The Warding Grass Burns

The village of Kondal, out around Grace Castle, changed with every day that passed. It was as clean now as the village of Morta, the repairs on the houses were all but finished, and against the coming winter a fireplace had been set into every one of them. A liveliness the place had never known before had come over it, and the smithy was groaning happily under a workload that grew heavier by the day.

Smith had taken sole charge of Dong-hui’s vault room, so the tool work fell to his assistants, who made and mended farm implements, saws, hammers and whatever else came in through the door. With so much of it piling up, he had called back the hands who had gone off to the logging team.

“Is my axe blade not done yet?”
“I’ve put it over there. It’s the one with the black cloth wound round the handle, isn’t it?”

“What became of that extra order of hammers and nails the Morta village chief put in?”
“That won’t be finished till the day after tomorrow, I should think. You can take the hammers on ahead, though.”

The sound of people calling in their orders and the ring of heated iron under the hammer mixed together into one dizzying din. Winter was on the doorstep and the weather had begun to freeze, but inside the smithy it was sweltering with the heat of iron glowing red and the heat coming off people’s bodies.

“If only Master Smith were here at a time like this, it would go a great deal easier.”

They were glad enough to be back at their old place of work, but hands were desperately short. Smith on his own could do the work of four or five men without breaking a sweat; at present, though, he was busy driving on with the lord’s vault room. Far from lending a hand, he was watching for his chance to poach men from the smithy or from anywhere else he could get them, so whenever he appeared, the foremen of each section would sidle quietly out of his way.

“Listen to him. That is a full-bellied complaint if ever I heard one. If you have time to grumble, make another nail.”

At his workmate’s scolding, the man who had been muttering broke into a grin.

“This is exactly the sort of thing I always wanted to do. Heh heh heh.”

He was grinning still as he remembered the days when there had been no work to be had and every day had gone by in sighing and despair. He swept the beads of sweat off his jaw with the back of his hand, and his face could not have been brighter.

Looking round the village as it began to come alive, Dong-hui could not hide her delight. She had taken the work up only because the Mission the status window handed her left her no choice, but the sight of people this happy filled her chest to bursting, quite apart from any reward. More than anything, she was glad to feel she had become someone genuinely needed.

“My lady, good day to you!”
“My lady! Thank you!”

People greeted her gladly and offered their thanks every time she passed. Nothing could have been further from the old days, when the favorability had plunged at the mere sight of her carriage. Walking along beside her, Handsome and Anna wore proud smiles at the welcome the villagers gave their lord.

The minus had long since vanished altogether from the estate residents’ favorability, and day by day, steadily, it piled up.

The houses and roads repaired with Chloment were harder and neater than before; no dust rose when the wind blew, and no rain leaked in. Tiestone, once treated as the curse of Grace, had become a precious thing they could not do without. Lighter and easier to come by than any other stone, it had also turned into a way for the children to earn a few coins.

Even now children were a common sight around the village with small buckets in their hands. The older ones went outside the castle walls after bigger pieces, carried them to a foreman and got their money that way.

By now there were places all over Grace where anyone, grown or child, could earn money. Once word of that spread past the estate borders, the residents who had left and anyone else in want of work would want to come in, and a plentiful supply of labor was the estate’s economic strength, in the end. Dong-hui smiled to herself, imagining the place crowded with people in the not-far-off future.

“How is the Komo tree logging going? It isn’t dangerous?”

The logging team had been split into two, one team securing building materials and the other handling nothing but the Komo trees. Work on the Komo team carried hazard pay and was always in demand, and the men who went into it were picked out of the workforce for their strength. Dong-hui worried endlessly about the team that went into the Black Forest. She had spent money on mercenaries and attached knights to them, and still, on any day there was logging, she was uneasy from morning to night.

Red Bear, seeing the worry in Chloe’s face, answered quickly.

“As my lady instructed, they no longer wait until sundown but come out of the forest at a suitable hour.”
“All the same, they must always take care. There is no knowing when the monsters may attack, so tell them not to let their guard down.”

She had only just finished speaking.

— Bwooo! Bwooo!

An enormous horn blast that seemed to shake the eardrums came from every direction at once.

— Bwoooooooo!

At the long note that followed the two short ones, Red Bear’s face set rigid with horror. In the same moment, faces that had been nothing but peaceful turned white with fear. It took no more than an instant for air that had been full of laughter to freeze into tension and dread.

“What is that sound?”

The horns had come out of nowhere, and bewilderment spread over Dong-hui’s face. Red Bear, though, was more startled than she was. The instant they sounded he had put himself in front of her without thinking, and now he turned quickly round and shouted.

“My lady, get inside the castle, quickly.”
“Why? Has somebody attacked us?”

Her first thought was that Viscount Patrasche had come marching on the Grace estate with mischief in his heart. But it was far too quiet for war; beyond the horns there was no sound at all. While she looked about her, at a loss, every last person went ashen and vanished into the houses. Everyone but her seemed to know what the horns meant.

Red Bear had assumed as a matter of course that the lord knew as well; grasping the situation a beat too late, he spoke in the calmest voice he could manage.

“It seems there is trouble with the warding grass.”
“The warding grass? That field of grass below the Black Forest?”

Anything to do with the Black Forest put Dong-hui’s nerves on edge at once. And the warding grass was no ordinary grass; its whole purpose was to keep the monsters from coming down to the villages.

“Yes.”

There was urgency in Red Bear’s voice as he answered.

“What sort of trouble could come to grass that was perfectly sound?”
“This signal means a fire has broken out. As to the size of it, I think we shall have to go and look before we can know exactly.”
“Fire? What about the logging team? Today is the day the logging team goes into the forest!”

What she feared for, more than anything, was the logging team that had gone into the forest.

“Red Bear.”
“Yes!”
“Bring the logging team back safely.”
“Yes!”

Red Bear answered and ran for the training ground in the same breath. His quick-witted men would already have finished making ready to set out. He prayed with all his heart that the peace which had come to them at last, after so long a wait, might be kept safe.

“Wh-what in the world has happened here!”

They had not yet reached the village of Morta and already the black smoke was in sight, shooting up into the sky. By the size of it the fire was a big one. He could all but hear the weeping of the villagers, whose lives had only just grown a little easier.

“Hyah! Hurry!”

At Red Bear’s shout the hoofbeats making for the village quickened. The field of warding grass that ringed the Black Forest was burning away fast, and the smoke climbed into the sky in a black pillar with a great crackling roar, as if warning of the threat still to come.

“What are we to do!”
“Oh no, this is a disaster!”
“What are you standing about for! Get the sand over here, quick!”

The villagers hopped from foot to foot in terror that the flames would spread to the village, and worried themselves sick at the same time over what would become of them if the warding grass burned away entirely. The sun was still high, so the monsters could not come down on them at once, but sundown was only a matter of time, and a village whose warding grass had burned away was no better than a table laid out ready in front of the Black Forest.

Everyone but the small children turned out to fight the fire, but after years of drought the grass was bone dry, and water enough to put it out was nowhere to be had. The flames took fresh ground far faster than anyone could beat them back.

“The knights are here!”
“Waaah!”

The logging team had seen the smoke going up and come hurrying out of the forest; catching sight of the knights, they and the villagers already fighting the fire sent up a cheer. The mere arrival of the knights made the villagers feel a great deal safer. Even if the warding grass could no longer do its work and hold the monsters inside the Black Forest, they believed the knights would defend the village.

Holding back only the men set to watch the forest against whatever might come out of it, Red Bear threw every other knight into fighting the fire. It was the same with the mercenaries. There was at least the sand laid in for the construction work, without which there would have been nothing to fight it with. And by great good fortune the logging team had spotted the smoke and come back to the village on their own, so it looked as though the men could give the flames their whole attention.

Years of unbroken drought had left the river showing its bed, and the village well had long since run dry. With barely enough drinking water left to them, spending water on putting out a fire would have been the same as telling the villagers to die.

“The fire must be put out before it reaches the Black Forest!”
“Yes, sir!”

The moment the flames reached the forest, the monsters would feel the threat and come charging down toward the village. That much was plain as day. They were hardly going to run for the snow mountains, where a creature could hunt high and low and still find nothing to eat.

The knights stripped off armor and swords alike and flung them to the ground. The lighter they were, even by a little, the faster they could move.

But the fire was faster than any man.

Left as it was, it would burn every last blade of the warding grass, and the village they had barely finished rebuilding would go back to a handful of ash as well before long. Red Bear’s face and the faces of his men were smeared black with soot, and their hearts, filled with despair, had turned as black as the burning field.

“Do not give up! Hold the village and the forest to the last! See that not another blade of the warding grass burns!”

He shouted until his throat was fit to burst. The field of warding grass, once so wide that no end to it could be seen, was down to less than a third. They had tried to move the old and the sick out of the village, but not one of them would stir a step, saying they would lend what hands they had.

“God above, help us!”

Red Bear cried it out from the bottom of his heart and flung a sandbag down in front of the flames with all his strength. The heat came at him over his whole body, flickering like a snake’s tongue.