"Chenyth, it was on fire. I saw it with my own eyes."

"I saw what happened, Will. Lord Hammer just stood there with his arm out. You stopped acting goofy and came back."

The campfires cast enough light to limn the nearest trees. I glanced at the one that had had me. I shuddered. "Chenyth, I couldn't get back."

"Will..."

"You listen to me. When Lord Hammer says do something, do it. Mom would kill me if I didn't bring you home."

She was going to get nasty anyway. I had taken Chenyth off after she had sworn seven ways from Sunday that he wasn't going to go. It had been a brutal scene. Chenyth pleading, Mom screaming, me ducking epithets and pots.

My mother had had a husband and eight sons. When the dust of the Great Eastern Wars settled, she had me and little Chenyth, and she hadn't seen me but once since then.

Then I came back with my story about signing on with Lord Hammer. And Chenyth, who had been feeding on her stories about Dad and the rest of us being heroes in the wars, decided he wanted to go too.

She told him no, and meant it. It was too late to do anything about me, but her last child wasn't going to be a soldier.

Sometimes I was ashamed of sneaking him out. She would be dying still, in tiny bits each day. But Chenyth had to grow up sometime...

"Hey! Listen up!" Fetch yelled. "Hey! I said knock off the tongue music. Got a little proclamation from the boss."

"Here it comes. All time ass-chewing for doing a stupid," I said.

She used Itaskian first. Most of us understood it. She changed languages for the Harish and a few others who didn't. We drifted toward the black tent.

From the heart of the meadow I could see the pattern of the fire pits. Each lay in one of the angles of a five-pointed star.