Page 192 of Circle of Days

Duff looked as if he wanted to argue, but in the end he said: “When will you go?”

“Tonight. No point in postponing these things.”

They returned to their fields and worked until sundown. By thetime they finished supper it was dark. Pia kissed Olin good night and left.

The sky was partly cloudy. Stars showed now and again. Pia went slowly through the wood, not finding it as easy as she had thought, stumbling sometimes over tree roots and fallen branches. It would be better on the other side, where she would have nothing more than a grassy plain to negotiate.

She emerged from the wood and paused to get her bearings. There was no herd in sight, though she could smell it not far away. No herders were in view. But there was someone, and before she could slip back into the wood he said: “Hello, who’s that?”

It was a farmer, she could tell by the accent. He had been sitting on a log, and now he stood up. He was tall and wide, and she recognized him as Hob, a crony of Troon’s.

She tried to appear relaxed. “Hello, Hob,” she said. “What are you doing? Spying on people who flit about in the dark?”

He walked toward her. “It’s Pia, by the voice—and the attitude.” She realized that she had had a chance to run away unrecognized, and had missed it. “Spying?” he went on. “I suppose I am. Troon likes to know who’s going in and out of the farmer territory. You’re going out, I see. He’ll be interested in that. Women are supposed to stay home.”

“Don’t give away my secret, Hob. I’m in love with a herder boy.”

“Well, if that’s the case you’d better go home. You know Troon has banned fraternization with herders.”

A question occurred to her. “If I’d gone another way you wouldn’t have seen me, would you?”

“I’m not the only sentry, lass. There are six of us at different points on the perimeter. You’d be very lucky not to be seen by one of us.”

This was bad news. “I didn’t know Troon had set guards on us,” she said, not hiding her disapproval. “It makes Farmplace seem like a pen to stop animals wandering. Is that what we’ve come to, Hob? Are we to be treated like animals now?”

“Don’t ask me, I just do as I’m told. And you’d better do the same. Start by going back to your house.”

“Very well. Good night, Hob.”

“Good night.”

Defeated and depressed, Pia headed back through the wood to her home.

Troon came visiting in the morning.

Pia and her family were depressed as they ate the usual cold leftover porridge for breakfast, sitting outside the house in weak sunshine. They had failed and they did not know what to do next. Only Olin was carefree.

Pia had been caught the moment she left farmer territory, but she was determined to try again. She would need to evade Troon’s guards. Was there a chance she could slip between two of them, perhaps on a particularly dark night? Could Duff distract one long enough for her to get away unseen? She would have to think of something. Troon could not be allowed to commit mass murder.

He appeared while she was trying to think of a way to outwit him.

He came with Shen and Hob. Hob was carrying a stick of oak, shaped and smoothed, clearly a club meant to hurt people. They sat down uninvited.

“So, Pia,” Troon said with pretended amiability, “you were on your way to see your herder lover last night, when Hob here met you.”

She said defiantly: “I didn’t know that we farmers are penned in like animals that must not stray.”

Troon ignored that. “Your man Duff here doesn’t seem very upset about your lover.”

Pia said impatiently: “What are you doing here, Troon? What do you want?”

“You’re a cocksure bitch,” he snarled. “But you’ll suffer for it.”

Yana said: “People never used to talk like this in Farmplace. Whatever happened to good manners?”

Troon did not reply to her. He said to Pia: “You weren’t going to Riverbend—you had no food with you for the journey. So you must have been going to Old Oak. But which herder is your lover?”

“Zad,” she said.