with a shout. Conor groaned and pushed himself into a sitting position, shaking off the grogginess of another restless, nightmare-filled night. The other men automatically lined up at the door, expressionless.
Talfryn nudged Conor. “Up, quickly. You don’t get in line, you don’t eat.”
With difficulty, Conor made his stiff limbs obey and fell into line behind the Gwynn warrior. He moved toward the dim light of the door, but one of the guards stopped him with the haft of a spear.
“Hands,” he said in Norin.
Conor obeyed and held out his wrists to be bound. The guard also knotted a rope around his ankles, leaving just enough slack for him to walk in small, shuffling steps. He would have been flattered if the whole idea were not so ludicrous. Were he really capable of escape, a length of rope would hardly be a deterrent.
He hurried forward to catch up with the others, helped along by the occasional jab of a spear point between his shoulder blades.
Talfryn shot him a wry smile over his shoulder. “The most dangerous prisoner.”
“Until I have need of breathing deeply.”
“Quiet!” The guard thwacked the back of Conor’s thigh with the spear, hard enough to make him stumble.
Conversation effectively cut off, Conor instead looked to his surroundings. The village was larger than he had first thought. The curve of the stone and earth walls seemed to suggest a large circle, and timber-planked walkways formed the main thoroughfares, intersected at right angles by other, smaller walkways.
The line halted at a little square formed by several small buildings, in the middle of which hung a heavy iron cauldron over a cook fire. An old woman in a linen shift and wool overdress ladled porridge into wooden bowls, strings of beads swinging from the two brooches at her bosom as she worked. Substitute a man for the woman, and it wasn’t so far from what he’d been accustomed to in Ard Dhaimhin.
The line moved slowly forward. Conor held his hands out wordlessly for a bowl, but the woman paused before placing it into his hands. Her lips twisted into a sneer, and she spat into his bowl. “Balian filth.”
Conor cringed, but he took the food anyway, not knowing when the opportunity to eat would come again. The other men crouched in a circle nearby, eating with their hands. He squatted beside Talfryn and scooped out the spittle floating on top of the thick oat mush.
“She gave you something extra today, did she?” Talfryn said with a wicked grin.
“She called me Balian filth.”
“Ah, don’t take it personally. Yesterday, she spat in Geralt’s and called him the son of a cross-eyed mule. She’s completely mad.”
“I feel so much better.” Conor tried not to think of what had been in his porridge. It was still probably cleaner than his fingers, though, which seemed to be the only utensils he’d be getting.
Across from them, Dyllan, the biggest of the prisoners—though, given their emaciated states, that wasn’t saying much—took the bowl from an adolescent boy. The young slave protested, only to get cuffed in the ear for his trouble. Conor shot a look at the grinning guard and then stood up.
Talfryn clamped a hand on Conor’s shoulder, eyes never leaving his own bowl. “Don’t interfere.”
“But—”
“It is not your fight. They already fear your reputation as Fíréin. Don’t give them another reason to look your way.”
Conor lowered himself back down, though fury at the injustice burned inside him. Someone had to stop it. But not him. Not today. Aine’s life depended on his staying alive and being of use to Haldor, at least long enough to find her and order her release.
Another warrior approached and spoke quietly to Conor’s guard, who booted Conor in the hip. “Get up. Haldor wants you now.”
“Good luck,” Talfryn mumbled.
Conor struggled to his feet, only to be pushed forward by the new guard. It was the warrior who had tried and failed to kill him, twice. As they walked, Conor tried to note landmarks, get his bearings, but the village’s symmetrical nature defied his efforts. They neared a barn, and the guard unceremoniously pushed him into the nearest trough.
When Conor surfaced, spluttering, the guard grinned. “You smell like goat dung. Wash.”
The water was hardly cleaner than his body, but it was better than nothing. Conor dunked his head under again and scrubbed the filth from his hair and face and then did the best he could to wash his trousers while they were still on his body. When the guard yanked him from