Page 203 of Circle of Days

They were Dab and Revo. Tears came to Joia’s eyes and overflowed. They had undoubtedly led peaceful lives, minding cattle, but their time had been brutally cut short, and now they were gone, and their bodies were lifeless.

And Lim had no mother, no father.

Dee appeared and took Lim from her. “You have to decide what to do about the track,” she said.

Joia pulled herself together.

She considered moving the stone without a track, dragging it over the bare ground. The hardest part of the journey was over, and from now on the way was mostly flat. All the same, progress would be slow, and she would certainly fail to keep her promise of nine stones in ten days. No, she decided, it was better to spend time mending the track. That should be quicker in the long run.

There were two hundred people in this team. With luck they could get the stone moving again before sundown.

She set them to work. She told them to pick up all the strewn branches and replace them in the track. She sent half a dozen people to search for logs for the pyre. There were a few bushes on the plain, dry now after the warm spring, and they, too, would serve for firewood.

Once that process was underway she talked to Jara about where the farmer army might be now. It had been here, where they stood, but had gone. “Perhaps they’re heading home,” she said optimistically. “Troon might feel he has made his point.”

“I doubt it,” Jara said. “They’ve killed two herders, and they’ve inflicted some damage that looks as if it can be repaired by the end of today. That’s not going to satisfy a man like Troon.” She looked around the rolling landscape. “They’ll be west of here, so that they can retreat home if things go wrong for them; but they’re not far away, so they can attack again quickly. They’ll be hiding in a shallow valley behind a ridge, watching for a favorable opportunity.”

Joia was chilled by that thought.

She said: “The second team should have left Stony Valley by now. They could be here by sundown, barring accidents. That will give us another two hundred people, making four hundred in all.”

“I don’t understand your numbers.”

“It’s more than double the number the farmers are expecting, and probably double the size of their force. We have a huge advantage.”

Jara nodded. “But the herder society is unused to violence. We hardly ever fight, even when we should.” She was thinking of the time when Troon seized the Break, and the herders had done nothing about it, Joia guessed. “Farmers are violent people. Think what they did to the woodlanders.”

Joia said: “So what can we do to protect our people?”

Jara had clearly been thinking about this, for she had heranswer ready. “This part of the route, between the twin hills and Upriver, needs to be patrolled day and night.”

Joia was calculating. “If, say, twenty people were spread evenly across that distance, each could shout to the one ahead or the one behind, and so an alarm could be sounded along the whole stretch.”

“That sounds right,” said Jara. “But we’ll double the number and send them in pairs, so that they can stop one another falling asleep.”

Joia did not want the guards to get hurt. “Tell them that if they see the farmers they should give the alarm, then run away. They mustn’t try to fight the farmer army alone. They’ll be slaughtered.”

“I’ll tell them that, and I’ll send them out right away, in case the farmers are already on the move.”

“Good.”

Jara went off and Joia looked around for Dee. She found her kneeling down, mending the track, with the dubious help of Lim, who had stopped crying and was bringing small pieces of vegetation to her.

Joia said: “I want to talk to you.”

Dee got to her feet. “That sounds ominous.”

Joia said seriously: “For some people, there is only one love. I’m like that. My mother told me I just have to wait for the right one. Now I’ve found you.”

Dee smiled. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“And now that I’ve found you, I’m not going to lose you.”

“I’m glad.”

“So I want you to go home.”

Dee was taken aback. “Why?”