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and travelling across these plains had indeed taken a toll on the old man’s body.
    â€œIt will do. Salick, scout the area. Take Garet with you.” The Banemaster walked towards the well, but Marick dropped the wood with a crash and ran ahead of him to lower the bucket and draw up water for his master to drink.
    The truth is in the deed , thought Garet. No matter what the impudent boy said, he loved his master as much as Salick did. He dismounted and followed his tutor in a wide circle around the farm. Salick stopped often to examine tracks on the ground, but to Garet they looked like the tracks of cows and dogs. Reassured, they moved on to examine the barn then returned to the house.
    A resident cat acted as their host that evening, giving its haughty approval to their presence by rubbing against their legs and hopping into their laps at the least convenient moments. Marick put his wood in the hearth and lit the fire while Dorict searched for some food. Luckily, the speed of the owner’s departure meant that some provisions had been left behind. The stout boy, much cheered by what he found, began peeling potatoes and carrots.
    Garet was used to kitchen work and lent a hand. The vegetables were soon cubed and boiled in a blackened pot over the fire while Dorict rolled out flour and water into thin disks. “If we had some herbs,” the young Bane told Garet, “and some honey, I could show you the bread we eat in Shirath.”
    â€œThere’s green onions in the garden,” Garet offered. He pulled some from the wreckage of the hastily dug plot, another sign of the speed with which the farmer had left. The chopped green stems were added to the flat bread, along with a touch of sugar that Salick had found in the bottom of a crock. Dorict set them in a frying pan that he had heated in the centre of the coals, and a wonderful aroma soon filled the abandoned house. They sat down to a better supper than Garet had tasted since their journey began.
    Filled to the brim with Dorict’s cooking, the Banes sought an early bed. Mandarack took his blanket to a back room that must have once housed the farmer and his wife. Salick, Dorict, and Marick arranged cushions and rugs around the banked fire and soon drifted off to sleep. Garet had a problem. The cat was firmly planted in his lap and showed no signs of moving. After waiting until all his companions were breathing deeply, he gently lifted the cat down to the still form of Marick. The creature gave him one unfathomable look from its green eyes and then snuggled against the boy’s chest.
    Garet crept about looking for another rug to cushion the polished plank floor. He had not had a chance to examine the house before this, what with helping Dorict prepare supper, and he was struck with how familiar the place looked. It had the same basic arrangement as his own home: a long bottom floor, although the lower sleeping quarters were here enclosed by a plastered wall; a loft that had once held beds small enough to be put on the owner’s cart when he fled this place; a kitchen hearth no deeper or wider than his mother’s; and here and there, an abandoned pot or wooden spoon that touched his heart with their homely familiarity. He reached down and picked up a straw doll, wrapped in a bit of cloth for a dress. Garet held the lost thing and thought of his sister calling his name to come play. He put the doll back where he had found it and, picking up a straw mat rolled up in the corner, turned to join the others in sleep. He saw a gleam in the fire’s uncertain light but couldn’t tell if the two eyes looking at him were the cat’s or Marick’s. Whoever they belonged to, they shut again and Garet drifted off to sleep.

The next morning saw the party of Banes finally arrive at the village of Bangt. Mandarack had roused them at dawn, and they had chewed on Dorict’s slightly stale disks of bread while riding. The trail widened as it