"Get out of my home!" she shouted. No one gave her notice.

"Yes…" the masked one whispered with a voice like windblown sand. "The one shown to me. The one sent into my dreams by our patron."

The father glanced back to his son.

"You should be pleased," he remarked. "She'll make you an attractive bride."

The woman's eyes widened. She wouldn't be the first or the last to suffer the whims of a vassal lord assigned to a fief, but nobles did not take village women as wives.

"Bride?" said the son. "I doubt, Father, that your lackey"-and the masked one hissed over his shoulder- "would bother with the customs attached to such a title. Take her and let us leave. The sooner done, the better."

The masked one's fingers inched forward, and she felt her captor's grip tighten to pull her up. At the touch of fingertips on her cheek, her hand closed about the knife on the table.

The robed one recoiled to the room's far wall before she even moved. She twisted forward, thrusting low and upward. The knife blade slipped into the side slit of her captor's mail shirt and buried in his abdomen.

His grip clenched harder about her throat. No one in the cottage moved.

Her rage drained when she stared into the father's face and saw no hint of emotion in his eyes. He pulled her upright by the throat, not bothering to remove her hand from the knife hilt. The masked old man glided evenly toward the door and out into the night. The father pulled her along by the neck as he followed the old main.

She staggered and regained her footing. The son turned away as she passed, and she caught no glimpse of his face. Two large horses waited outside in the village path. The son mounted the closest, a tail bay, and the father lifted her up behind him as if she were no burden at all. Shouts rose out of the dark.

Villagers emerged from cottages and huts, but most stayed well back. A few held torches or candle lanterns that barely illuminated the path between their homes. Three young men came forward in smudged and grimed field clothes, armed with hoes and hay rakes. Two hesitated, but the third showed no fear. Even in the dark, the woman recognized his brown unwashed hair hanging loose around angular features and a square, dark-shadowed jaw.