"Right. Just mind you don't say anything about Travelers unless Papa does."
Tier urged Skew forward again, this time with his weight and a click of his tongue. The patchwork-colored gelding paced forward with his usual glass-smooth walk.
There were three huts, the smithy, a small pottery, and a handful of small buildings in the village that Benroln had sent them to. But there was no answer from inside the potter's shed when Lehr knocked, nor did anyone come out at his shout. He opened the door and briefly peered inside.
"No one here."
So they went to the next building.
The smithy was a three-walled, open-face shed and appeared as empty as the pottery had been. Tier threw a leg over Skew's back and slid - slowly for the sake of his stiff knees - to the ground. He dropped the gelding's reins to ground-tie him and limped into the building, Lehr and Jes beside him.
Inside the smithy, tools were hung in an organized manner on one wall, rough steel lay scattered on the ground next to the forge, as if someone had just dropped it there. Tier put a hand over the bed of coals, then touched them cautiously, but not even the memory of fire lingered.
"What can you tell me about this, Lehr?" asked Tier. "How long have they been gone?"
It was an unreasonable question to ask of even the most seasoned tracker. The roof of the smithy kept the rain off and the walls protected the dirt floor. Tier wouldn't have been able to tell how long the steel had lain on the ground, abandoned to tend to whatever emergency had called the smith away.
But Lehr, like Jes and Tier himself, was an Order Bearer - and his Order was Falcon - the Hunter.
Lehr cast his Falcon's eyes over the scene and Tier felt the rise of magic as his son read the traces left by the people who'd lived here.
"No one's been in this building for at least two days, maybe as long as three," he said finally. "But there were chickens here until yesterday."
They'd seen no chickens when they rode up.
"There are people here still," said Jes after a moment, his voice crisp and alert. "I can smell them."
Something about the deserted place had alarmed his oldest son. Jes, his sweet-natured slow-speaking Jes, was gone as if he had never been, and in his place was the deadly predator who sometimes looked out of Jes's eyes. Jes's Order was a heavier burden than the others. Jes was Guardian, and the magic-induced dread that accompanied his secondary nature, unique to the Eagle's Order, sent chills up Tier's spine.
Lehr didn't even look up from the ground just outside the smithy. "Something ate the chickens."
"What kind of something?" asked Tier.
"I don't know," Lehr answered. "It's not very big - about the weight of a small wolf. See, here's a print."
Tier peered at the faint trace in the dust of the small trail. To his eyes it could have been any of a number of animals. "Could it be a raccoon?"
Lehr shook his head. "It's not a raccoon. No racoon has claws that size."
"Can you see where the people went?"
"There's someone here, Da," Tole said, his face pressed against a crack in the wall. "Out by the smithy. Strangers this time."
Aliven looked up from the damp cloth he was using on his wife's forehead. She hadn't opened her eyes since he'd brought her here days ago.
Because their home was closer to the well than the smithy was, his wife had been quicker to answer their daughter's scream. By the time he'd gotten to the well, Lorra was dead and his wife was struggling beneath some dark beast. When the strange creature noticed Aliven it ran off; at first he'd thought that the sound of his shout or the sight of his hammer had sent it fleeing - but he'd since learned the folly of that. Perhaps it only hadn't want to kill its food too fast lest it spoil. In any case, between the time he'd carried Irna into the house and returned for Lorra, it had come back and dragged her body away.
He'd sent his son for Tally, his wife's cousin, who'd been so immersed in his potting that he'd not heard Lorra's scream. As the other man had come hurrying over, it had attacked yet again, from behind the garden hut. If Aliven hadn't been carrying his hammer still, the beast would have gotten them both instead of just clawing up