The man said dully to his hysterical daughter, “Davi, you go with these people. Be a brave girl.”

“No!” she shrieked. “They scare me!”

Clement jerked the girl out of the man’s grip, and handed her, flailing and screaming, to the soldier behind her. The father uttered a shout and flung himself after her. A sharp crack on the head, and he fell. The old woman, released, cried bitterly, “We will never forget this!”

Out in the yard, which was crowded with war horses, they dumped the screaming child into the closed wagon, where her cries revived those of the other children previously snatched from other farms where other farmers had offered the same outraged, disbelieving resistance. It had become a routine. So far Clement had managed to convince the families of her seriousness without killing anyone. In Sainna, the parents would have begged her to take the children so they’d have one less mouth to feed.

“That’s fourteen kids,” said the sergeant in charge of guarding the wagon.

“Mount up,” said Clement.

“Mount up!” cried the captain, and the signal‑man led the way, with his lantern.

It was a gorgeous, soft night: spring’s swift bloom had given way to summer; winter’s bitter winds and drifting snow were nearly impossible to remember now. Stars crowded the sky, and Clement could almost imagine what the Shaftali found to love in this unforgiving land. The children’s muffled cries settled to whimpers, and Clement could hear bird calls and a din of frogs at the pond they were passing. She pretended to herself that she was serene enough to appreciate this lovely ride. Forty children for forty dead soldiers: a grueling night.

She had let the people of Watfield and the surrounding countryside wait for retribution. Immediately after the fire, the local Paladins had been mustered, and for a long time had hovered just outside the city, where they made themselves a nuisance by interfering with lumber deliveries. Occasionally, Ellid, to boost morale, had sent out a company of angry soldiers to fight with them. When Cadmar, Gilly, and a select company of soldiers had ridden out to begin the tour of the garrisons, they reportedly had enjoyed a brisk clash of arms as they passed through the Paladins’ perimeter. Now, nearly a month after the fire, the Paladin alert had relaxed. That night, Clement and her detachment had slipped out of the city unnoticed, and so far had done their work unhindered.

Clement could not predict how long it would take for the Paladins to converge on them or how much the presence of children would inhibit them from attacking. The attackers would probably try to force the soldiers to abandon the wagon, and Clement had trained the detachment accordingly. The soldiers had enjoyed the playacting, which was easier and more interesting than clearing rubble. Clement had needed the distraction, for she felt that she lived in the shadow of doom, and Gilly was not there to jolt her out of her dark mood with his acerbic commentary.

They rode into an empty farmstead. The soldiers searched the house and reported bed covers flung back and clothing tossed about. After they were on the road again, the captain rode up beside Clement and said, “I suppose there’s a farmer galloping ahead of us on a fast horse.”

In the past, farmers could have warned their neighbors or summoned help using bells that were hit with iron poles, but they had long since been broken of that habit by Sainnite retribution. Clement said, “Farmers don’t have fast horses. They’re probably running from farm to farm in relay. Let’s hurry our pace, skip a couple of farms, and see if we can get ahead of the alarm again.”

By this method, Clement’s detachment managed to acquire a couple of more children, but then they found only empty beds again.

“Signal fire,” the captain said in disgust.

Clement had also noticed light flaring on a hilltop, and knew that soon several more scattered hilltops would be aflame. “Return to Watfield,” she said. “Quickly. No need to spare the horses now. And let’s hope no one in town notices the signals.”

*

In the city, her soldiers broke down the doors of two and even three houses at once. Even though Clement insisted that they take only one child from each household, the total quickly mounted by ten, fifteen, twenty more children before the forewarned parents began hiding their children from the soldiers in cellars, woodsheds, and attics. The soldiers, forced to extricate cowering, hysterical children from dark and cluttered places while holding back and sometimes fighting desperate parents, began to lose their tempers. Clement, supervising from the street, heard reports of blood spilled, of a child injured. She listened to the city rousing: dogs barked as a ripple of door pounding and warning shouts spread down the streets from her operation.

“How many recruits do we have?” she asked the sergeant in charge of guarding the wagon.

“Recruits!” He laughed as though he thought she was joking. “Thirty‑six.”

“Close enough to forty. Signal‑man! Retreat to garrison!”

The night was no longer quiet. From the water gate Clement could see a distant beacon, its flames subsiding now but still bright in the distance. The roused city echoed with the angry clangor of pots being banged. A mob had gathered at the garrison gate, and all watches had been mustered to guard the wall. Periodically, Ellid’s bugler sounded a signal, which received an orderly answer from each of the scattered companies. The signals told Clement that there had been some few skirmishes, but so far no emergencies.

Clement was feeling very tired. The signal‑man told her the time; soon dawn light would start to extinguish the stars. Clement rubbed her face vigorously and shouted at the stable sergeant, “How long does it take to change horses?”

“It’s hard to get the harnesses buckled in the dark, Lieutenant‑General,” he said apologetically.

At last, the fresh horses were in their traces, and they were led down the ramp onto the barge, pulling the wagonload of children behind them. The wheels were secured. As the wagon swayed with the movements of the water, Clement could hear children whimpering again. They would quickly learn not to cry, just as Clement had when her soldier‑mother came to take her away from the only home she had known.

The barge was loose; the dray horses on shore leaned into the traces. Clement watched until the barge had been towed through the water gate and was picked up by the river’s sluggish current. It would reach a garrison down river by mid‑afternoon and from there the wagon would travel to the children’s garrison. She turned away, sighing with relief. Her operation had been a success.

Some six days later, the gate remained blocked by a restless crowd that banged their pots and uttered ugly shouts every time the garrison bell rang. Food supplies came in by the water gate, but three times Paladins had cut barges loose from their tow‑horses to be carried away and eventually wrecked by the slow current. Now, as far away as the western borders, lumber mills refused to sell at any price if they suspected the lumber was going to Watfield garrison.

“We can’t manage without wood!” In a temper, Commander Ellid paced Cadmar’s quarters, stepping over and around the clutter of sleeping pallets and gear. Most of the garrison’s officers were sleeping in Cadmar’s quarters at night; four companies slept in shifts in the hallways, and Clement slept with half a company in her own room, while another half occupied it in the daytime. Since the fire, solitude could only be found out of doors.

Clement got up from Cadmar’s table, where she had been going over the duty roster, and took Gilly’s book of maps from its shelf. “We’ll send a company from another garrison to take over a lumber mill,” she said. “Show me where the wood is coming from.”

They discussed logistics, and Clement wrote an order in her own hand, which she had done a lot lately. The harried company clerk arrived, mixed a fresh bottle of ink and trimmed several pens, and left again with a sheaf of paper under her arm. She was not doing duty as a scribe anymore, for she was the only person in the garrison who could cipher well enough to produce reliable measurements for the building plans. “No workers,” grumbled Ellid, still in a temper. “No materials, no facilities, no plans–” The door opened to admit an aide carrying a tray. “No edible food!”