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your tongues!” Gweniver snapped. “The Boar’s warband is doubtless riding here right now to claim us. Do you want to end up as trophies?”
    “Gwen!” Macla wailed. “How can you be so coldhearted?”
    “Better coldhearted than raped. Now, hurry, all of you. Get the things you can carry on one horse. We’re riding to the Temple of the Moon. If we live to reach it, the priestesses will give us refuge. Do you hear me, Mam, or do you want to see me and Maccy handed over to the warband?”
    The deliberate brutality forced Dolyan silent.
    “Good,” Gweniver said. “Now, hurry, all of you!”
    She followed the others as they puffed up the spiral staircase, but she went to her brother’s chamber, not her own. From the carved chest beside his bed she took a pair of his old brigga and one of his shirts. Changing into his clothes brought her a scatter of tears—she’d been fond of Avoic, who was only fourteen—but there was no time for mourning. She belted on his second-best sword and an old dagger. Although she was far from being a trained warrior, her brothers had taught her how to handle a sword. Finally she unclasped her long blond hair and cut it off short with the dagger. At night she would look enough like a man to give any lone marauder pause about attacking her party on the road.
    Since they had over thirty miles to go to reach safety, Gweniver bullied the other women into riding fast, trotting, walking, then occasionally galloping in short bursts. Every now and then she would turn in her saddle and scan the road for the dust cloud that would mean death chasing them. Shortly after sunset the full moon rose to shed her holy light to guide them. By then her mother was swaying in the saddle with exhaustion. Gweniver saw a copse of alders off to one side of the road and led the others there for a brief rest. Dolyan and Mab had to be helped down from their saddles.
    Gweniver walked back to the road to stand guard. Faraway on the horizon, in the direction from which they’d come, a golden glow flared like the rising of a tiny moon. It was most likely the dun burning. She drew her sword and clutched the hilt while she stared unthinking at the glare. Suddenly she heard hoofbeats and saw a rider galloping down the road. Behind her in the copse the horses nickered a greeting, unknowing traitors.
    “Mount!” she screamed. “Get ready to ride!”
    The rider pulled up, then dismounted and drew his sword. As he strode toward her, she saw his bronze cloak pin glittering in the moonlight: a Boarsman.
    “And who are you, lad?” he said.
    Gweniver dropped into a fighting crouch.
    “A page of the Wolf, from your silence. And what are you guarding so faithfully? I hate to kill a slip of a lad like you, but orders are orders, so come now, turn the ladies over to me.”
    In utter desperation Gweniver lunged and struck. Taken off guard, the Boarsman slipped, his sword swinging up wildly. She cut again and sliced him hard on one side of his neck, then struck back on the other, just as her older brother Benoic had taught her. With a moan of disbelief the Boarsman buckled to his knees and died at her feet. Gweniver nearly vomited. In the moonlight the sword blade was dark wet with blood, not shiny clean as in the practice sessions. Her mother’s shriek of terror brought her back to her senses. She ran for the Boarsman’s horse, grabbed the reins just as it was about to bolt, then led it back to the copse.
    “That it would ever come to this!” Mab sobbed. “That a lass I tended would be forced to turn warrior on the roads! Oh, holy gods all, when will you have mercy on the kingdom?”
    “When it suits them and not a minute before,” Gweniver said. “Now, get on those horses! We’ve got to get out of here.”
    Deep in the middle of the night they reached the Temple of the Moon, which sat at the top of a hill with a stone wall around its compound. Along with his friends and vassals,Gweniver’s father had given the coin to