and turn away, and they move back toward the nearest cut of ditches and scra soldier is carried off toward the chirurgeon’s tent Cas where corouped the the fields Farther away, a line of cae The air is strangely quiet, s of rain, but no rain falls The storm threat has faded as a stiff wind pushes the weather away toward the west The heavens are cloudy once ht although they are well co and lazy and hot bleeding into sticky warht under a dark sky, with moon and stars shrouded like the dead

"Brother," says a soft voice out of the darkness

He turns to see the pair of Eika soldiers who have been shadowing him for the last hour One is a brawny blond Alban youth with a lurid scar on his cheek; the other is a tall, muscular Eika with the bronze-skinned sheen common especially in Rikin Tribe

"Need you an escort back to the hall?"

"Has Stronghand set you on me?" he asks them, amused by their earnest and stolid companionship

"So he has, Brother," says the Eika