Plow and Sword Read Free

ignoring the boy’s frantic attempts to break from his grasp. Gasping from exhaustion, he finally dropped Fren and pointed.
    “Horse. Get on. “
    “I’m not a child! You—”
    Rorr once more engulfed his stepson in a powerful hug and clumsily mounted. Even before he had his seat, his heels raked at the horse’s flanks, getting it moving. The horse had barely gone fifty yards when the granary exploded like the very sun. Burning grain cascaded down in fiery flutters around them. Rorr kept the horse trotting along at its top speed. Only when the roar diminished did he slow and turn to look back.
    “What happened?” Fren coughed and wiped soot from his face. “The grain?”
    “The dust catches fire easily. Trapped inside the granary, it exploded.”
    “You knew that would happen?”
    “I’ve seen such things before.” Rorr said. In truth, he had loosed such a ferocious storm on others before, for the same reason as the brigands.
    “What are we going to do?”
    Rorr let his stepson find a less awkward seat on the horse. He took a deep breath to clear his lungs, then said, “We search for the Torvans, but I don’t think we will find them.”
    “Do you think they got away before the soldiers came?”
    Rorr said nothing.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    “There was nothing you could do to save the grain?”
    Rorr smiled a little at his wife’s question. Always the practical one, Beeah. He shook his head.
    “Since you found no trace of them, I can only assume they simply left.”
    “Ma, it wasn’t like that. There were these soldiers, and Pa stood up to them.” Fren looked at Rorr with a glimmer of respect. “He saved me when the granary caught fire.”
    Rorr hadn’t bothered relating the details. Letting Beeah know only what was necessary seemed most prudent. Worry over brigands and the like served no purpose, now that the attackers lay dead.
    “We need to finish plowing,” he said. “As much fun as speculating about Thom Torvan and his family might be, it does nothing to prepare us for the winter.”
    “He’s right,” Beeah said, lips drawn into a disapproving line. “No time to waste now. We can sit around the fire this winter and spin wild tales of how Thom and Ganley are off somewhere with that brood of theirs, enjoying the fine weather on a southern beach.”
    “But Ma, those men were killers. They—”
    “Work, young man. Now. You too, Rayallan. You weren’t finished sorting through the onions.”
    “Aw, Ma, there aren’t any rotten ones.”
    “Then start with the potatoes. Small ones in one pile, larger ones in another.”
    The two boys went off, but Beeah reached out and stopped her husband. He winced, just a little, as her fingers gripped his forearm.
    “What really happened there?” She peeled back his bloody sleeve to reveal the wound he had field-bandaged before returning. “Are the Torvans dead?”
    “Didn’t find bodies. They might be dead.” He forced a smile. “Or they might be relaxing on that southern beach, waiting for winter to freeze our bones so they’ll have a laugh on us.”
    Beeah started to say something, hesitated, then muttered, “You’re just like Ulane.”
    “We are—were—brothers,” he said, unsure of what else to say.
    “The plague did so much damage. I thought we were safe. The Torvans, not a one of them caught it. No one else this side of Pitax caught it.”
    “Except Ulane.” Rorr hugged her, then pushed back as he became self-conscious about such a display of affection. He realized he was trying to convince himself that the past meant nothing, and that the future didn’t hold a fate like the Torvans’. “There’re fields to be plowed, and I don’t trust Fren to cut a straight row.”
    “With that worthless horse, how could he? It wanders from side to side like a drunken gnome. Get on, now.” Making her words light did nothing to brighten the darkness in Beeah’s eyes. Rorr quickly left.
    He could deal with a balky plow horse, or the annoying worms that