They moved Vetch in a quick procession that tried not to look like one: Miren and Edric, Sibley with the key-ring that opened more than doors, Ralla distracting the children with a story about a goat that learned arithmetic. The shrine smelled of river mud and thyme. Under the flat stone behind the altar, the hatch gave with a reluctant sigh. Cool air rose, mineral and deep.
Vetch shrugged free of the apron at the rim, looked at Miren once, and climbed down of its own will into the dark. It took the crimson scrap with it.
"Come back when the counting starts," Miren whispered into the hole. "If you can. If you choose."
A soft scrape answered. Then quiet.
They sealed the hatch. Outside, the horns sounded again, nearer. Dust from the wheat field began to settle on the white linens still hanging by the well, as if the ordinary afternoon had not yet agreed to end.
Edric found Miren's hand in the shrine's dimness and held it, not tightly.
"You reached for it," he said.
"It was climbing toward us," she answered. "That's different from climbing at us."
"The King may not see the difference."
"Then we'll have to show him," Miren said, and they went out to the wall where Stonewell intended, against sense and history, to stand and be counted.
King Osric did not ride at the front. That was the first thing Miren noticed when the army resolved from a wall of color into separate men and horses and burdens. The front belonged to a captain with a grey-streaked beard and a voice trained for courtyards, who raised an open hand when he reached the dry-stone wall and waited for the dust to settle before he spoke.
"Stonewell," he called. "By order of Osric, King in the Wheaten Crown, we come for the autumn levy and for winter stores owed to the capital. No plunder is authorized. No fire. Stand aside from your granaries and your mill, and you will be receipted."
Elder Sibley stepped onto the low wall as if it were a dais. The wind worried her iron braid. Behind her, the villagers arranged themselves in a line that tried to look like hospitality and braced like judgment.