If she'd just left the field alone once she'd broken the curse, the earthkit would have seen to it that the wheat grew normally. She knew what Benroln was, and being a farmer's wife she should have remembered what disasters the weather can bring.
"Benroln," she said harshly, "you are a fool. This man has assassins in the woods - do you think they lurk there to watch the magic?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," said the merchant.
Benroln stopped his casting and looked at the other man.
"Why do you think that a man like this would come here without guards?" said Seraph. "There has always been a problem doing the work of solsenti who are willing to hire Travelers to make evil upon others of their kind."
"What do you suggest?" Benroln said bitterly. "My people will starve. I tried it your way. We were driven from one place to another, sometimes by people who feared what we might do and sometimes by people because we wouldn't do as they asked. I've had four - four - mermori come to me. Four more clans dead and gone."
"Do not air our quarrels before solsenti," she said sharply.
Benroln glanced at the merchant and bit his lip.
"Lehr took care of three of the men who were watching," said Hennea, coming out of the woods with Gura at her side. "Jes has the other one immobilized."
"So what do we do with him?" Benroln asked.
Jes appeared and grabbed the merchant's hand.
"You don't want to draw that knife," Jes said quietly. "My brother's over there with one of your men's bows. No use anyone else dying tonight."
The merchant all but collapsed at Jes's touch, and Seraph's oldest son relieved him of several throwing knives.
"Asherstal," said Seraph, snapping her fingers. "The owner of this field. He has managed to survive this long; I suspect he can handle this one if we deliver him. Hennea, Jes, could you escort him there?" She turned to Benroln and said, "I need you to call a meeting of your people tonight. I'd like to tell you some things that you need to know."
If she could persuade the entire clan to follow her to Taela, she'd have the clan's healer for her husband when she found him. She just wished she were as good at persuading people as Tier was.
Benroln didn't wait for her, but stomped off, angry at her, at the merchant, and at a responsibility he didn't know how to fulfill.
When Benroln was gone, Jes said, "He bears no open wounds, Mother, but Lehr is hurt."
Seraph nodded. "Take this one to the farmhouse and don't get anyone hurt in the process, and I'll do my best for Lehr."
She waited until Jes and Hennea were halfway to the cabin, but before she called out, Lehr came. It was too dark to see him well, but she could smell the blood on him.
"Thank you," she said. "If you had not been here tonight, Benroln and I would doubtless have been dead."
"There are three men dead instead," he said. "Jes tied the fourth one up before I got to him."
"They were men who were willing to kill for no cause but gold," said Seraph. Words were not her strength, but for Lehr she searched for the right ones. "They have doubtless killed others on the merchant's orders. Now they will not kill anyone again."
"When I killed them," whispered Lehr, coming toward her, "it was so easy. Easier than hunting deer. What am I, Mother?"
"This is what it means to be an Order-Bearer," she told him. "None of the Orders are easy. You are Hunter, and among the tasks of the Hunter is the bringing of death."
She opened her arms, and, when he dropped to his knees in front of her, she pulled him close. He buried his face in the crook of her neck.
"I don't like it," he said.
"Shh," she held him and rocked lightly back and forth, as she had when he'd been a child. "Shh."
"Someone's waiting in front of our tent," said Jes just as Gura gave a happy bark and ran forward with his tail wagging.
"So," said Brewydd from a bench someone must have carried over for her. "You stopped Benroln from his folly. That's more than I've managed to do." Gura sat beside her and put his big black muzzle on her knee and heaved a contented sigh.
"Hardly," said Seraph. "I just pointed out that the merchant he chose to do business with was a thief and a killer