Across the Face of the World by Russell Kirkpatrick Page B

death, bleeding from a blow to the forehead. Hal, however, was conscious, and began to talk to me.'
    'What?' the farmer exclaimed, forgetting about all else. 'Hal was alive?' The Haufuth motioned for him to be silent.
    'Hal told me that his father had returned the previous night. At first I thought he was delirious, but then I recalled seeing a caped figure over near Indrett after the Play, and she and her boys left with him almost immediately.'
    'Yes, I saw him,' said Kurr, scratching his chin. 'I thought. .. I can't remember what I thought.'
    The memories of that night had been washed away by the discovery he had made on his return home.

    The Haufuth continued: 'I remember thinking at the time that it was odd! Anyway, Hal told me that Mahnum had been pursued all the way from Bhrudwo by evil men because he had learned something that placed all Falthans in peril. He said that these men had broken into the house and abducted his parents. Then these men had set fire to the house and left the boys for dead. It was these horsemen with their captives that I heard riding through our village that morning.'
    'And the boys,' Kurr asked, now wide-eyed and alert, 'how did they die?'
    'They didn't,' the Haufuth replied simply. 'They're still alive.'
    'Alive? Then who . .. ?' He glanced confusedly in the direction of the twin graves.
    'No one. A necessary fiction. Hal convinced me that Mahnum knew something important, important enough for killers to come halfway across the world to try to snuff out that knowledge. If the horsemen learned that Hal and Leith were still alive, they might come back and kill them, and the entire village along with them, to preserve whatever secret Mahnum had discovered. So I decided that their deaths should be feigned, for the sake of the village. It would be easy enough to pretend that the boys had been killed and their bodies consumed in the fire. For a while I thought of pretending that Indrett had also perished in the blaze, but I was afraid that someone else might have seen the horsemen, and might ask difficult questions.
    So I decided to tell at least some of the truth.'
    'And the secret? What did Mahnum find out in Bhrudwo?' the old man asked impatiently.
    'Why don't you ask the boys? I took them home, and there they have remained, recovering from their wounds. Come to my house. Hal has a story that you must hear. And, in return, you have some horses that we may have need of.'
    'You're asking my help? After all that's been done to me?'
    'Yes,' came the simple reply. 'Because of your Midwinter speech. Would you warn us of danger and then pull back when that danger threatens?'
    'Why should I help anyone in this village?' the old man repeated stubbornly.
    'Because you're a good man. A man with a past, perhaps - no, I don't want to know what it is,'
    he added hastily as Kurr made to reply. 'I don't care about that. You're a fair man, one who won't stand for any nonsense. One who will act to see that right wins out. I've heard what the men around these parts say about you, and it's not what you think. Stubborn, yes; because you won't let go of something until you've bent it to your will. If some people mistake determination for fierceness, that's their lookout. I know better.
    'Now, I've entrusted you with a secret that no one else in the village knows. Will you trust me, and come and hear the boys' story?'
    The farmer stood up and looked down at the Haufuth, the dead-ness banished to the corners of his eyes. 'Let's hear what the boys have to say. It may be that I can supply something even more valuable than horses.'
    They found Leith and Hal engrossed in a spirited game of Stickslap, a simple but rather exhausting amusement. Leith appeared to be winning, but Hal was making a good fist of it even though he had to sit awkwardly. Looking the brothers over, Kurr saw that Leith's head wound had subsided to little more than a nasty bruise and some broken skin: he had likely been caught with the flat of a blade.