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arrived in time to help, sometimes not.
    The time came when I turned from slaying an invader to find
there were no more of them left. The last of the enemy were even now
disappearing into the shadows of the trees.
    I stood in the center of the green and surveyed the carnage.
Despite our efforts, the village lay in ruins, the dead littering the ground
wherever I looked. Most of the bodies belonged to villagers.
    I had never felt more frustrated. I had done everything I
knew how, and still I hadn’t been able to defend them in the end. Why was I
always too late to turn the tide?

 
    Chapter
Four
     
    The first gray of dawn was touching the sky by the time I
finished helping the Hammond’s Bend folk drag their injured into the meeting
hall to be cared for. I stayed all that day, heaping up the corpses of the
fallen enemy for burning. There were many of them, and none of us cared to
grant them a more decent burial. Even less pleasant was the task of disposing
of the dead villagers. Lined out among the corpses, I discovered the lifeless
body of the shy little girl I had spoken to last night. I didn’t know her name,
but I memorized her face, even as I hid the sadness her death awakened in me.
The villagers needed strength now. The time for mourning would come later.
    Blinking my stinging eyes, I wrapped the girl’s small body
in the rough blanket her grief-shocked mother provided and laid her gently into
the mass grave. That grieved me that we had to bury them like so many rotten
melons dumped into a single compost heap. But there was no choice. The number
of the dead was greater than that of the living, and so we did what we could.
    At the end of the day, I rested on the front porch of a
cabin, exhausted. There was work yet to be done, but the sun was sinking, and
my strength ebbed low. An older village woman bade me sit and pressed a plate
of stewed potatoes in my hands. It was the first meal I’d taken since yesterday,
and I thanked her gratefully, inwardly marveling at how yesterday I had been
all but ordered from this very porch. But today this woman and her husband
couldn’t do enough for me. I was so wrapped up in enjoying the simple meal that
I didn’t immediately notice when the village head joined me on the steps.
    I looked up belatedly and offered him my plate, because he
looked as worn and weak as I felt. But Dunnel refused. He had spent the day
digging graves, and his face was streaked in dirt and dried sweat. More of it
was matted in his hair. He regarded me with serious bloodshot eyes. I had no
idea what he wanted.
    He said, “I don’t know what it was that brought you to us,
stranger. But there’s no question in my mind, nor I think in the minds of any
this night, that we would all be dead if not for your efforts.”
    I shook my head, feeling as uncomfortable as he looked and
said, “I did nothing. You saved yourselves.”
    He looked down at his hands. They were big and scarred, the
strong hands of a farmer who spent his life working the soil. But tonight they
were flecked with dried blood.
    He said, “You did nothing we couldn’t have done for
ourselves, but you did everything we wouldn’t have done. If we did save
ourselves, it was you who gave us the courage to do it. You organized us when
we were too afraid to think for ourselves. If you hadn’t caused us to hold that
line—well I don’t know what would have become of us. I want to thank you on
behalf of the village. Also, to apologize for how roughly I received you last night.
Little did I know the stranger I refused to share my table with that day would
be saving my life the next.”
    “You did give me winter-fruit,” I pointed out.
    A weary grin split his face. “So I did.”
    I sobered suddenly and asked, “Any final count of the missing?”
    His smile vanished. “Fourteen, we think. But we have hopes
some of those merely fled into the woods and might yet return.”
    I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to. I was sure we both
knew