Page 54 of The Threadbare Queen

His unit slipped out of sight.

“They’re back.” Marcus seemed to droop. “I knew it.”

“How many of them were there?”

Marus lifted a hand, palm down, and waggled it side to side. “Fifty? Around that number.”

That would mean the odds were in Luc’s favor. Better if they held the advantage of surprise, as well.

“Stay here.” Luc glanced over at the huddled crowd, then back at Marcus. “And keep quiet.”

“Kill them.” The woman spoke for the first time, looking up at him from her position crouched on the ground. Her eyes flashed pure hatred. “Kill them all.”

Luc put a finger to his lips, then joined Kikir up against the building, out of sight of anyone taking the lane down to the back field.

Kill them all.

It might come to that, but he hoped not.

He didn’t know yet what the Jatan had done in the north east. Whether his people were safe, or whether they were having to deal with the same type of raid that had just happened in this tiny Kassian village.

He needed to find out.

A bird’s call came from down the street, near the burning hall.

Revek. He always had a way with bird calls.

It was a warning that the Jatan were in sight, coming from the woods behind the hall, from the back of the village.

They moved in silence, no talking or calling.

The sound of horses hooves and the clink of metal the only evidence of their approach.

Luc heard them come to a stop outside the hall, and waited for a reaction.

“Where are the villagers?” someone asked, his voice loud in the quiet.

He spoke Jatan, but it was close enough to Kassian as to simply be a different dialect.

“Getting the food they were hiding before, is my guess.” The man who spoke sounded grim. “Seems we might catch them at it.”

Luc felt his own anger begin to rise at that comment.

What right did this commander think he had to the winter store of an entire village?

He heard them come down the lane toward the back field, and then a group of ten horsemen trotted past his and Kikir’s position.

Their gaze was fixed on Marcus and the woman, and the huddled villagers at the far end of the field. If they had looked to the left and back, they would have seen him, but they weren’t expecting resistance or any trouble at all.

Two of the horses were each pulling a wooden cart.

They’d come back to steal the village’s food supplies and cart it away.

That was their first mistake.

Their second was that they had only brought a small number of soldiers to do it.

Luc wondered if the rest had been left behind to fool the older commander, to pretend that his orders were being followed.

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