He did so. Tenar filled the kettle and swung it out on its iron arm over the blaze.
There was blood on her skirt, and she used an end of linen soaked in cold water to clean it. She gave the cloth to Ged to clean the blood off his hands. “What do you mean, she said, “you came with them but they didn’t know it?”
“I was coming down. From the mountain. On the road from the springs of the Kaheda. “ He spoke in a flat voice as if out of breath, and his shivering made his speech slur. “Heard men behind me, and I went aside. Into the woods. Didn’t feel like talking. I don’t know. Something about them. I was afraid of them.”
She nodded impatiently and sat down across the hearth from him, leaning forward to listen, her hands clenched tight in her lap. Her damp skirt was cold against her legs.
“I heard one of them say ‘Oak Farm’ as they went by. After that I followed them. One of them kept talking. About the child.”
“What did he say?”
He was silent. He said finally, “That he was going to get her back. Punish her, he said. And get back at you. For stealing her, he said. He said-” He stopped.
“That he’d punish me, too.”
“They all talked. About, about that.”
“That one isn’t Handy.” She nodded toward the man on the floor. “Is it the. . . ” . . . “
“He said she was his.” Ged looked at the man too, and back at the fire. “He’s dying. We should get help.”
“He won’t die,” Tenar said. “I’ll send for Ivy in the morning. The others are still out there-how many of them?”
“Two.”
“If he dies he dies, if he lives he lives. Neither of us is going out.” She got to her feet, in a spasm of fear. “Did you bring in the pitchfork, Ged!” “
He pointed to it, the four long tines shining as it leaned against the wall beside the door.
She sat down in the hearthseat again, but now she was shaking, trembling from head to foot, as he had done. He reached across the hearth to touch her arm. “It’s all right,” he said.
“What if they’re still out there?”
“They ran.”
“They could come back.”
“Two against two? And we’ve got the pitchfork.”
She lowered her voice to a bare whisper to say, in terror, “The pruning hook and the scythes are in the barn lean-to.”
He shook his head. “They ran. They saw-him-and you in the door.”
“What did you do?”
“He came at me. So I came at him.”
“I mean, before. On the road.”
“They got cold, walking. It started to rain, and they got cold, and started talking about coming here. Before that it was only this one, talking about the child and you, about teaching-teaching lessons-” His voice dried up. “I’m thirsty,” he said.
“So am I. The kettle’s not boiling yet. Go on.
He took breath and tried to tell his story coherently. “The other two didn’t listen to him much. Heard it all before, maybe. They were in a hurry to get on. To get to Valmouth. As if they were running from somebody. Getting away. But it got cold, and he went on about Oak Farm, and the one with the cap said, ‘Well, why not just go there and spend the night with-” “ .
“With the widow, yes.”
Ged put his face in his hands. She waited.
He looked into the fire, and went on steadily. “Then I lost them for a while. The road came out level into the valley, and I couldn’t follow along the way I’d been doing, in the woods, just behind them. I had to go aside, through the fields, keeping out of their sight. I don’t know the country here, only the road. I was afraid if I cut across the fields I’d get lost, miss the house. And it was getting dark. I thought I’d missed the house, overshot it. I came back to the road, and almost ran into them-at the turn there. They’d seen the old man go by. They decided to wait till it was dark and they were sure nobody else was coming. They waited in the barn. I stayed outside. Just through the wall from them.”