Then for some hours he and Eodan made the shepherd folk demolish their roof and their outbuildings. Phryne paced the dusty grounds, watchfully, her bow always in her hand. The wind blew from the high country and the snow clouds moved closer.
There were stout wooden posts at the corners of the shed. Tjorr dug them out and dragged them to the roofless house. He set two of them upright on the floor—one close to the entrance and one a yard from the rear wall; across them he laid a third. Then he put the branch-rafters back, crossing his heavy timber piece, and heaped a layer of turf on as before. The shepherd people gaped, blinked, made signs against the evil eye, which these surely crazed men must have, but helped him after a few blows. He had them form a line and pass him stones from the wrecked outbuildings. These he laid on the turf, within a yard of the rear wall, layer upon layer. Finally the branches beneath sagged, and even the timber upbearing them started to groan. Quickly, then, he threw enough sod on his roof of boulders to hide what it was.
Meanwhile Eodan was digging inside the house, at its rear end. He sank a pit nearly eight feet deep and drove a shaft from that, several yards outward, so that it ended below the grounds; he left the wooden shovel there and came back out. Rather his crew of men and children did this, even as most of the roof work had Tjorr merely overseeing. They would need their whole strength later.
At the end, hours past the time they began, Phryne looked at the completed task. She saw merely a shepherd hut with a somewhat thicker roof than was common, and wreckage behind it. "Do our lives hang on no more than this?" she asked wonderingly. "Would it not have been better to flee across the plain?"
"Once they found our trail," said Tjorr grimly, "they could have changed horse and horse while our own ran themselves dead. No, our chances here are not good, but I think the disa's plan has made them better for us than if we played mouse to the Roman ferret"
"One more thing to do," said Eodan. He kindled a stick, went over and touched it to the haystacks. The shepherds moaned. Eodan grinned, with a certain pity, and tossed the grandsire his full purse. "There's the price of your flocks and home and a winter's lodging. Go!" He waved his sword and pointed south. They stumbled from him, out onto the plain, looking back with frightened animal eyes. "Why those bonfires?" asked Tjorr. "Not that I don't like the warmth on this bitter day, but—"
"Hay could be stacked around the house and lit," said Eodan. "I do not wish to die in an oven."
Tjorr tugged his ruddy beard. "I had not thought of that. Is it a heavy burden to be forever thinking, disa?"
Eodan did not hear him. He took Phryne's hand in his. "Have I any hope of making you depart until the fight is over?" he asked.
Her dark head shook. "In all else will I obey you," she said, "but I have a right to stand with my man."