we tried to rebuild our villages, we made ourselves Her prey. Only so long as we move are we safe—safe to glean grain from abandoned fields and fruit from abandoned orchards, and tend such stock as remains to us, and so we have not died of hunger and lack. But when the last store of grain is gone, if any of us are left, we will die then.
"I do not think we will survive so long as that. She comes, like a wolf in the night, to take our children and our hope. She will have us all, for what Cinnas did."
"But who is she?" Glory asked.
"The Warmother," Helevrin's voice dropped to a hiss. "She whom Cinnas chained upon Elboroth-Haden of the Hilvorns a thousand years past, who now walks among us unfettered once more."
"What does she look like?" Glory asked, hoping for more information.
"Look like?" Helevrin echoed, sounding puzzled.
"Look like. Is she tall, short, what?"
"No one has ever seen the Warmother," Helevrin said, as if this were self-evident.
Glory stared at her. "You're out here running around in circles to get away from something you've never seen?"
The disbelief in her voice made Helevrin get stiffly to her feet. "You think that we are foolish children, running from shadows, yet it was no shadow that reduced Great Drathil to ash. Bide here with us, Vixen the Slayer, and you will have all the proof you require, to the last full measure." She stalked off, leaving Glory alone.
Carefully, Glory removed the half-empty platter from her knees and set it on the ground. Several of the camp dogs—big animals that looked half wolf, their golden fur stippled and barred with grey—had been sitting a few feet away, watching them as