Chapter 44
Insects buzzed in the tall grass at the edge of the forest’s end. Roots, forearm thick and twisted from their rampant growth, lay cluttered and heaped in the grass at the base of the treeline where they’d been cut back by the latest passing of the roadmen. Elias crouched among them, obscured by a bunch that he had gathered and stacked at a tree trunk to hide him from passersby on the road.
The crunching of hooves on the gravel of the road announced a boy leading three kirn by ropes, tied to the yokes around their necks, down the road. The striped animals moved at a docile pace, the boy tugging at their ropes to keep them plodding along, not stopping as they threatened to each time he let his attention slip. The boy looked Fiorian enough to Elias’s eyes, black-haired and as di
