In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

Sorrow sat on the man’s left arm, pinning him, and panted, drooling a little, as Alain stepped forward to look the man in the face.

“I know you. You’re called Heric. You were a man-at-arms in Lavas Holding seven or eight years back.”

The pungent smell of urine flooded as the man wet himself.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I pray you, forgive me!”

“For trying to kill me just now?”

Heric kept babbling. “It was my sin! Mine!”

Although it made his head ache a little, Alain remembered. “You were the one who put me in the cage.”

“Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

“What of the reward you received for bringing me in to Geoffrey? Surely he gave you something? How after all that do you come to be hiding in the woods wearing such rags?”

“Don’t let them chop off my hand! I didn’t steal anything!”

“Only my freedom!”

Heric screamed and jerked his leg, but Rage was only licking at the swollen toe. “I had to! You were an outlaw! You were a thief, the worst of all! You took what wasn’t yours to have. So they all said!”

“Roll over onto your stomach.”

“The beast’ll bite me!” But he did so, easing his arm out from under Sorrow as the hound looked up at Alain for direction.

Heric had been a big man once, but hunger had worn him down. He hadn’t a belt for the tunic, and a crude cord woven out of reeds tied back his unruly hair. This man had betrayed him. But Alain could find no indignation on his own behalf for this pathetic creature who had no shoes, no gloves, and only two arrows, one now broken, with which to kill himself some supper. He hadn’t even a knife.

“Why are you here at Ravnholt Manor?”

“Heard deer and rats seen roundabout,” Heric replied, head twisted to one side so he could speak without choking on dirt. “I’m hungry.”

“Do you know what happened to those four women?”

“No.”

“Ah.” Centuries ago, as humankind measured time, Alain had been bitten by a blind snake hiding in the lair of a phoenix. The effects of that venom still coursed through his blood, and where the poison burned, he burned with outrage. “You’re lying, Heric. I pray you, do not lie. God know the truth. How can you hide from Them?”

“I didn’t kill anyone! It was the others. It was them who are guilty! Even here at Ravnholt. I just stood watch, I never hurt anyone! After you escaped the cage, after that storm and that monster—ai, God! Then all those who were so friendly to me before, all them turned on me and cast me out! What was I to do? The woodsmen—that’s what they call themselves—they’re not so particular!”

“Although an honest woodsman might object to a pack of bandits calling themselves by an honest name.”

“We was hungry, just like others. Did what we had to do to get a scrap to eat.”

“Murdered folk here at Ravnholt Manor? Where are the four girls who were taken?”

He sobbed helplessly into the dirt, nose running. He stank with fear. “I left them after they done it. I wasn’t guilty. I didn’t do it!”

“After they done what?”

“Killed them! Raped them and killed them. Said they might try to escape. I said they ought to spare ’em. But no.”

“You touched none of those girls?”

“I didn’t kill them!”

“But you raped them! Isn’t that harm enough? And stood by and let them die after! Doesn’t that stain your hands with their blood? The one who refuses to act to save the innocent is as guilty as the one whose hand strikes the blow!”