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fishing-boats, anyway. They'd skim over the bar.
     
    Soon they were out on the bay, waiting for the tide, safe from any revenge attacks, with the village's boats lying burned on the shingle. Occasional sparks blew from the sullen embers of the crofts of the village. Otherwise there was darkness and desolation in what had been her home. Steeling herself, Meb edged her way down the bank. She had to make sure poor Hallgerd was dead, as little as she wanted to go down there.
     
    She established that fact quickly enough. Her stepmother was dead and stiff already, her old dress dark-stained with blood even in the moonlight. Gently closing Hallgerd's eyes, Meb pulled Hallgerd's dress down again.
     
    Meb's tears were swallowed down into an acid hatred that burned in her belly. No one would have dared to raid on Lord Zuamar's territory without his permission . . . or without a larger dragon dealing with the local dragon overlord. No one! And Zuamar was one of the greatest of dragons. Yenfar's people were proud of their dread lord, be he ever so greedy with his taxes. He was bigger and more dangerous than the dragons of other islands.
     
    She ground her teeth. Somehow, Zuamar would pay for this. He was supposed to defend them! She knew in her heart of hearts that this was as futile as hating the sea. But that didn't stop her hatred. It ran right then, as deep as the heavens were wide.
     
    After what seemed like an eternity, Meb got up off her knees from next to Hallgerd. When she stood up, she was a much older woman than the girl who had knelt down there in village street. Standing up, Meb was stiff, sore, hungry and cold, miserable to the core . . . and she had absolutely no idea what to do next. She tried to put it all aside, to be logical, to think. It didn't work very well. Her teeth were chattering with cold . . . so finding some warmth—even if it was just from the embers of her home, she thought bitterly, was probably the most important. Her other dress was burned. As was the blanket she would have slept under. She really needed some clothes. And then some food and shelter, but clothes came first. Then she'd have to bury Hallgerd. Alone, if no one else came back to help.
     
    She tried again to think about clothes, warmth, without letting the horror of it all overwhelm her. It was a pity that she'd washed her other dress the day before. Otherwise it might still have been drying on the flag bushes behind the houses. Maybe there might be other clothes there? Would the raiders have bothered with fisher-folk's washing?
     
    She made her way back towards them. The straggly bushes everyone used to hang out their washing on grew along the bottom edge of the dune she'd just come down.
     
    Near them, she tripped over another lump that shouldn't have been there. In the moonlight she saw that it was Leofric's son, Alemric. He was also dead. She swallowed and backed away. He'd been the leader among those who had felt that she had an ugly face but an interesting body. She'd really hated the boy. Been scared of him. But she hadn't wanted him dead. She left as hastily as she could.
     
    The flag bushes did yield one thing. A boy's tunic. Old and threadbare, but at least somewhat warmer than her salty skin. She struggled into it. It was fairly tight—it must have belonged to one of the village's younger boys. But it helped with the night-wind. The only other clothes she'd seen were on dead people, and full of their blood. She didn't think she could cope with that. Not yet anyway.
     
    She made her way back towards the burned croft, sidestepping Alemric's body. Instead she kicked his trousers. Meb carefully avoided even thinking about why he wasn't wearing them. Instead, she gritted her teeth and pulled them on. Boy's clothes on a girl might be indecent. But it wasn't half as indecent as her underthings. At least they kept the cold wind off her skin.
     
    She found a place next to the remains of the croft that was out of the