The Trouble with Goblins
Captive beneath the meeting hall, Beech discovers a dangerous rift between the raiders and their employers. Above ground, the village's foundations begin to give way.
In which Beech discovers that being wanted is not nearly as flattering as he had supposed.
The goblin who took Beech's frying pan held it by the handle, weighed it thoughtfully, and looked disappointed.
"It's a pan."
"Yes," said Beech. "I've been trying to explain that for two days."
The goblin turned it over. The dent made by the captain's axe caught the light from a lantern. "Thought it'd have teeth."
"Only if you leave it unwashed long enough."
"Quiet," said the red-cloaked captain.
Beech was standing in the service chamber beneath the meeting hall, where the ironbound chest had once rested in its carved stone cradle. Two guards held his arms. His left wrist, already sore before the day's adventures, protested whenever either goblin tightened its grip.
The captain removed the kitchen knife from Beech's belt himself. He examined its freshly sharpened edge, tested the handle, and passed it to a guard.
"Anything else?"
Beech glanced at the pan in the goblin's hands and shook his head. The captain had become a great deal less entertaining since their first meeting at the cottage door. He had once been an angry creature with an axe stuck in a piece of oak. Now he was an angry creature who had learned to keep his axe in his hand and other creatures between himself and danger.
One of those creatures tied Beech's wrists with a leather cord. The other set the frying pan on the empty chest cradle, as though it were an article of evidence.
Beech disliked seeing it there. His mother had cooked in that pan. His father had polished its handle smooth after the iron grew too hot for bare hands. It had survived kitchen fires, dropped plates, a disastrous attempt to make plum jam, and most of Beech's childhood. He had not expected it to end up in an underground chamber surrounded by goblins.
"Careful with that," he said. "It's a family possession."
"So's my axe," the captain replied. "You've been very unkind to it."
Beyond the inspection panel lay the descending gallery overlooking Vale Mouth, the southern gate itself. An uneven metallic groan travelled up from it. The wedge Beech had driven into the moving rod was still taking some of the load, or so he hoped. The sound made his stomach tighten.
A marked goblin emerged from the gallery. He wore a strip of black cloth bearing the white ring cut through by a line. Unlike the ordinary raiders, his tools were clean, his belt properly buckled, and his lantern shielded against the draught.
"The rod's jammed," he told the captain. "We can get the wood out if we cut it, but that may drop the guide. He knows where he put it."
The captain looked at Beech. "Then he's going to tell you."
Beech regarded the narrow opening behind the cradle. He knew which piece of oak he had driven into the guide, and very little about the machinery beyond it. The marked goblin seemed to expect considerably more.
"I put it between the iron and the square hole," he said. "I could draw a picture, but the last drawing I made seems to have caused enough trouble."
The marked goblin's eyes narrowed. "We know where it is. We need to know how tight you've driven it."
"Very tight," Beech admitted.
The captain showed his teeth. "You'll make it loose."
"I'd rather not."
The captain stepped close enough for Beech to smell damp leather and old smoke on his red cloak.
"Your friends are running about up there thinking they've won something," he said. "My employer wants the road open. I want what I'm owed. You are going to help both of us, and if you make a nuisance of yourself again, I'll start asking questions of the people in the cottages instead."
Beech looked at him. For once there was no useful answer waiting in his mouth.
The captain turned to the marked goblin. "Get your surveyor. And tell him the carpenter has a price."
"The master has already set his price," the inspector replied.
"Not mine."
The two goblins regarded one another across the empty cradle, and Beech had the unpleasant sense of being both the cause of their argument and its least important participant.
✦ ✦ ✦
Nella reached the sheepfold with Mara and Fern shortly after midday, carrying Beech's canvas bag and none of the good news anyone was waiting for.
Harl came down from the stone store before she had crossed the yard. "Where is he?"
"Taken below the meeting hall."
"Injured?"
"His wrist. Possibly more by now."
Harl started towards the eastern path as though he meant to fetch Beech himself. Nella caught his sleeve.
"There's an archer on the cooperage roof. Two men at the orchard gate. The captain has Beech because somebody higher up wants him alive. Running down there won't change that."
"We can't leave him."
"I didn't say we would."
Mara set down the bag. Its canvas was damp, and the shoulder strap had torn where Beech had snagged it during the escape. She had managed to save the little mallet, the cooper's measuring rule, a few scraps of bread and the knotted cord, but the bag felt absurdly light without its owner.
"He went back for the hatch," she said. "We were nearly out."
Nella did not answer. She had seen him turn, had heard the barrel stave scrape against stone, and had known precisely what he intended to do. The decision had probably saved her and Mara from being caught between the raiders and the bowman. It did not make the decision Beech had made below the hall any better.
"He gave me his word," she said at last.
Harl frowned. "That sounds like Beech. He's always promising to finish something."
"This was different."
She told them how their mission to watch the lifting rod had gone wrong, and that Beech had deliberately ignored her order to leave it alone. Darron, seated by the store with his left arm in a sling, listened with his jaw set. Merrick rested his bad knee on a folded blanket.
"Was the gate moving before he interfered?" the miller asked.
"The rod was. We never saw the gate itself open."
"Then we still don't know how much they've managed," Merrick said.
Elna stood at the store entrance with a basin balanced against her bandaged hands. Behind her, Pellin slept fitfully while Berta kept watch on his fever. Joss sat on a bench nearby with his injured arm supported; Tilly was beside him, trying to mend a torn piece of cloth with very small, very determined stitches.
"Can we get him back?" Tilly asked.
Nella looked down at the girl. "We're going to try."
"You've got five goblins in the pound," Tilly said. "Could you exchange them? That's a lot of goblins for one carpenter."
"Thank you," said Darron. "You've made him sound a bargain."
Nella thought about the prisoners. They had been given water and bread. They had surrendered weapons, though she trusted their claims of having no more about as far as she trusted a rotten stair. They were frightened, angry and, from what little the guards had heard, increasingly doubtful that their captain was coming for them.
"We may be able to speak to him," she said. "But first we need to know what they mean to do below the hall. If the stone starts moving under people's homes, fetching Beech will not be the only problem."
Mara opened the bag and passed Nella the measuring rule. "Then we need eyes on the yard, not another expedition into it."
They went to work. There was no council table, no vote, and no banner. Tam was told to watch the northern road without using his cracked horn. Mara took two runners through the orchard hedges. Harl began moving the sickroom's spare blankets and water skins towards the upper sheepfold, and Darron directed those who could carry timber to clear the narrow path away from the lower cottages.
Nella kept Fern beside her and went to speak to the goblin prisoners.
✦ ✦ ✦
The prisoner who answered her questions was the small, pinched-faced goblin who had complained about the wages during their first interrogation. He sat with his back against the cattle-pound wall, nibbling a crust as though he feared someone would take it away.
"Your captain has a carpenter," Nella told him. "The men with the broken-ring marks want him to work on something below the hall."
The prisoner kept chewing.
"When do they intend to leave?"
"When they get paid."
"When's that?"
"Ask the captain."
"I'm asking you."
He looked at the crust, then at the four others sitting out of earshot. "They promised us silver when the chest reached the north. Then the marked ones said the account would be settled when the southern mouth was ready. Always another job before the pay."
"So the captain brought you here for money."
"We came for money," the goblin said sharply. "He said we'd take a village, make a noise, and go home. Nobody mentioned getting buried under a meeting hall."
Nella remembered the bakery, the arrow in Pellin's leg, and the burned houses below them. She felt no urge to comfort him.
"You brought those things with you," she said. "The weapons and the burning."
He lowered his eyes to the bread.
"The marked ones need the road," he muttered. "They don't need us once it's open."
"You know that?"
"I can count."
Nella left him with the remainder of his crust. He had told her nothing she could prove, but enough to recognise a weakness. The captain's raiders and the marked workers were partners only while there was something for each of them to gain.
She returned to the sheepfold, where Harl was attempting to persuade Duchess to move away from a pile of turnips.
"I need some clean cloth," she said. "And somebody the goblins will recognise as a person worth talking to."
Harl stood taller. "At last."
"I was thinking of myself."
He looked genuinely wounded.
"You can come as far as the orchard wall," she added. "And if I tell you to get back, you'll do it."
"Naturally."
"Harl."
"I heard you the first time."
✦ ✦ ✦
Beech had been given a stool, a bowl of water, and half a loaf of bread with a crust so hard it could have served as a building material.
He regarded this as an improvement over being threatened with an axe.
The guards had settled him in a shallow recess off the service chamber. It had once held racks, judging by the marks on the walls, but the timber had rotted away. A lantern burned beyond the opening, and one goblin sat where he could see Beech's bound hands. The other was carrying stolen timber down the stair.
From the gallery came the rasp of a fine-toothed saw, stroke after stroke. The marked workers were cutting away his oak wedge. Beech couldn't tell from the sound what would happen when they finished.
The guard watched him bite a piece from the loaf.
"You really stopped it with wood?"
Beech chewed until he could speak. "A bit of wood, yes."
"Could you stop it again?"
"I don't intend to have the opportunity."
The guard had a split ear and a poorly mended strap on his shoulder. He was younger than the captain, and his leather armour had belonged to someone much larger. He kept touching the loose buckle to check that it was still there.
"My brother says the gate's big enough for wagons," he said. "Says they'll come through with a whole road full of treasure."
"Has your brother seen it?"
"No."
"Has anybody?"
The goblin scowled. "The marked men know."
"They also seem to know where the food is kept," Beech said. "Your bread's no better than mine, is it?"
The guard glanced at his own empty hands and said nothing.
The guard sounded uncannily like a hungry apprentice complaining about his master. Beech could still see Pellin's arrow wound and Elna's ruined bakery in his mind. It was unpleasant to discover that the creatures who had caused such harm were themselves being cheated and frightened.
Footsteps approached. The marked surveyor entered, followed by the captain and a narrow-shouldered clerk carrying rolled drawings.
The clerk spread one across the empty cradle. Beech recognised the outer outline of Briar Glen's meeting hall: the three buttresses, the eastern yard wall, the paving around Brant's rear hatch. Small measurements had been added in a precise hand, including dimensions from below the floor that Beech had never taken.
"You drew this?" the surveyor asked.
"The top of it," Beech said. "The repairs. Years ago."
"Who had it?"
"The hall keeper, I suppose. Then the council. It wasn't a secret."
The clerk touched a notation beside the old south wall. "This was added later. By someone who knew the settlement under the foundation."
Beech glanced at the figures. The lower stone had shifted after the great flood, and several of the timber props he had once fitted were meant to keep the meeting-hall floor level. He knew the repairs because he had carried their timber on his shoulder. He did not know who had drawn the older work beneath them.
"You can measure the posts without me," he said.
"Not from here," the surveyor answered. "The old supports have taken the load differently from the drawings. We need to know which pieces can be moved before the wheel is tried again."
The captain folded his arms. "And I need to know when my men are to be paid."
"When the route is available."
"That's what you said about the chest."
"The chest is at North Scar. The southern end is your concern."
Beech looked from one to the other. The captain's jaw tightened, and the surveyor returned to his parchment as though he had dismissed a servant.
"There's still a village standing above your work," Beech said. "If you pull the wrong prop out, you won't get a gate. You'll get a roof on your heads."
"Then show us the right prop," said the surveyor.
"I don't know which it is until I've seen the floor."
The clerk rolled the drawing up again. The surveyor gave an impatient nod, and the captain ordered Beech brought upstairs.
✦ ✦ ✦
By mid-afternoon, the light was painfully bright after the chamber. Beech blinked in Brant's rear yard while the guard with the loose shoulder strap untied his wrists and replaced the cord with a shorter length around one wrist. The other end stayed in his own hand.
They had brought out new oak uprights to brace the meeting hall's rear wall. Beech recognised the timber: straight-grained, sound wood from the smith's drying shed, dragged here while Darron lay wounded at the sheepfold. The marked workers were using it well, which was perhaps the most irritating thing about them.
He tested one upright with his heel. The footing sank into wet soil beside the old paving.
"That'll move," he said.
The surveyor glanced up. "How far?"
"Far enough to break something expensive. Put a flat stone under it if you want it to stand."
He hated helping them. But if the post failed, the hall might drop onto the service chamber, the lanes, and anyone still trapped nearby. He had no intention of sacrificing a village roof to prove that he disapproved of goblins.
A worker fetched a flagstone. Beech watched it set beneath the foot and gave the post a cautious shake. This time it held.
From the square came a shout. The captain had gone to meet someone at the orchard entrance. Beech caught a glimpse through the broken service gate: a length of white cloth raised above a low wall, with Nella standing beneath it.
His stomach lurched.
The guard tightened the cord. "Don't try."
Beech had no intention of trying. Nella was standing in plain view of the archer's roof, and the archer had not survived this long by mistaking an exposed target for a flowerpot.
The captain walked towards her, axe in hand but low at his side. He stopped well short of the wall.
"You've come for the carpenter," he said.
"I have."
"Five of mine in your pound."
"Alive," Nella answered. "Fed and watered. That's more than some of your men have managed for our people."
The captain ignored the rebuke. "Bring them to the square and leave them at the old fountain. Then perhaps we can talk about yours."
"Perhaps isn't an exchange."
"He's useful to my employer."
"He's useful to us."
The captain showed a thin smile. "Then he's worth something."
Harl stood somewhere beyond the wall; Beech heard him mutter, "Cheek of the fellow," before another voice told him to be quiet.
Nella did not move. "I won't hand over prisoners on a promise you refuse to make. If you want them, we talk with both sides standing where we can see them."
The captain looked towards Beech, who was holding an upright while the goblin guard watched him.
"You hear that, carpenter? She'd rather keep five goblins than have you back."
Beech met Nella's eyes across the yard. There was a great deal he wanted to say, and none of it would fit comfortably in front of the captain and a dozen armed strangers.
"I broke my word," he said.
Nella's face changed, but only a little.
"Yes," she answered. "You did."
"I'm sorry."
"We'll discuss it when you're somewhere I can shout at you properly."
The captain sneered. "You think there's going to be a later?"
Nella turned her attention back to him. "I think you've promised your raiders a great deal. Have they seen any of the silver yet?"
The captain's smile vanished. Around the yard two ordinary goblins slowed in their work. The marked surveyor looked up from his measurements.
"That's between me and my men," the captain said.
"Then perhaps you'd better settle it before asking them to go down beneath a hill that's moving."
The archer shifted on the roof. Nella lowered the white cloth and withdrew from the wall without running. Beech watched her go, furious at the fact that he was relieved she had refused to make a reckless bargain.
The guard at his wrist had heard every word. So had the two goblins beside the timber pile.
"We are getting paid," one said, too loudly.
"Of course we are," answered the other.
Neither sounded convinced.
✦ ✦ ✦
Not long after Nella withdrew from the orchard wall, the first crack came from below Beech's boots.
It was a small sound, almost polite. He had been checking a mortise in one of the new uprights when the yard paving shifted beneath his heel. A thin line opened between two stones and filled at once with dirty water.
He stepped back.
"Stop the wheel," he told the surveyor.
"The wheel hasn't moved."
Another crack ran along the paving. Beech could feel it through the sole of his walking boot, a faint shiver as though some enormous cart had passed beneath the ground.
From the hatch came a voice: "The saw's through the top of the wedge. The rod's free to settle."
Beech looked at the surveyor. "Then don't turn anything until the supports are checked. The stone's already moving."
The surveyor approached the crack and studied the water. He did not laugh at Beech or call him a fool. He looked frightened for one fleeting moment, which was worse.
"Bring the men down," he ordered. "We need pressure on the outer brace before we test the lift."
Three ordinary raiders hurried towards the hatch. One was the guard with the loose strap, still holding Beech's cord. Another paused when he heard the groan from below.
"You said we were carrying timber," he protested.
"You'll carry it down," the surveyor replied. "The gallery floor will hold."
"You haven't looked at it since this morning," Beech said. "I have. There's a seam behind the cradle and wet stone under the outer wall. If the paving is moving here, the floor below is taking the weight."
The surveyor gave him a cold look. "You were not brought here to give orders."
"No," said Beech. "I was brought here because you needed someone who knew when a post wouldn't stand."
The captain returned from the square, where Nella had left him to consider unpaid wages. He looked at the water spilling through the crack and at his three men gathered around the open hatch.
"What's happening?"
"A controlled test," said the surveyor.
"Of what?"
"The southern lift. Your men will help hold the outer props while we make the turn."
The captain stared at him. "Under that?"
"There is no other way."
"Then your men can do it."
For a moment nothing moved. The ordinary raiders glanced between their captain and the marked inspector. Beech could hear a saw being withdrawn below; somewhere farther down the gallery, a wheel began to creak.
"Your employer will hear of this," the surveyor said.
"Good," answered the captain. "He can hear that I want my payment before you bury my lot under his road."
The surveyor raised two fingers towards the hatch. The order passed below in a shout, and the wheel turned again without the captain's men.
Beech felt the strain in the paving. It spread under his feet and into the oak post he was holding. The new prop bent slightly, just enough to change the angle of its shadow against the hall wall.
"Let go of that!" he shouted to the goblin beside him.
The guard with the loose strap still had Beech's wrist cord. When he stepped aside, the leather tightened and pulled Beech towards the moving post. Beech grabbed at the knot with his free hand. The guard let go to catch his own balance.
The paving broke.
A long, narrow section dropped between the upright and the old yard wall. Water surged from the gap, washing away mortar and loose earth. The goblin with the shoulder strap fell to his knees, one leg trapped beneath a split timber. His scream stopped the arguments.
Beech was already kneeling beside him. He could have run for the service gate. It stood half open, and the captain's attention was on the breaking ground. Instead he caught the fallen timber near its balance point and tried to lift it.
The pain in his left wrist made him gasp. The wood barely moved.
"Don't pull your leg," he told the goblin. "You'll make it worse."
"GET IT OFF!"
"I'm trying!"
A second ordinary raider seized the far end of the timber. Together they raised it enough for the trapped goblin to drag himself clear. Beech kept his hands under the beam until the leg was out, then let the wood drop into the waterlogged gap.
The captain hauled his wounded man away from the broken edge. His face had gone pale beneath the grime. He turned towards the surveyor, who was shouting down the hatch for the wheel to be held.
"I told you no," the captain said.
"The support gave unexpectedly."
"You said it would hold."
"It will if the carpenter finishes the bracing."
The captain looked across at Beech. The cord hung loose from his sore wrist. Beyond the broken paving, the little service gate opened towards the narrow lane beside the cooperage.
The surveyor pointed. "Secure the carpenter. We still need him."
The captain had his wounded goblin by the shoulder, and the creature was trying not to cry out. The two raiders carrying him were slipping on the wet paving. Another tremor shook the hall, scattering mortar into the yard.
"You want him?" the captain snapped at the surveyor. "Then fetch him yourself. I'm getting my men out."
Beech edged behind the new oak upright, trying to keep the post between himself and the hall steps. The raider who had helped him free the trapped goblin caught the movement.
"Carpenter's going!" he shouted. His hands were still occupied with his injured companion, but a marked guard turned from the stair and came straight for the service gate.
Beech made for the gap in the broken wall instead. His cloak caught on a jagged nail in the half-open gate, hauling him backwards by the neck. He twisted, heard good wool tear, and lurched free with a strip of brown cloth hanging from the iron.
"Carpenter!" the captain shouted.
The bowstring sounded above the cooperage. Beech dropped, but not quite quickly enough. The arrow sliced through the upper part of his left sleeve, scoring a hot, shallow line along his arm before burying itself in the upright beyond him. He hit the wet cobbles shoulder-first, crawled under the line of the wall, and scrambled through the gap.
The marked guard followed as far as the broken paving, where a fresh spill of muddy water forced him round the fallen timber. Beech gained the narrow lane first. Behind him the captain was still ordering his wounded men clear, and the surveyor was calling for guards who had their own reasons not to descend into a collapsing hole.
Beech pressed his sore arm against his side and kept to the shelter of the cooperage wall. The pan remained on the chest cradle below the hall; his knife was with a guard. He had escaped without either, and now he was bleeding into what remained of a perfectly good shirt.
✦ ✦ ✦
Nella was waiting beneath the collapsed end of the orchard wall, where the lane narrowed behind a row of ruined sheds. Mara crouched beside her with Fern held by the collar. Nella had expected to spend the afternoon choosing between a bad rescue and a worse one. Seeing Beech slip through the gate without a guard behind him seemed almost too much to hope for.
Beech appeared along the narrow lane just as another groan shook the meeting hall. His cloak was filthy and missing a strip near the hem; blood darkened his left sleeve, and a leather cord hung from his wrist.
"Don't look up," Nella whispered as he reached them. "The archer's still on the roof."
"I know."
"Then walk."
They walked along the shaded side of the lane, keeping the wall between themselves and the bowman's position. Halfway to the orchard, Fern's ears pricked. A shaft struck the gatepost behind them, low and hard enough to bury itself almost to the fletching.
They did not wait for a second.
Mara led them behind the fallen orchard wall and into the drover's track. A runner met them at the first hedge, recognised Nella's knotted cord, and hurried ahead with the news. Only when they were among the trees did Beech stop to breathe.
Nella caught his shoulders and examined the bleeding sleeve before she saw the leather mark around his wrist.
"An arrow?"
"A very small part of one," Beech said. "It went somewhere else afterwards."
She drew the torn cloth aside. The graze was shallow, but long enough to need washing and a dressing. "You're lucky."
"I've been hearing that rather a lot."
"And you're going to stop testing it."
She released him and took a step back. For a moment neither spoke. Fern pressed her nose against Beech's knee, sniffed, and seemed satisfied that he was the same troublesome human who had left the sheepfold that morning.
"I meant what I said," Beech told Nella. "I knew you were right. I put the wedge in anyway."
"I know."
"I thought if I stopped it quickly enough, everything else would turn out all right."
Nella looked down through the trees towards the meeting hall. More dust had risen above its roofline, and a loose plume of smoke was drifting from the lower street.
"It didn't," she said.
"No."
She stood silent for so long that Beech began to wish she'd shout at him instead.
"You don't get to decide the risk for everyone," she said at last. "Not me, not Mara, not the people under those roofs. If you tell me we're going to look, I have to be able to trust that you'll look."
Beech nodded. This time he did not try to joke.
"I understand."
"I hope you do. Because I came back for you, and I can't keep doing that every time you choose to be a hero without telling anyone."
"I know."
Nella drew a breath, steadied herself, and took the cord from his wrist. "Tell me what they were doing. All of it."
Beech told her about the unfamiliar measurements beneath the hall, the quarrel over unpaid raiders, and the soaked foundations. He described the paving opening beneath a goblin's feet and the timber that had trapped him. Nella listened without interruption.
"Can they open the gate?" she asked.
"I don't know. But the ground above it is giving way. We need to get everyone out of the lower street."
Nella called the runner back. She tied three knots in the cord, one for help needed, and handed it over with a message for the lookouts and Harl. Then she sent Mara ahead to warn the families still hiding in the eastern cottages.
Beech started after her.
Nella caught his sleeve.
"You are going to the sheepfold first. Berta needs to look at that wrist, and I need you to tell Darron exactly which supports you've seen. After that, we'll decide what you do next. Together."
"Together," Beech repeated.
He expected it to be an unpleasant word to say aloud. Instead he found that he was rather glad of it.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was nearing dusk when they reached the sheepfold. Harl had begun moving the stores uphill while the runners went house to house with Nella's warning. Darron was directing two men who carried lengths of timber between them, and Merrick was checking the water channels with an old miller's eye. Pellin's fever had eased enough for him to complain about being left behind, which Berta took as a hopeful sign and a reason to tell him firmly to stay in bed.
Elna sat on a low stool, helping her niece wrap bread in cloth with the careful movements her bandaged hands allowed. The little wooden horse stood on a crate beside them, listening with its new pointed ear.
Beech passed it and received a serious inspection from the child.
"Where's your pan?"
"Confiscated."
"Did somebody steal it?"
"Not exactly."
She regarded his empty belt. "You should get it back."
"That had occurred to me."
Nella sent him to Berta without allowing further discussion of cookware. She washed and dressed the graze on his upper left arm, then examined the aching wrist and wrapped it firmly. Beech joined Merrick and Darron with a scrap of parchment, drawing only the visible posts, their wet footings, and the cracked paving. Where the structure disappeared into stone, he left the page blank.
Darron studied the lines. "These props are keeping the hall upright, not holding the gate shut."
"And the cottages below the square?" Nella asked.
"Might lose their footing when the hall does," Beech said.
Merrick traced the lower street on the parchment. "Then we use the high path. The sluice can't mend a foundation, and I'd rather not learn how quickly those cottages can fall." Harl took one glance at the drawing and went to find more people to carry blankets.
As the last daylight faded beyond the sheepfold, a runner came up from the lower lookout with a knotted cord and mud on his boots.
"The marked ones have brought more timber into the square," he told Nella. "And there's a horn being answered from the northern ridge."
"Any soldiers?" she asked.
"Not ours. No sign of the king's men."
Nella checked the villagers carrying blankets, the wounded settling into shelter, and the small party ready to go back down for those still trapped in Briar Glen. Beech stood beside her with his wrist wrapped, his upper arm dressed beneath its torn sleeve, and nothing at his belt where his frying pan had hung.
"We can still get them out," he said.
"Some of them," Nella answered. "If we move now."
They turned towards the eastern path.
Far below, beneath the unburned roof of the meeting hall, something enormous groaned. A figure at the lower lookout ran into the road, waving both arms towards the first row of cottages. Somewhere beyond the roofs, people began to shout that the street was splitting.
And from the northern hills came an answering horn.
End of Chapter Nine
The story continues.
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