“Who’s this then?” A large woman with a body like a walnut shell and mass of thick copper curls atop her head sized Heden up.

Heden looked around, as though he didn’t know who she was talking about.

“Hush Gwennog, don’t be rude to the man.” This was a man and by the look of him, not her husband. Maybe a brother. A big man with brown hair.  Heden realized this is what his father must have looked like when Heden was a lad. When his da was still young and vital. Each of these folk reminded Heden of someone he knew as a boy.

“Don’t you hush me! And it’s not being rude to ask a stranger who he is.”

It was odd for Heden to feel both at home here and a complete stranger. Like being in two places at once. It was a feeling he knew existed, and which he stayed in the inn to avoid. The way his career had changed him. Made him an outsider to these people.

The sun was low in the sky, the day was late and Heden was surrounded by folk, pigs, and chickens. The pigs, as far as he could tell, belonged to Gwennog and the quiet tree stump of a man Heden concluded was her husband. Their sons kept them herded together. The chickens he hadn’t figured out yet. They could belong to anyone. What the town would be like with all these people and all these animals crammed into it, he had no idea, but was curious to see. There was a herd, or whatever they were called, of geese earlier. Heden presumed they were geese. He got birds confused.

“My name’s…,” he began, but these folk weren’t interested in what he had to say.

“He’s a ratcatcher, look at him,” the man behind the man behind him said. Heden didn’t turn in reaction; he’d heard the wiry goatherd talking before and remembered his face. Heden presumed he was a goatherd. The goats seemed to like him.

“Figures,” Gwennog said, crossing her arms and looking Heden up and down. “Thieving little worms. What’re you doing here, little rat? Come to see what coin you can make off our misery?”

Wonderful Heden thought. Making a great impression right off.

“What makes you say he’s a ratcatcher?” a woman behind him asked, her voice high. Long thin hair. “He’s nice looking.”

“And what would you know of nice looking, young Sirona? And you married to that pot roast Eidyn!”

The people laughed, but Sirona was not going to be cowed by the matronly Gwennog.

“I got eyes, haven’t I? He’s nice-looking, look at him. Seems honest.” She leaned forward past two men and touched Heden on the shoulder from his right. He turned and tried to smile at her in what he hoped was not a rictus grin. What would Gwiddon do? he wondered. Probably pay them all to go away.

“What’s your name, dear-heart?” Sirona asked.

“My name’s Heden,” he said, and felt self-conscious. Two days ago he’d almost told the Bishop to go stick his head up a cow’s ass, and now he felt defenseless surrounded by a bunch of dirt farmers. “I’m not a ratcatcher,” he said. Not anymore, he thought.

“His name is Heden and he’s a liar, more like,” Gwennog said, sucking on her teeth, looking out over the crowd at nothing in particular.

“Dyfan, will you tell your wife there to mind?”

“I’ll tell her no such thing, she can speak as she finds,” said the tree stump man with a voice like a saw missing many teeth. “And should too, I don’t see how we need any more strangers here. Got enough as it is.”

“Got that little birdie at the turnip,” another man said.

There was a kind of collected sigh from the younger women and a speculative silence from the others. Sirona was a sigher; Gwennog was one of the silent wonderers. Another stranger in town though.

“Who’s this minstrel then?” Heden asked.

“Never you mind!” Gwennog said. “And who was it said he was a minstrel?”

There was an element of comedy here, but Heden didn’t dare laugh. The wide woman was now defending one stranger against another. Heden understood. There were the strangers you knew, and then the strangers you just met and hadn’t yet taken the measure of.

“I know what a little birdy is,” and Heden found his accent coming back. His voice was a traitor. He didn’t want these people to think he was mocking them and wasn’t enthusiastic about reverting back to his family’s mode of speech. The more he thought about not talking like his brothers, the more he talked like them. “Goes tweet-tweet-tweet all the day long.”

The folk around him looked at him with suspicion. Sirona seemed pleased. “He’s got a fancy crouth,” she said in a voice that was perhaps more sing-song than her husband would have liked, “and nut-brown skin! With oily black hair.”

The men who were paying attention—a growing number as interrogating Heden was more interesting than standing around while chickens shat on your shoes—sneered at this, but the woman didn’t seem to think that dark skin and oily hair was, in this instance, a bad thing.

“It’s a lute,” Heden said, and knew from the description where the man was from. His hair would, in fact, be cleaned with special perfumed soaps every day, and it was the bright sheen the soaps gave that these folk took for oily.

“Aye, that’s what he called it,” one of the men asked.

Someone pushed Heden’s shoulder from behind.

“And what would you be wanting with our minstrel?” another man said.

Heden turned but there were several men around him, none of them so far enamored with Heden’s charm. It could have been any of them.

“He doesn’t want nothing!” Sirona objected.

“Quiet gel,” Gwennog said, and watched like a queen as the men challenged Heden.

“He done something wrong?” a man with a thick mustache and a gaunt face asked.

“Ah, not as far as I….” Heden began.

“You come looking for him, ratcatcher?”another man asked.

Heden wondered if these people would be as protective of him if someone came asking. Probably not, he concluded. I can’t sing.

“He never said what he was here for,” Gwennog stirred the pot.

“It’s folk such as you bring the urq down on us,” one man said and was angry, ready for violence. Heden didn’t even consider the idea the man’s anger might be misplaced. He was ready to believe these people’s problems with the urmen, whatever they were, were the result of someone like Heden—like Heden used to be—stirring up a hornet’s nest.

“What kind of name is Heden anyway?” a man asked. “Sounds southern.” There was a murmur.

Of course it sounded southern. Heden was born not fifty leagues from here in the northern third of one of the northern nations of Vasloria and that was “southern.” Everything was southern from here.

“We’re none of us in need of one such as you,” Gwennog said, standing still while the men crowded forward. Like a commanding general. “We’re not a chance to put coin in your purse while good men die.”

The people were closing in. They felt not the least bit threatened by Heden. It was a common attitude outside the big cities. Campaigners brought trouble and even though they were skilled with sword and spell, the local farmers and carters, wheelwights and tanners had no truck with them. Would drive them out of town fearlessly, armed with spades and rocks. And the campaigners would go. What point staying in a town where everyone hated you? When the sky made a decent blanket and there were ways to stay warm and dry, even in the rain.

“What of the urmen?” Heden asked. What else had Gwennog been referring to?

“There’s a thousand of them, I heard tell,” Sirona said, eyes wide. She was, it seemed to Heden, trying to change the subject on his behalf.

“The baron’s called the order,” a man next to her said. The order, Heden noticed. “We don’t need no ratcatchers coming up here to make the forest spit out all manner of beastie at us.”

“I’m not a ratcatcher,” Heden said.

“Oh he’s not then, with that pack and that plate and that broad sword,” Gwennog said. It looked bad, Heden knew. If there was a uniform of the itinerant campaigner, Heden was wearing it.

“I’ve heard about the order,” Heden said. “The Green Order.”

“You better hope they haven’t heard of you,” a man behind him said. “They won’t be having any truck with a thieving magpie of your like.”

“See through his lies right off,” Gwennog said.

“I’m not a liar,” Heden said, letting a little defensiveness show through.

“Let him talk!” Sirona said.

“What is he then,” the man with Sirona, presumably her husband Eidyn who looked, in truth, a little like a pot roast, said.

“I was sent by the Hierarch,” Heden said.

“What a terrible big lie you just told!” Gwennog said, and this seemed to be the consensus of the people.

“You ain’t no kind of priest,” another man said, and Heden was pushed again.

“Come on, godbotherer,” Eidyn said, smiling with newfound joy in menace. “Give us a prayer, then.”

“If he’s a godbotherer I’m Queen Agharat,” Gwennog said.

“I don’t blame you,” Heden said, “I’d be scared too if there were a thousand urmen bearing down on me, and no one to defend me and nowhere to run.” He was provoking them, he knew, but he suspected that in defending themselves and their lord he’d learn more about what was going on.

“We ain’t scared of them,” a new man said, stepping forward. This one was a brawler, Heden could tell, and some women were peering over the shoulders of the men to see what he’d do. “And we ain’t scared of you.”

“No,” Heden said, looking around, registering the faces. Then he looked back at the thug. “But you should be.”

“Why don’t you go home ratcatcher,” the man growled at him, “before you get hurt.”

Heden accepted this, as though the man had given him a proper response in a formal exchange.

Heden took a breath and the folk leaned in a little, sensing they were about to get a show.

He spoke a prayer in the first language, just two sentences, but the act of speaking the words impressed these folk. A man babbling in a language none of them knew? That was real godbothering. They were going to get a show, alright.

A shadow covered Heden’s face, his eyes burning out of it, and the folk gasped and recoiled.

“Gowan!” Heden said, his finger stabbing out like a crossbow bolt toward a man. A little man who’d been watching his friend bait Heden shrank back as though struck. His face was bright red and he was shaking and neither were his doing. He was frozen in place by Heden’s prayer.

The folk around looked at the man like he had the plague, pulling away from him.

Heden advanced in two quick, long strides. He grabbed the man by his thick woolen jerkin.

“You stole it,” Heden pronounced, pulling the man up and off his feet. Everyone was silent but the pigs and chickens. The man’s eyes went wider still and he looked around furtively. Heden could smell the thick odor of sweat and pig. “You stole Maelon’s silver,” he said.

“What?!” a man cried out behind them.

“The blacksmith wouldn’t take credit or trade from you, so you took it,” Heden’s voice came fast. “You crept into his house and took it. And the dog,” he shook the man, holding him up with one hand. “It knows you, it knows you don’t belong in that house so it barks and you don’t know what to do, they’ll find you. They’ll find out what a filthy little thief you are. So you killed it. You stole their silver and killed their dog to stop it barking and hid the body.”

“Please!” the man Gowan cried. He’d pissed himself.

“Black gods!” someone said.

“But you couldn’t spend it could you?” Heden’s voice went low, but no matter how low it went the folk around him could hear every word. “Everyone would know, and where did you get that kind of cash? You who never had a streak of luck in your life. So it’s to the tavern then, and women. 22 silver on women, what did it get you? Three hours? Five? Did you spread it out? An hour a day for a week?”

“Gowan!” a young woman stood behind the man and cried for him. She was only five feet away but she didn’t dare reach out to help. All the townsfolk looked on in fear, in fear at Heden and what he was doing.

“Gods, please. Please don’t!” Gowan cried, flakes of spit sailing out of his mouth, the tendons on his neck like cords.

“Cavall sees you, Gowan,” Heden said, his eyes were fire burning into the man.

“Ahh, gods!” the man cried. Heden’s words, a brand searing his skin.

“I am his eyes!” Heden voice was a trumpet.

“I did it!” Gowan shouted. As the words left his mouth, Heden dropped him. He fell to his knees, sobbing. But Heden wasn’t done.

He drew his sword, the old, notched blade of his father’s father and swung it back, holding it up and behind his head. His face was a thundercloud.

“Know then that I am an agent of Cavall, come to do judgment upon you!” His pronouncement was a lightning strike and with it, a score of townspeople surged forward, their hands grabbing Heden’s arm, his sword, his shoulders, pulling on his pack. They shouted, they pleaded.

Heden relented. He relaxed, and the fugue was gone, that raindrop of Cavall’s power, granted him to do justice in his god’s name, drained away leaving him a normal man, with normal sight. He no longer saw the truth, the awful fetid truth of every man around him. He no longer heard a dozen voices wondering and fearing.

With care, as though tending a sick man instead of a confessed criminal, a knot of country folk picked Gowan up by the arms and carried him away. His thin wisp of a wife followed, crying and reaching out to him. All the women, Sirona, Gwennog and many others, followed. The men stayed behind and stared at Heden in awe and wonder and fear.

“By the bald pate of Nikros, man,” one of them said, and the spell was broken. They all looked away. The one with the rough voice, Dyfan, Gwennog’s husband was accusing Heden of doing something indecent.

“Sirona said a thousand urq,” Heden said looking into the far distance.

Dyfan, nor anyone else contradicted him.

Heden sheathed his sword, turned and looked at these famers. Men with skin wrinkled by the sun, days’ worth of dirt caked casually into them.

“You’re going to need all the help you can get.”

“Aye,” Dyfan said, looking at the ground. The men nodded. Few would look at Heden and none for more than a moment.

“Gowan ain’t a bad man,” one of them said.

“I know it,” Heden said, and when he said it many of the men looked at him like he was a normal person.

“You folks came to his defense,” Heden said. “You forgave him in an instant. That’s why Cavall is your god.”

It was among the highest compliments a priest could give any man, especially a man from the farms in the north. Heden didn’t feel any shame in saying it to them.

“The guards at the gate,” Dyfan said, and Heden saw the two men in breastplates and helmets, now staring at the crowd of men surrounding Heden, all the other townsfolk having entered the walls now. “They’ll let you in with us,” he said. “They’ll just ask your name is all.”

“And I will give it to them,” Heden said, “as I gave it to you.” This was a mild reproach and it worked. The men showed a little shame in having been so distrustful. Heden took it easy on them.

“So,” he asked, his lip curling into a smile “where’s this little birdy makes the young girls sigh?”

Dyfan’s face slowly matched Heden’s grin.

On to Chapter Eighteen!

Chapter 17