Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters

snow had covered the traces since the holocaust, it seemed that a party of raiders at least ten or twelve strong had committed this outrage, driving off the sheep and the household cow, emptying the bam, and probably the house, too, of anything portable, stringing the fowls together by the legs, for scattered feathers still blew about the ground and clung to the blackened beams.
    Hugh dismounted, and clambered in among the wreckage of the house and barns. His men were quartering all the ground within and without the enclosing wall, probing the drifts.
    “They’ve killed them,” said Yves in a small, hollow voice. “John and his wife, and Peter, and the shepherd—killed them all, or carried them off, as they carried off Sister Hilaria.”
    “Hush!” said Cadfael. “Never jump to meet the worst until you’ve looked about you well. You know what they’re looking for?” The searchers were turning to exchange looks and shrugs, and drawing together again to the yard. “Bodies! And they’ve found none. Only the dogs, poor creatures. They did their proper work, and gave the alarm. Now we’d best hope they gave it in time.”
    Hugh came picking his way back from the barn, beating soiled palms together. “No dead here to find. Either they had warning enough to run for it, or they’ve been dragged off with the raiders. And I doubt if masterless men living wild would bother with captives. Kill they might, but take prisoners, of this simple kind, that I doubt. But I wonder which way they came? As we did, or by tracks of their own, along the hillside here above? If there were no more than ten of them, they’d keep to their measure, and the village might be too strong to tempt them.”
    “There was one sheep slaughtered by the fold,” said his sergeant, back from the hillside. “There’s a traverse comes along the slope there, that might be their path if they wanted to avoid Cleeton and pick off some meat less well defended.”
    “Then Druel may have got his family away towards the village.” Hugh pondered, frowning at the drifts that had covered all traces of coming and going of men and beasts. “If the dogs gave tongue for the sheep, there may have been time. Let’s at least go and ask in the village what they know of it. We may yet find them all alive,” he said, clapping Yves reassuringly on the shoulder, “even if they’ve lost their home and goods.”
    “But not Sister Hilaria,” said Yves, clinging to a quarrel which had become his own, and bitterly felt. “If they could run away in time, why could they not save Sister Hilaria?”
    “That you shall ask them, if by God’s grace we do find them. I do not forget Sister Hilaria. Come, we’ve found all we are going to find here.”
    “One small thing,” said Cadfael. “When you heard the horses, Yves, in the dark, and ran out to try to follow your sister, which way did they lead you from here?”
    Yves turned to view the sorry remains of the house from which he had run. “To the right, there, behind the house. There’s a little stream comes down, it was not frozen then— they started up the slope beside it. Not towards the top of the hills, but climbing round the flank.”
    “Good! That direction we may try, another day. I’m done, Hugh, we can go.”
    They mounted and turned back by the way they had come, out of the desolation and ruin of the hollow, over the ridge between the trees, and down the track towards the village of Cleeton. A hard place, bleak to farm, meager to crop, but good for sheep, the rangy upland sheep that brought the leanest meat but the longest fleeces. Across the uphill edge of the settlement there was a crude but solid stockade, and someone was on the watch for strangers arriving, for a whistle went before them into the huddle of house, shrill and piercing. By the time they rode in there were three or four sturdy fellows on hand to receive them. Hugh smiled. Outlaws living wild, unless they had considerable numbers and