The courage of the rebels increased with every victory against Jared's army. After a few months, Soterius noted that the army did not venture north without large numbers. By then, the rebels were well-trained enough to harry the intruders, decimating their numbers and keeping them off balance and in constant fear. Soterius showed the village militias how to appear more numerous than they were. Mikhail taught them how to move silently and hide themselves.
From the villagers' web of family ties came another unexpected boon. Soterius knew that Tris had given his blessing to the ghosts of the Scirranish to avenge themselves and their families. Tris had also lent his power to make those ghosts visible. As the spirits of the scirranish returned to the places of their slaughter they called to the ghosts of their ancestors, until the forests and passes of the north-lands were too dangerous for even the most intrepid of Jared's troops. Soterius heard tales of the encounters between the spirits and the Margolan army. If they resembled even a fraction of the truth, the murdered villagers had fully avenged themselves. Even without Tris's magic, Soterius was more aware of spirits around him than ever before, especially since he almost always rode by night to accompany Mikhail and avoid detection.
Vayash moru were more numerous than Soterius expected among the volunteers, until he heard the stories of how relentlessly Jared's troops had persecuted the undead, hunting them to their day crypts and burning them in the sun while they were vulnerable. Those vayash moru were kin to the villagers, and had remained part of the lives of their families and villages even after they had been brought across into the Dark Gift. And so the fear that Jared hoped to instill of the vayash moru became loathing for the usurper king who severed bonds of family and marriage that even death had not sundered.
Feeling the barely suppressed rage of the villagers, the anger of the spirits, and the cold resolve of the vayash moru, Soterius felt like he was watching storm clouds brewing on the horizon. The storm's center would be Shekerishet, and its fury would fall on the night of the Hawthorn Moon. Until then, he and Mikhail had a kingdom to lead into revolution.
Although Gabriel had given Soterius the names of Margolan nobles likely to aid the rebellion, those holdings were further south. So it was the villagers and farmers who offered shelter and hiding places, as well as provisions and safe passage. But now, just a few candlemarks from his father's lands, Soterius felt the need to go home and see how his own family fared.
Soterius passed an inn but did not stop. It was unlikely that anyone would recognize him, Soterius thought wryly, dressed as he was in a worn leather riding cloak with a full beard and his hair grown long. He was more likely to be taken for a brigand than the captain of Bricen's guard, but there was still no sense in tempting fate. He rode on, though a mug of ale and a few moments by the fireside would have warmed him.
Once he passed the inn, the road grew quiet. Soterius rode on high alert, wondering if he had been wrong about insisting on riding alone. But these were the roads he knew from his childhood, and he had never before felt in danger here. Now, in Jared's Margolan, Soterius wondered if he had beer, reckless. Again he wished for dusk to come, so that he would have Mikhail's company. Something felt wrong, very wrong. Soterius thought about going back to the inn, but decided that it would take longer to go back than to go forward. Besides, he argued with himself, Mikhail would be looking to meet him at Huntwood, the Soterius family manor. Chilled to the bone, Soterius decided to continue forward.
The sleet fell harder, glazing the wet ground and covering the bare branches of the trees so that they looked spun from glass. Soterius came to a rise in the road and saw Huntwood in the distance, a dark shape against the horizon. Only then did he realize the source of his sense of foreboding. The road to the manor, usually well-traveled, lay covered with an unbroken skin of ice, marked neither by hoof prints nor wagon tracks. The fields to either side of the road, usually home to cattle, goats, and sheep, were empty. No lights flickered from the manor house windows, and no smoke rose from its chimney.
Soterius urged his horse on, as fast as he dared to go on the icy roads. Within a few moments, the turn to the manor house came into view, as dark and undisturbed as the road itself. Feeling a rising panic, Soterius galloped up the long approach, hearing his horse's hoof beats pounding in the silence. He reached the great entrance and stopped, feeling his heart rise to his throat.
Huntwood was a ruined shell. The dim light of evening was visible through the upper floor window casings, where the roof had been burned away. The manor's windows had been shattered, their casings blackened by fire. The front door was splintered. From the overgrowth of the bare shrubbery, it appeared as if no one had tended the gardens for many months.
Soterius lightly tethered his horse to a hitching post and drew his sword, advancing toward the steps warily. In the distance an owl hooted, but there were no other sounds of life. Heart pounding, Soterius realized he was holding his breath as he approached the doorway, stepping over the broken pieces of what had been massive oaken doors.
The smell of smoke and charred wood still lingered. Little remained of the manor's furnishings. What had not been destroyed by fire appeared to have been slashed or hacked to bits. Icy rain fell from the gaping hole in the ceiling. Leaves swirled around Soterius's boots in the ravaged front hallway.
Numbly, he made his way through the ruin of the familiar manor, but found neither life nor any sign of recent habitation. He slipped from the back entrance into the terraced yards of which his mother had once been so proud. The gardens with their carefully tended hedge mazes and roses had been ridden down, and parts of them had burned.
Soterius found it difficult to breathe. He looked down over the sloping yard, toward the barns that were now charred timbers, and toward the fields that appeared to have been torched instead of harvested. Gone, all of it gone, he thought in shock. All gone—
- He heard a crunch of ice behind him, and then a cry. Soterius could not see his attacker, but the man had to be at least double his bulk and a good bit taller; he easily crushed Soterius to the ice-covered ground and pinned him with his knee. He grabbed for Soterius's sword hand and slammed Soterius's knuckles against the ground until he could pry the sword away and throw it well out of reach.
"There's nothing left to take, thief," a man's voice rasped near Soterius's ear. "Your kind has taken it all. Give me one reason I shouldn't slit your whore-spawned throat!"
Soterius felt the blade of a knife press against his skin. He struggled in his shock to place the voice.
"I'm not a thief!" Soterius said. "I'm Lord Soterius's son."
He heard a rush of air and a strangled cry from his attacker, who was suddenly lifted from off his back. Soterius scrambled to turn over and saw Mikhail, holding a burly man aloft with one hand so that the man's feet dangled a few inches off the ground.
"You!" the man gasped. "I should slit your throat! It's because of you they're dead—they're all dead!"
Shaken, Soterius regained his feet. Mikhail returned the attacker to the ground but did not remove his hand from the assailant's neck. Although the man was unkempt and an unruly growth of beard altered his appearance, Soterius recognized his brother-in-law, Danne. Danne's words gave him no doubt as to the fate of his sister, Tae.
"Danne, what happened?"
"Soldiers came just after the Haunts. When your father met them at the door, they ran him through. Your mother, your brothers, the children, Tae—the soldiers chased them down, through the house, into the fields and killed them. Even the servants. All but Anyon, who hid in the well. I was gone to market with Coalan. When we came back, the fires were still smoking. Everything was gone."