Oliver crouched beside the body and turned it over.
The man looked about sixty, with short gray hair, a thin body, and hands roughened by years of work. His mouth and eyes remained open. Oliver drew the blood-stiffened shirt aside far enough to see the wound through his chest. He didn't know enough to identify the weapon, but whoever had used it had struck to kill.
He stood and handed Kellan his shield and short sword. Taking the long saber in both hands, he looked along the silent road.
“Stay behind me. A little way back.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy's voice shook, though he held his ground.
An unarmed old man lay outside his own village, and nobody had come to cover him or carry him home. Oliver walked between the houses.
Bodies lay beside the road. Men, women, children, old people. Some had been struck in the head; others lay in blood beneath wounds that made Kellan turn aside and vomit. One body had been cut almost in two.
Oliver didn't feel sick. Heat gathered in his chest and face, and he had nowhere to put it. He knew what this was. He had read the words often enough. A village put to the sword.
Doors stood open. Inside, belongings had been overturned and scattered by whoever had searched the houses. He passed from one to another until he reached the largest building.
A young woman had been bound to a pillar. She had been violated and tortured before she died. Her eyes were gone. At her feet lay a small boy, no more than two, with blood on his face and his eyes closed.
Oliver couldn't bring himself to examine the child more closely. He cut the woman's bonds and laid her on a bed, then lifted the boy and placed him beside her. An old blanket covered them both.
He stepped back and rested the saber's point on the floor. His hands tightened around the hilt until the veins stood out. She could scarcely have been twenty. The child had barely lived long enough to speak. What could either of them have done to deserve this?
What sort of person could do it?
Kellan came up behind him.
“Sir, I've looked. The people outside were fishermen.” His voice sounded dry and strained. “I think pirates did this.”
“Are there many pirates up here?”
“I don't know. We get them sometimes in the Fingers. Father said the ones who came from this direction were savages from the north.”
Oliver looked at the blanket again. He wasn't inclined to argue over the word.
“Bring the barrow.”
Kellan had left it in the bushes outside the village when it seemed they might have to fight. He hurried back to fetch it. By the time he returned, Oliver had carried the woman outside, still wrapped in the blanket.
“Bring the others here,” Oliver said. “All of them.”
He unloaded their supplies, laid her on the barrow, and wheeled her to an open patch of grass beyond the houses. Then he returned for another body. Kellan brought the dead to the road, and Oliver carried them away.
They found thirty-two.
Oliver took off his armor, cut a stout length of wood, and fitted it to the mining pick in place of its shorter handle. Then he began to dig.
For a while, Kellan watched him. He could not understand the point. These people were strangers. Oliver had never met them, and they could give him nothing. Father or Uncle Tamlin would have searched the houses for anything the raiders had missed, then gone before the bodies began to stink.
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“Sir,” he said at last, “why are you doing this? You don't know them. It won't gain you anything, and you're wearing yourself out.”
Oliver kept working. “Because I wanted to. Because I could.” The pick struck again. “That's all.”
Kellan still didn't understand. But he considered himself under Oliver's protection, and that was reason enough to help. He found a hoe in the village and climbed down beside him.
He couldn't keep up. Oliver drove the pick into the earth as though he meant to break through it altogether. Hours passed. The hole deepened until its sides rose above their heads.
“Enough,” Oliver said eventually. “Help me with them.”
They lowered the dead into the pit one by one. Thin bodies, ordinary people, laid together until the uppermost rested a little above its edge. Oliver shoveled the loosened earth back over them and kept piling it until a broad mound covered the grave.
He wiped his forehead with a dirty hand.
“Will dogs dig them up?”
“I don't know.” Kellan looked at the mound. “Something heavy on top might stop them.”
Oliver let out a breath. “There's nobody to watch it. We could dig all day and still not be sure.” He leaned on the tool for a moment. “We've done what we can.”
The work had spent some of the anger. He could look at the grave without feeling quite so helpless. Still, something was missing.
“What gods do you pray to?” he asked.
“The Seven. But I don't know the prayers for the dead. That's for septons and the Silent Sisters.” Kellan hesitated. “And these are northmen. They worship the old gods.”
“Of course.” Oliver looked from the boy to the grave. “Never mind. I'll manage.”
He took his dagger to a plank and shaved off three slender strips of wood. Once he had lit them, he set them upright before the mound. Thin smoke rose into the evening air.
He searched his memory for words that might serve. He had no proper office here, no knowledge of these people's rites. The words he remembered from stories were all he could offer. In a low voice, he asked for rest for the dead, an end to their suffering, and mercy from whatever might receive them.
Kellan couldn't understand the strange language. He listened to Oliver's solemn voice and guessed that this was a prayer from his homeland. Lowering his own head, he silently asked the Stranger to grant peace to the thirty-two people beneath the earth.
The mound cast a long shadow in the setting sun. When Oliver finished, he stood without speaking.
They couldn't hear him. They couldn't see the grave or know who had put them in it. Whatever he had accomplished, it was no use pretending he had helped them as he might have helped the living.
Yet he no longer felt quite as powerless as he had inside that house.
“Get ready,” he told Kellan. “We're leaving.”
“Now, sir? You've worked so hard. We could rest here.”
“And what if the men who did this come back?” Oliver pointed to the track leading from the houses into the trees. “A village means other villages. That road must go somewhere. I'd rather sleep where there are people.”
Kellan considered that. He wasn't sure he could bear a night here either.
They ate dried food with cold water, without lighting a fire, and packed the barrow. Then they left the village by the track.
* * *
Dusk deepened into night as they walked beneath the trees. They carried no torch. Moonlight broke through the branches in patches, enough to show the way if they moved carefully. Neither felt like talking.
Oliver held his weapon ready. The men who had killed the villagers might be somewhere nearby, eating and drinking in a hollow while their victims lay cooling. He listened for anything beyond the birds, insects, and leaves stirring overhead.
Footsteps.
Rapid, uneven footsteps, coming through the undergrowth toward the track.
He stopped and pushed Kellan toward the roadside. “Hide.”
Oliver slipped behind a large tree. The running came closer. He could hear men's voices behind the first set of footsteps, raised and excited. He stayed where he was. Blundering out among unknown people in the dark would accomplish very little.
As the leading figure passed the tree, he thrust the saber's wooden scabbard across the path.
The runner tripped and fell with a cry. Only then did he see that he had brought down a young woman. Her clothing was torn and scant. She pushed herself up, saw the scabbard that had caught her feet, and followed it to the armored man standing over her.
She screamed.
The first pursuer came at her with his shirt already coming off, reaching for her hair. Oliver swung the scabbard into his face and sent him sprawling.
A survivor. That was his first thought. A survivor of the village, and the men behind her were the ones who had done it. Even if he was wrong about that, they were giving him little reason to hesitate.
He stepped out from the tree, reversed his grip, and drove the end of the scabbard into the second man's forehead. The man fell backward.
The third pulled an axe from his belt and swung for Oliver's head. Oliver moved in rather than away, inside the reach of the blow, and punched him in the stomach. As he doubled over, Oliver struck upward under his jaw. He dropped too.
The last man wore little more than raw hides. Faced with a fully armored fighter who had just laid out his companions, he turned and ran straight into a tree. He went down at its foot.
Behind Oliver, the first pursuer staggered upright, swearing. A dagger came out of his clothes. Oliver met him with a two-handed thrust of the scabbard into his belly. The man folded to his knees and vomited.
“Useless,” Oliver muttered. He kicked him in the head, and the man slumped beside the road.
A few seconds. Four men on the ground. He hadn't even drawn the blade.