She got the shutter free and dragged it across the window. But if they broke the glass they would be able to push the shutters open from the outside. The fastening was only a hook that would pull out of the wood if forced.

“Let us in and we won’t hurt you,” one of the voices said. She heard their feet on the frozen ground, crackling in the fallen leaves. Was Therru awake? The crash of the shutters closing might have wakened her, but she had made no sound. Tenar stood in the doorway between her room and Therru’s, It was pitch-dark, silent. She was afraid to touch the child and waken her. She must stay in the room with her. She must fight for her. She had had the poker in her hand, where had she put it? She had put it down to close the shutters. She could not find it. She groped for it in the blackness of the room that seemed to have no walls.

The front door, which led into the kitchen, rattled, shaken in its frame.

If she could find the poker she would stay in here, she would fight them.

“Here!” one of them called, and she knew what he had found. He was looking up at the kitchen window, broad, unshuttered, easy to reach.

She went, very slowly it seemed, groping, to the door of the room. It was Therru’s room now. It had been her children’s room. The nursery. That was why there was no lock on the inner side of the door. So the children could not lock themselves in and be frightened if the bolt stuck.

Around back of the hill, through the orchard, Clearbrook and Shandy would be asleep in their cottage. If she called, maybe Shandy would hear. If she opened the bedroom window and called-or if she waked Therru and they climbed out the window and ran through the orchard-but the men were there, right there, waiting.

It was more than she could bear. The frozen terror that had bound her broke, and in rage she ran into the kitchen that was all red light in her eyes, grabbed up the long, sharp butcher knife from the block, flung back the door-bolt, and stood in the doorway. “Come on, then!" “ she said.

As she spoke there was a howl and a sucking gasp, and a man yelled, “Look out!” Another shouted, “Here! Here!”

Then there was silence.

Light from the open doorway shot across the black ice of puddles, glittered on the black branches of the oaks and on fallen silver leaves, and as her eyes cleared she saw that something was crawling towards her on the path, a dark mass or heap crawling towards her, making a high, sobbing wail. Behind the light a black shape ran and darted, and long blades shone.

“Tenar!”

“Stop there,” she said, raising the knife.

“Tenar! It’s me-Hawk, Sparrowhawk!”

“Stay there,” she said.

The darting black shape stood still next to the black mass lying on the path. The light from the doorway shone dim on a body, a face, a long-tined pitchfork held upright, like a wizard’s staff, she thought. “Is that you?” she said.

He was kneeling now by the black thing on the path.

“I killed him, I think,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, stood up. There was no sign or sound of the other men.

“Where are they?”

“Ran. Give me a hand, Tenar."

She held the knife in one hand. With the other she took hold of the arm of the man that lay huddled up on the path. Ged took him under the shoulder and they dragged him up the step and into the house. He lay on the stone floor of the kitchen, and blood ran out of his chest and belly like water from a pitcher. His upper lip was drawn back from his teeth, and only the whites of his eyes showed.

“Lock the door,” Ged said, and she locked the door.

“Linens in the press,” she said, and he got a sheet and tore it for bandages, which she bound round and round the man’s belly and breast, into which three of the four tines of the pitchfork had driven full force, making three ragged springs of blood that dripped and squirted as Ged supported the man’s torso so that she could wrap the bandages.

“What are you doing here? Did you come with them?”

“Yes. But they didn’t know it. That’s about all you can do, Tenar. “ He let the man’s body sag down, and sat back, breathing hard, wiping his face with the back of his bloody hand. “I think I killed him,” he said again.

“Maybe you did.” Tenar watched the bright red spots spread slowly on the heavy linen that wrapped the man’s thin, hairy chest and belly. She stood up, and swayed, very dizzy. “Get by the fire,” she said. “You must be perishing.”

She did not know how she had known him in the dark outside. By his voice, maybe. He wore a bulky shepherd’s winter coat of cut fleece with the leather side out, and a

shepherd’s knit watch cap pulled down; his face was lined and weathered, his hair long and iron-grey. He smelled like woodsmoke, and frost, and sheep. He was shivering, his whole body shaking. “Get by the fire,” she said again. “Put wood on it.”

He did so. Tenar filled the kettle and swung it out on its iron arm over the blaze.

There was blood on her skirt, and she used an end of linen soaked in cold water to clean it. She gave the cloth to Ged to clean the blood off his hands. “What do you mean, she said, “you came with them but they didn’t know it?”

“I was coming down. From the mountain. On the road from the springs of the Kaheda. “ He spoke in a flat voice as if out of breath, and his shivering made his speech slur. “Heard men behind me, and I went aside. Into the woods. Didn’t feel like talking. I don’t know. Something about them. I was afraid of them.”

She nodded impatiently and sat down across the hearth from him, leaning forward to listen, her hands clenched tight in her lap. Her damp skirt was cold against her legs.

“I heard one of them say ‘Oak Farm’ as they went by. After that I followed them. One of them kept talking. About the child.”

“What did he say?”

He was silent. He said finally, “That he was going to get her back. Punish her, he said. And get back at you. For stealing her, he said. He said-” He stopped.

“That he’d punish me, too."

“They all talked. About, about that.”

“That one isn’t Handy.” She nodded toward the man on the floor. “Is it the. . . " . . . “

“He said she was his.” Ged looked at the man too, and back at the fire. “He’s dying. We should get help.”

“He won’t die,” Tenar said. “I’ll send for Ivy in the morning. The others are still out there-how many of them?”

“Two.”

“If he dies he dies, if he lives he lives. Neither of us is going out.” She got to her feet, in a spasm of fear. “Did you bring in the pitchfork, Ged!" “

He pointed to it, the four long tines shining as it leaned against the wall beside the door.

She sat down in the hearthseat again, but now she was shaking, trembling from head to foot, as he had done. He reached across the hearth to touch her arm. “It’s all right,” he said.

“What if they’re still out there?”

“They ran.”

“They could come back.”

“Two against two? And we’ve got the pitchfork.”

She lowered her voice to a bare whisper to say, in terror, “The pruning hook and the scythes are in the barn lean-to.”

He shook his head. “They ran. They saw-him-and you in the door.”

“What did you do?”

“He came at me. So I came at him.”

“I mean, before. On the road.”

“They got cold, walking. It started to rain, and they got cold, and started talking about coming here. Before that it was only this one, talking about the child and you, about teaching-teaching lessons-” His voice dried up. “I’m thirsty,” he said.

“So am I. The kettle’s not boiling yet. Go on.

He took breath and tried to tell his story coherently. “The other two didn’t listen to him much. Heard it all before, maybe. They were in a hurry to get on. To get to Valmouth. As if they were running from somebody. Getting away. But it got cold, and he went on about Oak Farm, and the one with the cap said, ‘Well, why not just go there and spend the night with-" “ .