A full platoon. Thirty–six horses were thundering toward us. We saw armor and helmets. I started running toward them, waving in relief. What luck! They would help us! With thirty-six men, we'd have the fires out in-
Halvadyr yanked me back hard. "Those aren't our men".
They came past at a near gallop, looking huge and dark and ferocious. Their shields had been blackened, soot smeared on the blazes and stockings of their horses, their bronze greaves caked with dark mud. In the torchlight I saw the white beneath the soot on their shields. They were from Harad.
"What you got there, girlie?" the burliest of the horsemen demanded, wheeling his lathered, mud matted mount before the onion sacks and the
cheeses. He was a wall of a man.
Halvadyr kicked the man's mount, hard in the belly; the beast bawled and spooked. "You're burning our farms, you bastards!"
I have sprinted in battle, racing under arrow and javelin fire with thirty pounds of armor on my back, and countless times in training have I been driven up steep broken faces at a dead run. Yet never have my heart and lungs labored with such desperate necessity as they did that terror-filled morning. We left the road at once, fearing more cavalry, and bolted straight across country, streaking for home. We could see other farms burning now. "We've got to run faster!" Halvadyr barked back at me. We had come beyond two miles, nearly three, on our trek toward Edoras, and now had to retrace that distance and more. Brambles tore at us, rocks slashed our bare feet, our hearts seemed like they must burst within our breasts. Dashing across a field, I saw a sight that chilled my blood. Pigs. Three sows and their litters were scurrying in single file across the field toward the woods. They didn't run, it wasn't a panic, just an extremely brisk, well-disciplined fast march. I thought: those porkers will survive this day, we will not.
I called to Halvadyr to stop; my heart was about to explode from exertion. "I'll leave you, you little shit!" She hauled me forward. Suddenly from the woods burst a man. My uncle. He was in a nightshirt only, clutching a single eight–foot spear. But this only struck more terror into me. "Where's Father?" I could hear Halvadyr demanding. His eyes were wild with grief. "Where's my father?" I shouted. "Is my father with you?"
"Dead. He's dead". "How do you know? Did you see him?" "I saw him and you don't want to."
He retrieved his spear from the dirt.
He had always been my favorite uncle; now I hated him with a murderous passion. "You ran!" I accused him with a boy's heartlessness. "You showed your heels, you coward!" He turned on me with fury. "Get to the city!". He slapped me so hard he bowled me right off my feet. "Stupid boy".
Halvadyr hauled me up. I saw in her eyes the same rage and despair. Our uncle saw it too. "What's that in your hands?" he barked at me. I looked down. There were my ptarmigan eggs, still cradled in the rag in my palms. His callused fist smashed down on mine, shattering the fragile shells into goo at my feet.
"Get into town, you insolent brats!"
