Read Evil for Evil for Free Online Page A

whatever-it-was, put down the bowl and looked round. A few people were still moving about, but mostly there was the stillness of rest after hard work; of men whose only resource was their strength, saving it up for another day. If I could walk, Miel thought, I could offer to help them tomorrow with digging the graves. I can't even do that. I can't do anything.
    He lay back. There was a stone or something just under his shoulder blade; he wriggled about to avoid it. Nothing to do; he'd have expected to be bored, since all his life the one thing he could never abide was doing nothing. It wasn't like that, though. It was dark, so it was time to sleep; or, if sleep didn't happen to pass by his way, he would be content to lie still and wait for the dawn. Gradually, awareness of time slipped away from him, and then he slept.
    When he woke up, there was someone standing over him again. He recognized the boots.
    "On the cart," the man with the mustache said. "Here, I'll give you a hand up." Miel nodded, and let himself be lifted. "Are we going back to the battlefield?" he asked.
    The man frowned, as though he hadn't expected to be asked a question, and wasn't quite sure it wasn't against the rules. "You go back to the camp," he said.
    "They'll look after you there."
    The tailgate closed behind him, and he snuggled back among the sacks. Fine resistance leader I turned out to be, he thought. By now I should've overpowered a dozen guards, stolen a sword and a fast horse and be galloping home. Instead, they put me on a cart. About the best thing anybody could say about me right now is that I'm reasonably portable.
    But that'd be silly, he thought. You can't overpower guards if there's nobody guarding you, and I expect if I asked them nicely they'd sell me a sword and a horse, assuming they haven't stolen all my money. (He checked; they hadn't. On the other hand, all he had left was six copper turners and a twopenny bit.)
    It was a long ride. The cart had to go slowly over the sad excuse for a track. (Weren't we supposed to have built a new road up here, Miel wondered, or did we never get round to it?) Shortly after noon he saw a small cluster of wooden buildings in the distance. As he got closer they grew into five thatched sheds surrounded by a stockade. That suggested a degree of effort; there weren't any woods for miles, so someone had thought it was worth all the trouble of putting up some kind of fortification. There was no smoke rising, and he couldn't see any people about. Barns, then, rather than houses.
    "Is that where we're going?" he called out, and wondered if the driver would reply. He hadn't said a word all day; but then, Miel hadn't either.
    "Yes."
    There was a ditch as well as a stockade. The driver stopped the cart, jumped down and whistled. A gate in the stockade opened; apparently it doubled as a drawbridge. The cart rumbled over it, jarring Miel's knee. The drawbridge went back up again as soon as they were across.
    "Hold on, I'll help you down." The driver, now that he looked at him, was a short, stocky man with a fringe of sandy hair round a bald citadel of a head. Miel thanked him—the Ducas always acknowledges help—and leaned on his shoulder as they crossed the yard to one of the barns.
    "Live one for you," the bald man called out as they crossed the threshold into the darkness inside. He put Miel down carefully and walked away.
    He'd called out to someone, so presumably there was someone there; but it was too dark for Miel to see, so he stayed where he was, leaned up against a wall, like a hoe or a shovel. He was getting used to being property, he decided, and so far it hadn't been so bad. That could change, of course. He decided to resume some responsibility.
    "Hello," he called out. "Anybody there?"
    "Just a minute, I'll come down." A woman's voice, which made a change. Not a pleasant voice, though. The best you could say for it was that it sounded like it meant what it said. You knew where you were with a