Krispos wondered whether he'd get cuddled if he started crying. He thought he'd be more likely to get his father's hand on his backside or across his face. Like every farm boy from anywhere near the town of Imbros, he knew who the Kubratoi were: wild men from north of the mountains. "Will we fight them, Father?" he asked. Just the other day, with a stick for a sword, he'd slain a dozen make-believe robbers.

But his father shook his head. "Real fighting is for soldiers. The Kubratoi, curse 'em, are soldiers. We aren't. They'd kill us, and we couldn't do much in the way of fighting back. This isn't play, boy."

"What will we do, Phostis?" his mother asked above Evdokia's sniffles. She sounded almost ready to cry herself. That frightened Krispos more than all the racket outside. What could be worse than something bad enough to frighten his mother?

The answer came in a moment: something bad enough to frighten his father. "We run," Phostis said grimly, "unless you'd sooner be dragged north by the two-legged wolves out there. That's why I built close to the forest; that's why I built the door facing away from most of the houses: to give us a chance to run, if the Kubratoi ever came down again."

His mother bent, rose again. "I have the baby."

In her arms, Evdokia said indignantly, "Not a baby!" Then she started to cry again.

No one paid any attention to her. Krispos' father took him by the shoulder, so hard that his flimsy nightshirt might as well not have stood between man's flesh and boy's. "Can you run to the trees, son, fast as you can, and hide yourself till the bad men go away?"

"Yes, Father." Put that way, it sounded like a game. Krispos had played more games in the forest than he could count.

"Then run!" His father threw open the door. Out he darted. His mother followed, still holding Evdokia. Last came his father. Krispos knew his father could run faster than he could, but his father didn't try, not tonight. He stayed between his family and the village.