Free PROLOGUE by beni

anyway, if she ran, she'd probably never find this trove of onions again.
    A man shrieked. Branches snapped and splintered in a wave of sound, and a heavy weight hit the ground so hard and close behind her that she felt the shudder through her knees. An arrow thunked into wood. Metal rang, meeting another blade. A man shouted a warning. Many feet crashed through the undergrowth and someone cursed.
    Then came many voices raised at once, running feet, undergrowth torn and broken, and a drumming like many blows thrown down upon the earth —or on some object. Silence.
    She dared not raise her head. A thin liquid puddled by her left hand, lapping over and wetting her little finger. It stung like the kiss of a bee. Moving her head a bare fraction, she risked a glance back over her shoulder.
    An outflung hand reached for her. Eyes stared at her, and lips pulled back from sharp teeth, a mouth opened wide in a last grimace. Every part of her that was not her actual physical body bolted up and fled, screaming in terror —but her training held. She did not move, and after an instant of such terror that her stomach burned, she realized the Eika had fallen, dead, almost into her hiding place. Farther away, she heard foresters talking. "I only saw two." "They scout in pairs." "Where's their dogs?"
    "Ai, Lord, have you ever seen their dogs, lad? Scout with them dogs and you tell everyone where you're passing. They never scout with their dogs, and it's just as well for us. I swear the dogs are harder to kill than the damned savages."
    "What do we do with these two, now?" "Leave them be and let the maggots and flies have them, if such creatures can even eat Eika."
    Shuddering, she picked herself up, wiping her fingers clean of the greenish liquid that had oozed from the wound where an arrow had embedded itself in the Eika's throat. She had harvesting to do. The onions came up easily, but she trembled as she worked, even knowing the Eika couldn't hurt her now. "Hey there! What's this?".
    Men thrashed through the undergrowth and she glanced up to see two of them hacking at the thicket, then peering over the broken and crushed leaves, at her.
    "Ai, I know you," said one of the foresters. "You're the child what came out of Gent early summer." He didn't ask what she was doing; he didn't need to. "God's blood, but you came close to having your throat slit, lass. You'd better get back to town." He waved his companion away. "What have you found there, child?"
    "Onions," she said, suddenly afraid he would take them away from her.
    But he merely nodded, pulled a colored stick from his belt, and stuck it beside the tree to mark the find. "Don't take them all, now. That's the problem with you folk, you take everything and don't leave anything to go to seed for next year. You must husband what you find, just as a farmer saves seed to sow and doesn't use it all for bread."
    She stared at him, waiting for him to move off, and he sighed and stepped back. "Nay, child, I'll take nothing from you. We're better off who live out here than you poor orphans nearby the town. That Gisela, she's a cunning householder and would indenture you all if she had room for it. Go on, then."
    She jumped up and scuttled away, clutching the precious onions against her. After she could no longer see the foresters, she stopped to make a fold in her skirt, laying the onions in the fold and tucking the fabric up under her belt, a makeshift pouch for her new treasure. She peered up through leaves at the sky. It was hot, if not unpleasant, but well past noontide —time to be heading back so that she would not be caught out after dark. She arranged her shawl on her back to drape over one shoulder and around the opposite hip. With a practiced backward motion she filled this sling with firewood: anything loose, dry, and not too heavy for her to carry.
    Thus laden, she arrived back at camp in the late afternoon. She drew her sling of firewood over the lump in her skirt, hiding her trove