The Sentinel Mage

CHAPTER EIGHT





IT WAS LATE afternoon when Jaumé reached Neuly. The village gates were shut. Armed men stood atop the wall.

He halted uncertainly at the fringe of the forest. Were the gates closed because the curse had reached the village?

He listened, straining his ears. No screams came from within the walls. He heard only the soft rain. Everything was quiet, peaceful.

Hunger forced him from the forest. He walked towards the gates, his gaze lifting to the men on the wall. Before he’d covered half the distance, one of them shouted: “Come no closer!”

Jaumé halted.

“Go away!” the man shouted.

“I don’t have the curse,” Jaumé called out. “I haven’t drunk—”

“Be gone!” A stone struck the ground, spraying mud and water.

Jaumé stepped back a pace. “Please—”

This time the stone almost struck him. He stumbled backwards.

“Be gone!” the man cried again.

Jaumé swallowed. “But I don’t have the curse.”

The men on top of the wall made no reply. Their faces were grim.

“Please—” Jaumé’s voice broke. “Please may I have some food?”

“We keep our food for our own. Now go!” Another stone accompanied the words.

Jaumé blinked back tears. He turned away from the village.

After half a mile, he came to a farm. Smoke rose from the chimney. Jaumé wiped his face. He walked down the path and knocked on the door. It swung open, revealing an empty kitchen. “Hello?”

No one answered him.

Jaumé stepped into the kitchen. A fire still smoldered in the hearth, but the larder had been hastily emptied. Spilled flour lay on the shelves and the floor. The storeroom was bare apart from a string of onions hanging in the farthest corner. It was full of smells—cheese, cured sausages—that made his mouth water.

He went outside, into the rain. The farmyard was eerily silent. The hen house was empty, and the pig pen. No dogs barked a warning at him.

The garden had been stripped—pumpkins cut from the vine, carrots pulled from the ground—but in a far corner Jaumé found a row of radishes that had been overlooked.

He squatted in the dirt, pulling up radishes and eating them.

When he was finished, he started walking again. West. Away.