10. A little Fall of Rain

Smoke rose into the grey sky, curling wisps and misty shrouds fading gently as the wind carried them away. Stonesend was burning, bright tongues of flames licking up into the sky, specks of colour against the monotonous grey and green of the mountainside against which the village lay nestled, clearly visible from a third of a mile away, where Eponine crouched hidden amid the tangle of green near the crown of a young oak tree at the curving edge of the forest. She had seen the columns of riders and footsoldiers coming down the mountain road, and she had seen them entering Stonesend like a dark flood. The rebellion had been crushed, the tribute taken by force. Stonesend, not only the largest but also the richest village of the valley, was the one that suffered most under the reign of Norgard.

Close to Stonesend, the Hyavanda River came down from the mountains, a bright band where it passed the village, but soon disappearing into a deep gorge as it travelled eastwards, where the mountains rose to their sheerest height, to cascade down the Deep Falls, roaring and foaming, and then to bend to the southwest, around the last of the mountains in the range, the Weathercliff with its belt of fir-trees, where it would eventually form the border to Hyavand. When the wind blew from the south, Eponine sometimes thought to hear an echo of the water's voice as it crashed down over the Deep Falls. And high above, at the crown of the mountains, the fires of Norgard were bright as stars against the grey clouds. The gentle summer rain had not been able to extinguish them.

Just as it had not succeeded in forcing Eponine to seek shelter. The leaves offered protection from the worst, and those drops that hit her she simply ignored. She had not even unstrung the bow she carried over her shoulder to protect the waxed string from the moisture.

All the villages were in a similar situation. The henchmen of Norgard came to gather stored goods and cattle, and nobody knew what would be left by the end of the month, or how they were to survive the winter – if they lived to see even the beginning of it, that was. The watch on the roads connecting the villages was not as rigid as it had been the week before, but the way to Moorcastle was as tightly blocked as ever, and the bridge in the south that led to Hyavand had been destroyed. There was only one way out of the valley that had been left open, and this way led up into the mountains, into Norgard.

Eponine had roamed the whole valley, from Lowford in the east to Stonesend in the west, from Greengrove and small Vinyarden in the north to the wild forests of Rosendale in the south. She had seen them all and their plight. At first she had thought that none of them would surpass the fate of Lower Rosendale, but it seemed that Stonesend was suffering worse. A full quarter of the houses destroyed – now it would be much more –, a hundred dead – and the death toll was bound to rise –, a quarter of the cattle gone – and now even more. A pair of hunters had told her, and upon her return she would inform those who needed to know. Perhaps Orvar knew already, but then again, perhaps he did not.

The day before, when attempting to slip off towards Moorcastle, she had encountered one of Norgard's men, a stout brute clad in black and brown leather, lazy from a good meal and slow from drink. He had meant to apprehend her, but her hidden daggers had done their work. Did they miss him already, all those other guards out there? Had they maybe even found the body? She did not know; she had not gone back to the place where she had left him out of caution. One single drunkard she could deal with, but a whole patrol of trained warriors… It was like stealing the seal out of Orvar's very hand, and with Javert standing guard behind his chair.

At this thought she automatically gazed towards the mountains. Gavroche claimed Javert had gone to Norgard to kill the resurrected Sorcerer, but Eponine was far from convinced of this version. What had really become of her brother's protector she could not tell, all she knew was that his absence greatly grieved Gavroche. Part of the time the boy now lived with Sophia, part with the students, and more often than before he accompanied her on her frequent wanderings through the forest. There were enough people around him, and still it seemed to Eponine that he was lonelier than ever before. He was a capable lad, of course, and had proven his mettle quite a few times over the course of their lives in Paris. It was probably just some sort of passing phase, he would get over it soon enough. Not that Eponine would admit worrying over her brother's feelings, but then again, what did it matter if she did? It was not as if anybody asked her.

The rain was falling unceasingly, drop by drop, slowly turning the narrow path along the edge of the forest into a stretch of mud. Maybe the fires in Stonesend were burning lower, but those of Norgard were as bright as ever. The raindrops whispered in the leaves around her and rolled down along her bow and over her hair.

Cautiously Eponine withdrew further into the branches, where the rain hardly reached her anymore. Through a gap in the leaves she could still see the smoke above Stonesend. Huddling against the trunk with her back, she began to sing to herself softly.

"My father don't know me,
My mother don't love me,
And Death don't want me
'Cause I'm too young…"