II:WESTPORT

“Men become accustomed to poison by degrees”

Victor Hugo

The first year they were always hungry, and Benna had to beg in the village while Monza worked the ground and scavenged in the woods.

The second year they took a better harvest, and grew roots in a patch by the barn, and got some bread from old Destort the miller when the snows swept in and turned the valley into a place of white silence.

The third year the weather was fine, and the rain came on time, and Monza raised a good crop in the upper field. As good a crop as her father had ever brought in. Prices were high because of troubles over the border. They would have money, and the roof could be mended, and Benna could have a proper shirt. Monza watched the wind make waves in the wheat, and she felt that pride at having made something with her own hands. That pride her father used to talk about.

A few days before reaping time, she woke in the darkness and heard sounds. She shook Benna from his sleep beside her, one hand over his mouth. She took her father's sword, eased open the shutters, and together they stole through the window and into the woods, hid in the brambles behind a tree-trunk.

There were black figures in front of the house, torches flickering in the darkness.

“Who are they?”

“Shhhh.”

She heard them break the door down, heard them crashing through the house and the barn.

“What do they want?”

“Shhhh.”

They spread out around the field and set their torches to it, and the fire ate through the wheat until it was a roaring blaze. She heard someone cheering. Another laughing.

Benna stared, face dim-lit with shifting orange, tear-tracks glistening on his thin cheeks. “But why would they … why would they … ?”

“Shhhh.”

Monza watched the smoke rolling up into the clear night. All her work. All her sweat and pain. She stayed there long after the men had gone, and watched it burn.

In the morning more men came. Folk from around the valley, hard-faced and vengeful, old Destort at their head with a sword at his hip and his three sons behind him.

“Came through here too then, did they? You're lucky to be alive. They killed Crevi and his wife, up the valley. Their son too.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We're going to track them, then we're going to hang them.”

“We'll come.”

“You might be better—”

“We'll come.”

Destort had not always been a miller, and he knew his business. They caught up with the raiders the next night, working their way back south, camped around fires in the woods without even a proper guard. More thieves than soldiers. Farmers among them too, just from one side of the border rather than the other, chosen to settle some made-up grievance while their lords were busy settling theirs.

“Anyone ain't ready to kill best stay here.” Destort drew his sword and the others made their cleavers, and their axes, and their makeshift spears ready.

“Wait!” hissed Benna, clinging at Monza's arm.

“No.”

She ran quiet and low, her father's sword in her hand, fires dancing through the black trees. She heard a cry, a clash of metal, the sound of a bowstring.

She came out from the bushes. Two men crouched by a campfire, a pot steaming over it. One had a thick beard, a wood-axe in his fist. Before he lifted it halfway Monza slashed him across the eyes and he fell down, screaming. The other turned to run and she spitted him through the back before he got a stride. The bearded man roared and roared, hands clutching at his face. She stabbed him in the chest, and he groaned out a few wet breaths, then stopped.

She frowned down at the two corpses while the sounds of fighting slowly petered out. Benna crept from the trees, and he took the bearded man's purse from his belt, and he tipped a heavy wedge of silver coins out into his palm.

“He has seventeen scales.”

It was twice as much as the whole crop had been worth. He held the other man's purse out to her, eyes wide. “This one has thirty.”

“Thirty?” Monza looked at the blood on her father's sword, and thought how strange it was that she was a murderer now. How strange it was that it had been so easy to do. Easier than digging in the stony soil for a living. Far, far easier. Afterwards, she waited for the remorse to come upon her. She waited for a long time.

It never came.