I had seen dead bodies before, by the score, by the hundreds. Yet the sight of my father there in the shadows made my throat go dry. I sank to my knees beside him and gently, gently turned him so I could see his face.

They had battered him terribly. Yet his eyes fluttered, then focused on me.

“Lukka …” His voice was a tortured sigh.

“Don’t try to speak. Let me—”

He clutched at my arm, his aged fleshless fingers still as strong as a hawk’s talons. “I knew you would return.” He coughed painfully. “I knew …”

“Quiet, Father. Quiet. I’ll get a healer, a priest.”

“No need. No use.”

He coughed blood.

“Your sons,” he gasped. “Gone …”

“Gone? Where?”

“They fled.” He coughed again, his frail body spasming in my arms. “Your wife was mad with panic. Slavers were breaking into the houses …”

“Slavers?”

“She feared them … she took my grandsons …”

The third child of war, I thought. The poor wretches who were not killed or maimed were made into slaves.

“Find them!” my father commanded me. Gripping my arm even harder, he hissed, “Find them. My grandsons. They are my flesh. Find them, Lukka. Find them!”

Those were his last words to me. He died in my arms, his blood soaking into the earthen floor while smoke from the burning thatch made my eyes sting and water.

2

My sons. My wife. Find them.

I took a spade from the corner by the fireplace, where my father had always kept his tools. Coughing from the thickening smoke, I dug a shallow grave for him there in his house, the home of my ancestors. I tried to remember the words for the dead, but my mind would not recall them. All I could think of was his final command to me. Find his grandsons.