“The Pocked Man!” cried a man close to the end of the line, and he lifted a hand to point at us. His face was drawn with weariness and white with fear. His voice cracked on the words. “It’s the legends come to life,” he warned the others, who halted fearfully to stare back at us. “Heartless ghosts walk embodied through our village ruins, and the black-cloaked Pocked Man brings his disease upon us. We have lived too soft, and the old gods punish us. Our fat lives will be the death of us all.”
“Oh, damn it all. I didn’t mean to be seen like this,” Chade breathed. I watched his pale hands gather his reins, turning his bay. “Follow me, boy.” He did not look toward the man who still pointed a quivering finger at us. He moved slowly, almost languorously, as he guided his horse off the road and up a tussocky hillside. It was the same unchallenging way of moving that Burrich had when confronting a wary horse or dog. His tired horse left the smooth trail reluctantly. Chade was headed up into a stand of birches on the hilltop. I stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Follow me, boy,” he directed me over his shoulder when I hesitated. “Do you want to be stoned in the road? It’s not a pleasant experience.”
I moved carefully, swinging Sooty aside from the road as if I were totally unaware of the panicky folk ahead of us. They hovered there, between anger and fear. The feel of it was a black-red smear on the day’s freshness. I saw a woman stoop, saw a man turn aside from his barrow.
“They’re coming!” I warned Chade, even as they raced toward us. Some gripped stones and others green staffs freshly taken from the forest. All had the bedraggled look of townsfolk forced to living in the open. Here were the rest of Forge’s villagers, those not taken hostage by the Raiders. All of that I realized in the instant between digging in my heels and Sooty’s weary plunge forward. Our horses were spent; their efforts at speed were grudging, despite the hail of rocks that thudded to the earth in our wake. Had the townsfolk been rested, or less fearful, they would have easily caught us. But I think they were relieved to see us flee. Their minds were more fixed on what walked the streets of their village than in fleeing strangers, no matter how ominous.
They stood in the road and shouted and waved their sticks until we were among the trees. Chade had taken the lead and I didn’t question him as he took us on a parallel path that would keep us out of the sight of the folk leaving Forge. The horses had settled back into a grudging plod. I was grateful for the rolling hills and scattered trees that hid us from any pursuit. When I saw a stream glinting, I gestured to it without a word. Silently we watered the horses and shook out for them some grain from Chade’s supplies. I loosened harness and wiped their draggled coats with handfuls of grass. For ourselves, there was cold stream water and coarse travel bread. I saw to the horses as best as I could. Chade seemed full of his own thoughts, and for a long time I respected their intensity. But finally I could contain my curiosity no longer and I asked the question.
“Are you really the Pocked Man?”
Chade started, and then stared at me. There were equal parts amazement and ruefulness in that look. “The Pocked Man? The legendary harbinger of disease and disaster? Oh, come, boy, you’re not simple. That legend is hundreds of years old. Surely you can’t believe I’m that ancient.”
I shrugged. I wanted to say, “You are scarred, and you bring death,” but I did not utter it. Chade did seem very old to me sometimes, and other times so full of energy that he seemed but a very young man in an old man’s body.
“No, I am not the Pocked Man,” he went on, more to himself than to me. “But after today, the rumors of him will be spread across the Six Duchies like pollen on the wind. There will be talk of disease and pestilence and divine punishments for imagined wrongdoing. I wish I had not been seen like this. The folk of the kingdom already have enough to fear. But there are sharper worries for us than superstitions. However you knew it, you were right. I have been thinking, most carefully, of everything I saw in Forge. And recalling the words of those villagers who tried to stone us. And the look of them all. I knew the Forge folk, in times past. They were doughty folk, not the type to flee in superstitious panic. But those folk we saw on the road, that was what they were doing. Leaving Forge, forever, or at least so they intend. Taking all that is left that they can carry. Leaving homes their grandfathers were born in. And leaving behind relatives who sift and scavenge in the ruins like witlings.
“The Red-Ship threat was not an empty one. I think of those folk and I shiver. Something is sorely wrong, boy, and I fear what will come next. For if the Red-Ships can capture our folk, and then demand that we pay them to kill them, on fear that they will otherwise return them to us like those ones were—what a bitter choice! And once more they have struck when we were least prepared to deal with it.” He turned to me as if to say more, then suddenly staggered. He sat down abruptly, his face graying. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.