Ursula Le Guin - Tehanu The Last Book of Earthsea

The poker still in her hand, Tenar went down the dark hall to the door that gave on the cool-room. Beyond the cool-room was the dairy. The house was built against a low hill, and both those rooms ran back into the hill like cellars, though on a level with the rest of the house. The cool-room had only air-vents; the dairy had a door and a window, low and wide like the kitchen window, in its one outside wall. Standing at the cool-room door, she could hear that window being pried or jimmied, and men’s voices whispering.

Flint had been a methodical householder. Every door but one of his house had a bar-bolt on each side of it, a stout length of cast iron set in slides. All were kept clean and oiled; none were ever locked.

She slipped the bolt across the cool-room door. It slid into place without a sound, fitting snug into the heavy iron slot on the doorjamb.

She heard the outer door of the dairy opened. One of them had finally thought to try it, before they broke the window, and found it wasn’t locked. She heard the mutter of voices again. Then silence, long enough that she heard her heartbeat drumming in her ears so loud she feared she could not hear any sound over it. She felt her legs trembling and trembling, and felt the cold of the floor creep up under her skirt like a hand.

“It’s open,” a man’s voice whispered near her, and her heart leapt painfully. She put her hand on the bolt, thinking it was open-she had unlocked not locked it- She had almost slid it back when she heard the door between the cool-room and the dairy creak, opening. She knew that creak of the upper hinge. She knew the voice that had spoken, too, but in a different way of knowing. “It’s a storeroom,” Handy said, and then, as the door she stood against rattled against the bolt, “This one’s locked.” It rattled again. A thin blade of light, like a knife blade, flicked between the door and the jamb. It touched her breast, and she drew back as if it had cut her.

The door rattled again, but not much. It was solid, solidly hinged, and the bolt was firm.

They muttered together on the other side of the door. She knew they were planning to come around and try the front of the house. She found herself at the front door, bolting it, not knowing how she came there. Maybe this was a nightmare. She had had this dream, that they were trying to get into the house, that they drove thin knives through the cracks of the doors. The doors-was there any other door they could get in? The windows-the shutters of the bedroom windows- Her breath came so short she thought she could not get to Therru’s room, but she was there, she brought the heavy wooden shutters across the glass. The hinges were stiff, and they came together with a bang. Now they knew. Now they were coming. They would come to the window of the next room, her room. They would be there before she could close the shutters. And they were.

She saw the faces, blurs moving in the darkness outside, as she tried to free the left-hand shutter from its hasp. It was stuck. She could not make it move. A hand touched the glass, flattening white against it.

“There she is."

“Let us in. We won’t hurt you.”

“We just want to talk to you."

“He just wants to see his little girl.”

She got the shutter free and dragged it across the window. But if they broke the glass they would be able to push the shutters open from the outside. The fastening was only a hook that would pull out of the wood if forced.

“Let us in and we won’t hurt you,” one of the voices said. She heard their feet on the frozen ground, crackling in the fallen leaves. Was Therru awake? The crash of the shutters closing might have wakened her, but she had made no sound. Tenar stood in the doorway between her room and Therru’s, It was pitch-dark, silent. She was afraid to touch the child and waken her. She must stay in the room with her. She must fight for her. She had had the poker in her hand, where had she put it? She had put it down to close the shutters. She could not find it. She groped for it in the blackness of the room that seemed to have no walls.

The front door, which led into the kitchen, rattled, shaken in its frame.

If she could find the poker she would stay in here, she would fight them.

“Here!” one of them called, and she knew what he had found. He was looking up at the kitchen window, broad, unshuttered, easy to reach.

She went, very slowly it seemed, groping, to the door of the room. It was Therru’s room now. It had been her children’s room. The nursery. That was why there was no lock on the inner side of the door. So the children could not lock themselves in and be frightened if the bolt stuck.

Around back of the hill, through the orchard, Clearbrook and Shandy would be asleep in their cottage. If she called, maybe Shandy would hear. If she opened the bedroom window and called-or if she waked Therru and they climbed out the window and ran through the orchard-but the men were there, right there, waiting.

It was more than she could bear. The frozen terror that had bound her broke, and in rage she ran into the kitchen that was all red light in her eyes, grabbed up the long, sharp butcher knife from the block, flung back the door-bolt, and stood in the doorway. “Come on, then!" “ she said.

As she spoke there was a howl and a sucking gasp, and a man yelled, “Look out!” Another shouted, “Here! Here!”

Then there was silence.

Light from the open doorway shot across the black ice of puddles, glittered on the black branches of the oaks and on fallen silver leaves, and as her eyes cleared she saw that something was crawling towards her on the path, a dark mass or heap crawling towards her, making a high, sobbing wail. Behind the light a black shape ran and darted, and long blades shone.

“Tenar!”

“Stop there,” she said, raising the knife.

“Tenar! It’s me-Hawk, Sparrowhawk!”

“Stay there,” she said.

The darting black shape stood still next to the black mass lying on the path. The light from the doorway shone dim on a body, a face, a long-tined pitchfork held upright, like a wizard’s staff, she thought. “Is that you?” she said.

He was kneeling now by the black thing on the path.

“I killed him, I think,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, stood up. There was no sign or sound of the other men.

“Where are they?”

“Ran. Give me a hand, Tenar."

She held the knife in one hand. With the other she took hold of the arm of the man that lay huddled up on the path. Ged took him under the shoulder and they dragged him up the step and into the house. He lay on the stone floor of the kitchen, and blood ran out of his chest and belly like water from a pitcher. His upper lip was drawn back from his teeth, and only the whites of his eyes showed.

“Lock the door,” Ged said, and she locked the door.

“Linens in the press,” she said, and he got a sheet and tore it for bandages, which she bound round and round the man’s belly and breast, into which three of the four tines of the pitchfork had driven full force, making three ragged springs of blood that dripped and squirted as Ged supported the man’s torso so that she could wrap the bandages.

“What are you doing here? Did you come with them?”

“Yes. But they didn’t know it. That’s about all you can do, Tenar. “ He let the man’s body sag down, and sat back, breathing hard, wiping his face with the back of his bloody hand. “I think I killed him,” he said again.

“Maybe you did.” Tenar watched the bright red spots spread slowly on the heavy linen that wrapped the man’s thin, hairy chest and belly. She stood up, and swayed, very dizzy. “Get by the fire,” she said. “You must be perishing.”

She did not know how she had known him in the dark outside. By his voice, maybe. He wore a bulky shepherd’s winter coat of cut fleece with the leather side out, and a