Read To Save a World for Free Online Page B

rain-drenched and stark white, the blackened remnants of a dozen flattened wooden houses around it. Toward this still-standing shelter they made their way.
    Behind them, three miles of forest lay, a blackened horror with wisps of smoke still rising in the rain and sleet. As they came under the roof, sighing and staggering, with exhaustion, one of the men lowered the half-burnt carcass of a deer to the floor. He motioned with his head and a worn-looking woman in a smoke-damaged fur smock and cape came to heft it. He said wearily, "Better cook what's left of it before it spoils. Little enough meat we'll taste this winter now."
    The woman nodded. She looked too tired to speak. On the floor at the far end of the stone-walled room, a dozen young children were sleeping on furs and an odd assortment of cushions and old clothes. Some of them raised their heads curiously as the men came in and carefully shut out the drafts, but none of them cried out. They had all seen too much in the past two weeks.
    The woman asked, "Was anything saved?"
    "Half a dozen houses at the edge of Greyleaf Town. We'll be living four families to the house, but we won't freeze. There isn't a roof standing in the Naderling Forest, though."
    The woman shut her eyes spasmodically and turned away. One of the men said to another, "Our grandsire is dead, Marilla. No, he wasn't caught by fire; he would take a pick with the rest on the fire lines, even though I begged him not; said I'd do his share and mine. But his heart gave out and he fell dead as he ate his supper."
    The woman, hardly more than a girl, began to cry quietly. She went and picked up one of the smallest children and automatically put it to her breast, her silent tears dropping on the small fuzzy head.
    An older woman, long gray hair straggling in wisps around her face, looking as if she had been roused from sleep three days ago and had not had a moment since to wash or comb her hair, as was in fact the case, came and took a long spoon from a rack by the fireplace. She began ladling a rough nut porridge into wooden bowls and handing it to the men, who dropped down and began to eat quietly. There was no sound in the room except the sobs of the young woman and the sighs of exhausted men. A child whimpered, sleeping, and murmured for its mother. Outside the sleet battered the wooden shutters with an incessant hissing sound.
    It was like an explosion in the quiet room when someone began to hammer on the door, with blows like gunfire, and shouting outside. Two of the smallest children woke and began to wail with terror.
    One of the men, older than the rest and with an indefinite air of command, went to the door and flung it part way open. He demanded, "In the name of all the gods, what is this racket? After eight days of fire fighting, haven't we earned a breakfast's worth of rest?"
    "You'll be glad to leave your breakfast when you hear what we have here," said the man rattling the door. His face was grim and smoke stained, eyebrows burnt away and one hand in a bandage. He jerked a head over his shoulder. "Bring the bre'suin here."
    Two men behind him thrust forward a struggling man in nondescript clothing, much burnt, cut, scratched and bleeding from a dozen wounds that looked like thorn scratches. The man holding the door open glanced quickly back at the women and children inside and thrust the door shut, but some of the men eating breakfast put down their bowls and came crowding out. They were mostly silent, waiting grimly to know what this was all about.
    One, of the men holding the stranger said, "Father, we caught him setting light to a pile of resin-branches at the edge of Greyleaf Forest, not four miles away. He had piled the thing like a beacon, to blaze and catch living wood. We had an hour's work to put it out, but we stopped it—and brought this here to you!"
    "But in the name of Sharra and all the gods at once," said the older man, staring in disbelief and horror at their prisoner, "Is the