CHAPTER TWELVE
Altfor rode into the latest village, sitting tall and proud atop his charger, armor in place so that he looked every inch a commander. The fact that this was his uncle’s force, and that the men here would have gone about their business regardless of whether he was present, was a matter of no consequence. He wanted to be here for this.
“Is this all of them?” he demanded, looking down at the lines of peasant folk arranged before him.
“All that we could find… my lord,” one of the men said, and the fact that it took him that long to remember the part that mattered irritated Altfor further.
He was sure that this couldn’t be all of them. A village would have more young men and women, wouldn’t just be these lines of sorry looking folk, so worn and weather-beaten that it seemed
