Free The Returning by Christine Hinwood

dragged his knuckles against the rough stone at his back.
    â€œThey did think I was one of them, from behind.” Cam arranged the wood piece by piece, handling the rough pine as if it were eggshell frail.
    â€œYou’re dark enough.”
    â€œAye.”
    â€œIs that why you do not hate them?”
    â€œHe . . .” Cam’s eyes gazed inward. “His sword did swing and the blood, it did just . . . jump from my arm and hit him, face and chest and hands, and he . . . he staggered back and fell over a body, so he was kneeling there, righting himself, using his sword as a prop, and I was looking at him, and his eyes met mine and it wasn’t . . . They look different, don’t they, but his eyes showed the same, I mean, a person, just a person. Like me.” Cam jabbed and jabbed at the fire with a stick.
    â€œHold.” Ban laid his hand over Cam’s, stilling it, then letting go again. “Keep on like that and you’ll have the fire out.”

    THE WINTER WAS bitter; the cold wore everyone down. Ardow belabored Ban, every night when Ban was held captive by the milking, every night until the goats’ milk dried up.
    â€œWhere were you the day?”
    â€œOut causing trouble, it may be.”
    â€œI’d know about it if you did.”
    â€œSo why ask?”
    â€œNot helping, that much I do know.”
    â€œWhere can I be but in the woods, if I don’t want to be beaten by you with words, by all of you, always so many, so close.” Ban slammed out of the cot and marched down the track to Kayforl.
    He went to the tavern to be warm, to be with Cam. Once inside, though, there was a stiffness in the air. “Cam, I would rather the cold without.”
    But Cam seemed set where he was.
    â€œBailey,” said Bubbo Nelsan. He stood over Cam, hooked his boot-toe around the leg of the stool Cam sat on, and jerked it. Cam looked up at him, and Bubbo leaned down. “My brother Bailey did march with you to the war. What of him then?”
    Ban waited for Cam to speak, but he did not. Finn Pacenot slashed the air with his riding crop. “Oda.” Ssslash. “Brae.” Cousins to Finn on his father’s side. “Why do you not tell us?”
    Cam shoved his stool back, legs screeching on the stone flags. Bubbo was taken off guard and stumbled back, nearly falling. “How often do I need to ask you, to let me forget?”
    The tap-maid leaned forward, breasts squished against the bar. “Oda was my sweetheart and he never did come home. How do I know he didn’t just take up with some loose maid up north? Dead! If he’s dead, why do you not just tell me!”
    Cam was angry, Ban could see it, but it seemed a cold, cold rage. He lifted his beaker and sipped a slow mouthful of beer. “Oda took a fever on the road.” He set the beaker down. “It was Brae who went first, though. Fighting. Oda did lose heart, I think, and so the fever got him. Bailey, he was murdered at rest. Layne Gorlance was took later on.”
    Roan Mattow said, “The Gorlances lost their best with him.”
    Cam lifted his gaze up and onto one face, and the next and the next. “It was only Callen Mansto and me, at the very last. He went in the Battle for Dorn-Lannet.”
    â€œAnd now you,” said Bubbo. “Of all of that marched off to the fighting?”
    â€œMost of me.” Cam lifted the stump of his arm.
    â€œAye, and a stolen horse!”
    â€œNo need for that.” Ban could not believe he had spoken Big Bubbo Nelsan down.
    â€œLeave out of it, Ban,” said Cam.
    It stung. It worse than stung; it bit, it bored into him.
    The silence was like glass, brittle and all edges. Behind the bar, the tap-maid began to weep.
    â€œHow did Bailey die?” Bubbo shouted into the quiet.
    â€œI’m away out of this.” Cam shoved and elbowed his way to the door.

    CAM STAMPED AROUND the clearing in the moonlight, taking big swipes