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Upland Outlaws


Upland Outlaws
Book 2 of A Handful of Men

By Dave Duncan

ISBN: 0-345-38477-6



PROLOGUE
"Ghosts?" said the old woman. She raised her lantern and peered up into the dark. "Something bothering you tonight, Ghosts? "


Wind wailed in the high rafters and stirred the hems of the dust sheets shrouding the furniture. Casements rattled far off. The hall was very high,
rising clear to the roof of the house. The faint glow of the lantern did not reach up there, but she needed no light to know of the staircases and
balconies, the great fieldstone chimney at one end, the minstrels' gallery at the other, and all the grimy windows. She sensed something fretting,
something intangible up there in the dark, listening amid the cobwebs and the beams.


"What ails you tonight, Ghosts?" She cackled.


Casements tapped in the darkness. Wind howled around a gable. Underfoot, little gray balls of dust rolled away out of sight.


The woman shivered, as the cold sank into her old bones. She tugged her shawls tighter with knotted fingers and began to hobble along the hall.
The golden glow of her lantern reflected back from high windows and threw her shadow on the dust sheets. Often in ages past this hall had rung
with the laughter of joyous parties, with music, and dancing, and feasting. No one but she had trodden these boards in many years.


Again she sensed the watchers, the listeners. She felt their hatred, their anger.


"No one coming tonight, Ghosts!" she cried. Her thin voice could barely raise an echo over the wind. "Snowing outside, Ghosts. Heavier than ever.
Rare to see such snow, and three weeks yet till Winterfest! But he won't come tonight!"


Shrill wails ...


Only the wind, others would have said, but she knew better. Then she paused, head cocked, straining dull ears.


"Ah!" she said. "Bells?" She waited. Yes, again she heard that heavy note, carried on the wind. "So that's it? That's what disturbs your sleep,, is it?"
She cackled once more, reassured. "He's gone! The Evil has his black soul tonight, then? Small wonder you stir tonight, Ghosts!"