They stood in the road and shouted and waved their sticks until we were among the trees. Chade had taken the lead and I didn’t question him as he took us on a parallel path that would keep us out of the sight of the folk leaving Forge. The horses had settled back into a grudging plod. I was grateful for the rolling hills and scattered trees that hid us from any pursuit. When I saw a stream glinting, I gestured to it without a word. Silently we watered the horses and shook out for them some grain from Chade’s supplies. I loosened harness and wiped their draggled coats with handfuls of grass. For ourselves, there was cold stream water and coarse travel bread. I saw to the horses as best as I could. Chade seemed full of his own thoughts, and for a long time I respected their intensity. But finally I could contain my curiosity no longer and I asked the question.
“Are you really the Pocked Man?”
Chade started, and then stared at me. There were equal parts amazement and ruefulness in that look. “The Pocked Man? The legendary harbinger of disease and disaster? Oh, come, boy, you’re not simple. That legend is hundreds of years old. Surely you can’t believe I’m that ancient.”
I shrugged. I wanted to say, “You are scarred, and you bring death,” but I did not utter it. Chade did seem very old to me sometimes, and other times so full of energy that he seemed but a very young man in an old man’s body.
“No, I am not the Pocked Man,” he went on, more to himself than to me. “But after today, the rumors of him will be spread across the Six Duchies like pollen on the wind. There will be talk of disease and pestilence and divine punishments for imagined wrongdoing. I wish I had not been seen like this. The folk of the kingdom already have enough to fear. But there are sharper worries for us than superstitions. However you knew it, you were right. I have been thinking, most carefully, of everything I saw in Forge. And recalling the words of those villagers who tried to stone us. And the look of them all. I knew the Forge folk, in times past. They were doughty folk, not the type to flee in superstitious panic. But those folk we saw on the road, that was what they were doing. Leaving Forge, forever, or at least so they intend. Taking all that is left that they can carry. Leaving homes their grandfathers were born in. And leaving behind relatives who sift and scavenge in the ruins like witlings.
“The Red-Ship threat was not an empty one. I think of those folk and I shiver. Something is sorely wrong, boy, and I fear what will come next. For if the Red-Ships can capture our folk, and then demand that we pay them to kill them, on fear that they will otherwise return them to us like those ones were-what a bitter choice! And once more they have struck when we were least prepared to deal with it.” He turned to me as if to say more, then suddenly staggered. He sat down abruptly, his face graying. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.
“Chade!” I cried out in panic, and sprang to his side, but he turned aside from me.
“Carris seed,” he said through muffling hands. “The worst part is that it abandons you so suddenly. Burrich was right to warn you about it, boy. But sometimes there are no choices but poor ones. Sometimes, in bad times like these.”
He lifted his head. His eyes were dull, his mouth almost slack. “I need to rest now,” he said as piteously as a sick child. I caught him as he toppled and eased him to the ground. I pillowed his head on my saddlebags and covered him with our cloaks. He lay still, his pulse slow and his breathing heavy, from that time until afternoon of the next day. I slept that night against his back, hoping to keep him warm, and the next day used what was left of our supplies to feed him.