Read Morningstar for Free Online Page B

boots, cloaks and jerkins. Two wagons stood by, piled high with furniture and chests. I glanced at the dead -several men, three women, and beyond the road a monk in a bloodstained habit with an axe still jutting from his back.
    ‘Good morning, Wulf,’ called Jarek, striding across the murder site and hailing a hunchback with a forked beard.
    The man looked up and grinned. ‘It is so far, Mace,’ he said. Lifting a small hand-axe, he brought the blade down on the hand of the dead man below him. I grunted in shock as the fingers were sliced in half. The hunchback lifted them, pulling the rings loose before discarding the shattered bones.
    ‘Who is your squeamish friend?’
    ‘He is a bard - and a magicker,’ Jarek told him. Then he pointed at the corpse. ‘You’ve missed an earring.’
    The hunchback grunted and tore the gold loose; the dead man’s head flopped in the snow. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for long,’ muttered Wulf. ‘What’s in the hide?’
    ‘Venison.’Looking to share it with friends?’
    ‘Are you looking to buy it?’
    The hunchback let out a cackling laugh. ‘Why should I not take it? There’s twenty of us, and only a fool would fight. You are no fool.’
    ‘No, I am not,’ Jarek agreed, smiling. ‘But I would kill you, Wulf, then offer to share it with the others. You think they’d fight to avenge you?’
    ‘Nah,’ said the hunchback. ‘What do you say to this here brooch?’ His bloody hand flicked the gold through the air. Jarek caught it with his left hand, then hefted it for weight.
    ‘Nice. It’s a bargain.’ Dropping the sack Jarek walked on, stepping over the body of the priest. I hurried after him, keeping my mouth shut and my disgust to myself until we were some distance from the scene.
    ‘At least he didn’t rape the women,’ said Jarek. ‘He’s very moral that way.’
    ‘Are you using that as an excuse for him?’
    ‘He doesn’t need me to excuse him,’ he answered. ‘Wulf is a woodsman - and a good one. But the war had taken its toll, even in the forest. The Count of Ziraccu needed money to hire his mercenaries. So, even - a count has a limited income: he could not afford to maintain his work-force here. Wulf has no job now. Food supplies are scarce, and prices have risen fourfold. He has a family to feed, yet no coin to buy food. What else could he do but take to the road?’
    ‘He has become a murderer!’
    ‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’
    ‘You condone the murder of innocent women?’
    ‘I didn’t kill them,’ he said. ‘Don’t vent your anger on me.’
    ‘But you were happy to trade with their killers.’
    He stopped and turned to face me - the smile, as ever, in place. ‘You are angry, bard, but not with me. You were filled with horror back there, and loathing and disgust. But you said nothing. That is what is burning inside you... not the trade.’
    I let out a long sigh and looked away.
    ‘Come on,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It is a short walk to the village.’
*
    The village was a collection of some twenty-five dwellings, some of simple wood construction beneath sloping roofs of thatch, others more solidly built of clay, mixed with powdered stone, beneath wooden roofs weighted with large stones. They were all single-storey, but equipped with narrow lofts where the children slept. The settlement was situated on the western shore of a long lake and a dozen fishing-boats were drawn up on the mud flats by the water’s edge.
    Jarek and I walked into the village, passing a group of children playing by the open doors of the central hall. There was much giggling as the youngsters, dressed in simple tunics and trews of wool - most of them grime-ingrained - chased each other around the building. An old man sitting in a narrow doorway nodded at Jarek and lifted a weary hand in greeting. Jarek waved and moved on.
    A young girl, scarce in her teens, watched us as we passed. Her blonde hair was cropped close to her head and her eyes were wide