Free A Time of Exile by Katharine Kerr Page A

of their headmen decides to build one of those forts along the road?”
    “And decides you should be slaves to farm for him? Leaving’s the wise thing to do.”
    “There’s plenty of open land farther north, I suppose. Ah, it’s so hard to leave the pastures of your ancestors! There’s a god in the spring nearby, too, and I only hope he won’t be angry with us for leaving him.” He hesitated for a moment. “We thought of leaving last spring, but it was too much of a wrench, especially for the women. Now we have another reason.”
    “Indeed?”
    Wargal considered him, studying Aderyn’s face in the flickering firelight.
    “You seem like a good man,” Wargal said at last. “I don’t suppose you have any herbs to take a brand off a man’s face?”
    “I only wish I did. If you’re harboring a runaway, you’d best move fast in case his lord comes looking for him.”
    “So I told the others. We were thinking of packing tomorrow.” Wargal glanced around the hut. “We don’t have much to pack or much to lose by leaving—well, except the god in the spring, of course.”
    Aderyn felt a sudden cold shudder of dweomer down his back. His words burned in his mouth, an undeniable warning that forced itself into sound.
    “You
must
leave tomorrow. Please, believe me—I havemagic, and you must leave tomorrow and travel as fast as you can. I’ll come with you on the road a ways.”
    His face pale, Wargal stared at him, then crossed two fingers to ward off the evil eye, in case Aderyn had that, too.
    On the morrow, leaving took far longer than Aderyn wanted. Although the village’s few possessions were easily packed onto bovine and human backs, the goats had to be rounded up. Finally a ragged group of refugees, about eight families with some twenty children among them, the cows, the herd of goats, and six little brown dogs to keep the stock in line, went to the holy spring and made one last sacrifice of cheese to the god while Aderyn kept a fretful watch on the path behind them. By the time they moved out of the valley, it was well after noon, and the smaller children were already tired and crying from the smell of trouble in the air. Aderyn piled the littlest ones into his saddle and walked, leading the horse. Wargal and a young man, Ibretin, fell in beside him. On Ibretin’s cheek was the brand that marked him as a lord’s property.
    “If you think they’ll catch us, O Wise One,” Ibretin said to Aderyn. “I’ll go back and let them kill me. If they find us, they’ll take the whole tribe back with them.”
    “There’s no need for that yet,” Wargal snapped.
    “There never will be if I can help it,” Aderyn said. “I’d be twice cursed before I’d let a man be killed for taking the freedom that the gods gave him. I think my magic might make us harder to find.”
    Both men smiled, reassured by Aderyn’s lie. Although he could control his aura well enough to pass unnoticed and thus practically invisible, Aderyn couldn’t make an entire village disappear.
    For two days they went north, keeping to the rolling hills and making a bare twelve miles a day. The more Aderyn opened his mind to the omens, the more clearly he knew that they were being pursued. On the third night, he scried into a campfire and saw the ruins of the old village, burned to the ground. Only a lord’s warband would have destroyed it, and that warband would have to be blind to miss the trail of so many goats and people. He left the campfire and went to look for Ibretin, who was taking his turn at watching the goats out in the pasture.
    “You’ve called me Wise One. Do you truly think I have magic?”
    “I can only hope so. Wargal thinks so.”
    It was too dark under the starry sky to see Ibretin’s face. Aderyn raised his hand and made the blue light gather in his fingers like a cool-burning torch. Ibretin gasped aloud and stepped back.
    “Now you know instead of hoping. Listen, the men chasing you are close by. Sooner or later,