Jordan had been prepared for all sorts of eventualities when he finally saw the tiny village of Tolems Ferry. He’d expected his family to be happy to see him or even angry that he’d come, depending on who it was that held the reins of power. After all, the world had all but ended, and there was no telling how much worse things might have gotten during that time. His father might be dead. It was possible that one or both brothers might be too.

The last thing he’d expected was to find the place basically abandoned, though. There was no one but a couple of fishermen who were able to offer up explanations for everything that had transpired. “The rest of your family has run off, my lord,” Rufus told them. “As soon as the sun rose again, they took their things and their retainers and took off toward the capital. They said it was to petition the king for men to fight the goblins, but… well, you know…”

Jordan nodded sadly. He did know. They’d decided to save themselves. That wasn’t surprising. He’d decided to save himself in the end, too, once upon a time, and the only reason he hadn’t been because he’d flubbed the spell.

The village itself wasn’t more than 60 buildings, built at a location where the currents were weak, and a safe crossing was all but assured. A little fishing was done here, and a little farming in the bottom lands prone to flooding along the river’s path where rice and potatoes were planted most years. Some wheat was grown higher up on the slopes, but those areas were mostly reserved for grazing sheep.

This village should have been home to a couple hundred people, but the brief conversation revealed that there were only a dozen left. Half had run off, and the other half had moved into the manor, slowly turning it into something resembling an armed camp under the orders of the headman Olmers.

“That might complicate things,” Jordan nodded, but regardless, he vowed to set things right and thanked the fisherman for the heads-up. He was a Sedgim, after all, and he couldn’t shirk the plight of his people. His family had already done enough of that for all of them.

He conferred briefly with his companions and then decided that it would be for the best if they all went together. After all, he didn’t think the chances of violence were high, but the presence of almost two dozen children would certainly reduce them.

At least, he thought so. He was wrong about that, too.

Jordan could feel the paranoia and the fear radiating off the men he glimpsed from behind makeshift barricades and through the slats of boarded-up windows. Sedgim Manor had been a keep once before it had been made into a manor house after generations of peace, but other than the giant picture windows that had been installed, the home and the giant U-shaped courtyard were still very defensible.

Paradoxically, when he announced himself, that seemed to put people even more on edge. “You’d bar the door against me?” Jordan asked, feigning a bit more arrogance than usual as he raised his voice. “I grew up in these halls!”

“I’ve sent someone to fetch the headman,” the guard said as he nervously fidgeted with his spear. “Olmers said no one allowed in without his say-so, but he didn’t make no exceptions for you.”

Jordan considered arguing the point but decided that he didn’t want to escalate things with so many children about on both sides of the makeshift barricade. Instead, he stood there peevishly while he waited to be let into his own home. Mel was a good guy, and he felt sure the old man would see reason.

When the headman finally appeared, the first thing he said was, “You can’t be Jordan. I heard he died.”

“Very nearly, more than once,” Jordan quipped, but he was unable to keep the warm tone with the drunk he was talking to.

He’d supposed that the man he was waiting on was the town cooper, Mel Olmers, senior. That man had been a rock of the community; he’d been everything his son wasn’t. Ned, on the other hand, was a half-remembered bully who seemed destined to grow up to be a swine herd. From the looks of it, things had changed much in the years you’ve been gone.

“Well, we’ll see about that,” Ned sneered. “I might be able to see fir to letting you in, and maybe the ladies with you, but the children… I’m afraid we simply don’t have the room for them.”

“You’d turn away children at the end of the day, Ned?” Jordan mocked him, losing his patience. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.”If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Ned’s brow furrowed for a moment as he tried to figure out if he’d been insulted. When he decided that he had, he drew his sword and pointed it at Jordan. “Open the gate so I can teach this lout some manners. We’ve saved plenty of kids, and I won’t let any of you be spoken down to by our betters.”

“Why don’t you put the sword away, man,” Jordan said through clenched teeth. That was one of his father’s swords, and the last place it belonged was in the hands of horse apple like Ned.

“Why don’t you make me,” Ned shot back as he strode through the door.

Everyone had moved back now except for the guard that had opened the door and, of course, the Templar. That man wouldn’t move out of the way of the devil himself.

Brother Faerbar didn’t even need to unsheathe his sword, though. As soon as Jordan said, “Are you sure we can’t talk this out,” the oaf sneered, “The time for your fancy words is past, pal. There’s no daddy that. Can save you now—”

He’d never finish his sentence. Jordan unleashed a bolt from the blue and struck his opponent dead without much effort.

“I trust that will be the end of that little mutiny then?” Jordan said, walking over to the body and retrieving his father’s sword from the steaming corpse that had just tried and failed to order Jordan’s death. It wasn’t an enchanted blade, but it was a finely worked piece of steel, and he had no doubt they’d need all the blades they could muster in the dark days to come.

No one said anything after that, which made him smile. It was one thing to be told that the youngest brother had gone off to learn magic, but it was quite another to see him use it when he returned, and none doubted him now.

Unfortunately, the more he toured the compound, the more clear it was that all of them would soon be in dire straights. The men had decided that the world was over, or it might as well be, and they’d dinned on the stores in the cellar like locusts. What hadn’t been taken by his family had been devoured by the people they’d left behind to defend it. The granary was halfway empty, the wine cellar was down to two dozen bottles, the beer and ale were all but gone, and even the cheese that should have been aging in the cave before it was brought to market in the spring had vanished.

Jordan didn’t even want to think about the conditions of the herds. Between the talk of increased goblin activity and the things these men had done to their emergency supplies, they were all about to be in fairly dire straights. The only bright side to all this was that by the time he returned to the house to lay down judgment, most of the worst offenders and all of Olmers’s inner circle had decided to get while the getting was good. The rest of the world might be a bleak, dangerous place, but it was far less dangerous than a man who could wield lightning and fire.

The place was in an uproar, and those that remained seemed pretty convinced that Jordan had tipped the scales to their annihilation, but that was only true until he showed them that they’d only been weeks away from running out of food as it was. After that, their fear turned to the anger it should have been the whole time.

. . .

Once the chaos died down, and it was made very clear to everyone that they could demand neither a more legitimate ruler nor a stronger protector than him and his very quiet holy warrior companion, things got back to normal fairly quickly, but only because they had to. No one doubted that the weather would turn earlier than ever this year. So, giving it their all became a literal life-or-death matter.

Brother Faerbar wanted to cut the hands of a few people who remained who were obviously guilty of looting and otherwise feathering their own nests to his sight, but Jordan forbade it this time. Instead, he promised the Templar that he could have a free hand to punish the wicked after they’d all been warned, and then he offered everyone the same admonition: “Work hard until the first snow, or none of us will live to see spring.”

They were in dire straights. It would be a minor miracle if they made it to spring without having to devour their seed or slaughter every last ewe, but they had no choice. He very much doubted things would be better in the capital, and it was too late in the season to flee north to where climes might be better.

Everyone worked after that. Even the children. What grains had ripened were cut, and the fields were gleaned of every last kernel to save them from the birds. Rice was harvested, potatoes were stacked even though they were small and gnarled, and the lambs were slaughtered.

For the next month, they did all the work that had been neglected for the last two and more, and slowly, the mood of his subjects improved. When he’d arrived, they were desperate men sure there wouldn’t be enough food to go around, but comradery and teamwork, mostly facilitated and aided by all of the “mouths to feed,” had turned the tide.

Even that wouldn’t have been enough were it not for the generosity of the river. They all agreed to blame Markez for the stunning amount of fish they started to catch on a daily basis in the days leading up to the river freezing over. In a week, they caught more than the dozen fishermen that made the town home usually caught in a season. There were so many that they were going to have trouble smoking and preserving all of them.

Jordan knew the truth, though, and he suspected that others did, too. This was just one more favor from Oroza to them, and he vowed to repay it by rebuilding a shrine to the river goddess, though that could wait until the snows had set in, and the ground had frozen. For now, he could only offer her his silent prayers.

They had long, hungry months ahead of them, just like the rest of the world, and even as he pulled his robe around him to fight the rising chill, Jordan walked outside to find an axe. Now that they’d done everything they could for food, they needed to bulk up their stocks of firewood while there was still time.