Chapter 5: Hollin

Hollin had one street, one chapel and one mill, and by the time Seren got there men in Varran red were dragging people out of all three.

He left the horse at the top of the lane and walked down.

The torches made the wet thatch steam.

There were thirty of them, maybe more, in red cloaks with the black Varran horse stitched on the shoulder.

The cloaks were new.

The boots under them were Caerwen boots, green-dyed leather, the kind Highcourt issued to the border companies.

They hadn't even bothered to change their boots.

The villagers stood in a clump in the square in their nightclothes.

A man was holding a baby inside his coat.

An old woman stood in front of all of them.

"Fire the mill first," a voice said. "Then the chapel. Leave the houses till they run."

That was a Caerwen voice too.

Seren walked into the middle of the square, into the torchlight, with his hands empty.

He had no knife. He'd given Corvus his back that morning.

"Put them out," he said.

Thirty men turned around.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Seren Caerwen. Third son of your king."

He took off the red-lined cloak Garrow had given him and dropped it in the mud, so they could see the rest of him.

"You're wearing the wrong cloaks. You're wearing the right boots."

The torches wavered.

Somebody at the back said, "It's him. I saw him at Highcourt on the feast day."

A captain shoved through to the front with a torch in his fist.

He was square and red-faced, with a Caerwen captain's knot on his shoulder under the red cloak.

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