IN MANY OF the old legends and tales of the Wit, it is insisted that a Wit user eventually takes on many traits of his bond-animal. Some of the most frightening tales say that eventually a Witted one becomes capable of assuming the guise of that animal. Those who know intimately of such magic have assured me it is not so. It is true that a Witted one may, without realizing it, assume some of the physical mannerisms of his bond-animal, but one bonded to an eagle will not sprout wings, nor will one bonded to a horse begin to neigh. As time goes by, a Witted one grows in understanding of the bond-beast, and the longer a human and an animal are bonded, the greater will be the similarity of their mannerisms. The bond-animal is as likely to assume the mannerisms and traits of the human as the human is to adopt those of his beast. But this only happens over a long period of intense contact.
Nik agreed with Burrich's idea of when mornings began. I awoke to the sound of his men leading the horses out. A cold wind blew in the open door. Around me in the darkness the others were stirring. One of the children was crying at being awakened so early. Her mother shushed her. Molly, I thought with sudden longing. Somewhere hushing my child.
What's this?
My mate bore a cub. Far away.
Immediate concern. But who will hunt meat to feed them? Should not we return to her?
Heart of the Pack watches over her.
Of course. I should have known that. That one knows the meaning of pack, no matter how he denies it. All is well, then.
As I rose and bundled my blankets together, I wished I could accept it as blithely as he did. I knew Burrich would care for them. It was his nature. I recalled all the years he had watched over me as I had grown. Often I had hated him then; now I could not think of anyone else I would prefer to care for Molly and my baby. Save myself. I would much rather it was I watching over them, even rocking a crying babe in the middle of the night. Though I rather wished, just now, that the pilgrim woman would find a way to quiet her child. I was paying for my Skill-spying of the night before with a savage headache.
Food seemed to be the answer, for when the girl had a piece of bread and some honeycomb, she soon quieted. It was a hasty meal we shared, the only hot item being tea. I noticed Kettle was moving very stiffly and took pity on her. I fetched her a cup of hot tea to wrap her twisted fingers around while I rolled up her blankets for her. I had never seen hands so distorted by rheumatism; they reminded me of bird claws. "An old friend of mine said that sometimes the sting of nettles actually relieved his hands when they ached," I suggested to her as I tied her bundle.
"You find me nettles growing under the snow and I'll try them, boy," she replied peevishly. But a few moments later she was offering me a dried apple from her small store. I accepted it with thanks. I loaded our things onto the cart and harnessed the mare while she finished her tea. I glanced about but saw nothing of Nighteyes.
Hunting, came the reply.
Wish I were with you. Good luck.
Aren't we supposed to speak but little, lest Regal hear us?
I didn't reply. It was a clear cold morning, almost shockingly bright after yesterday's snow. It was colder than it had been the day before; the wind off the river seemed to cut right through my garments, finding the gaps at cuffs and collars to poke its cold fingers through. I helped Kettle mount the cart, and then tucked one of her blankets around her in addition to her wraps. "Your mother trained you well, Tom," she said with genuine kindness.
I still winced at the remark. Starling and Nik stood talking together until everyone else was ready to go. Then she mounted her Mountain pony and took a place beside Nik at the head of our procession. I told myself that it was likely Nik Holdfast would make a better ballad than FitzChivalry anyway. If he could persuade her to go back with him at the Mountain border, my life would only be simpler.
I gave my mind to my task. There was really little to it, other than to keep the mare from lagging too far behind the pilgrims' wagon. I had time to see the country we traversed. We regained the little-used road we had been on the day before and continued to follow the river upstream. Along the river, it was sparsely treed, but a short distance away from the riverbank, it became a rolling, treeless terrain of brush and scrub. Gullies and washes cut our road on their way to the river. It seemed that at some time water had been plentiful here, perhaps in spring. But now the land was dry save for the crystal snow that blew loosely across it like sand and the river in its bed.
"Yesterday the minstrel made you smile to yourself. For whom is the frown today?" Kettle asked quietly.
"I was thinking it a shame, to see what this rich land has come to."
"Were you?" she asked dryly.
"Tell me of this seer of yours," I said, mostly to change the subject.
"He is not mine," she said with asperity. Then she relented. "It is probably a fool's errand I go on. He whom I seek may not even be there. And yet what better use do I have for these years, than to chase a chimera?"
I kept silent. I was beginning to find it was the question she answered best. "Do you know what's in this cart, Tom? Books. Scrolls and writings. Ones I've collected for years. I have gathered them in many lands, learned to read many tongues and letterings. In so many places, I found mention, over and over again, of the White Prophets. They appear at the junctures of history and shape it. Some say they come to set history on its proper course. There are those who believe, Tom, that all of time is a circle. All of history a great wheel, turning inexorably. Just as seasons come and go, just as the moon moves endlessly through her cycle, so does time. The same wars are fought, the same plagues descend, the same folk, good or evil, rise to power. Humanity is trapped on that wheel, doomed endlessly to repeat the mistakes we have already made. Unless someone comes to change it. Far to the south, there is a land where they believe that for every generation, somewhere in the world there is a White Prophet. He or she comes, and if what is taught is heeded, the cycle of time moves into a better course. If it is ignored, all time is pushed into a darker path."
She paused, as if waiting for me to say something. "I know nothing of such teachings," I admitted.
"I would not expect you to. It was in a far place I first studied such things. There they held that if such prophets fail, again and again, the repeating history of the world will grow more and more evil, until the entire cycle of time, hundreds of thousands of years, becomes a history of misery and wrong."
"And if the prophet is heeded?"
"Each time one succeeds, it is easier for the next one. And when an entire cycle passes in which every prophet succeeds, time itself will finally stop."
"So they work for the end of the world to come?"
"Not the end of the world, Tom. The end of time. To free humanity of time. For time is the great enslaver of us all. Time that ages us, time that limits us. Think how often you have wished to have more time for something, or wished you could go back a day and do something differently. When humanity is freed of time, old wrongs can be corrected before they are done." She sighed. "I believe this is the time for such a prophet to come. And my readings lead me to believe that this generation's White Prophet shall arise in the Mountains."
"But you are alone on your quest. Do no others agree with you?"
"Many others. But few, very few, go to seek a White Prophet. It is the folk the prophet is sent to who must heed him. Others should not interfere, lest they set all time awry forever."
I was still puzzling over what she had said about time. It seemed to make a knot in my thinking. Her voice fell silent. I stared forward between the mare's ears and pondered. Time to go back and be honest with Molly. Time to follow Fedwren the scribe instead of being an assassin's apprentice. She had given me much to think about.
Our talk lapsed for some time.
Nighteyes reappeared shortly after noon. He came trotting purposefully out of the trees, to fall into place beside our wagon. The mare gave him several nervous glances as she tried to puzzle out wolf smell and dog behavior. I quested toward her and reassured her. He had been for some time at my side of the cart before Kettle caught sight of him. She leaned forward to look past me, then sat back again. "There's a wolf beside our cart," she observed.
"He's my dog. Though he has some wolf blood in him," I admitted casually.
Kettle leaned forward to look at him again. She glanced up at my placid expression. Then she sat back. "So they herd sheep with wolves in Buck these days," she nodded, and said no more about him.
We pushed on steadily for the rest of the day. We saw no folk save ourselves, and only one small cabin sending up a trail of smoke in the distance. The cold and the blowing wind were a constant, but not one that became easier to ignore as the day went on. The faces of the pilgrims in the wagon in front of us became paler, noses redder, lips almost blue on one woman. They were packed together like fish in brine but all their closeness seemed to be no protection against the cold.
I moved my feet inside my boots to keep my toes awake, and shifted the reins from one hand to the other as I took turns warming my fingers under my arm. My shoulder ached, and the ache ran down my arm until even my fingers throbbed with it. My lips were dry but I dared not wet them lest they crack. Few things are as miserable to confront as constant cold. As for Kettle, I did not doubt it tortured her. She did not complain, but as the day went by she seemed to get smaller within her blanket as she curled closer on herself. Her silence seemed but further evidence of her misery.
We were still short of darkness when Nik turned our wagons away from the road and up a long trail nearly obscured by the blown snow. The only sign of it I could make out was that less grass stuck up above the snow, but Nik seemed to know it well. The mounted smugglers broke trail for the wagons. It was still heavy going for Kettle's little mare. I looked back behind us once to see the sweeping hand of the wind smoothing our trail out to no more than a ripple in the snowy landscape.
The land we crossed seemed featureless, but it undulated gently. We eventually crested the long rise we had ascended, and looked down onto a huddle of buildings that had been invisible from the road. Evening was drawing on. A single light shone in a window. As we wended our way down toward it, other candles were lit, and Nighteyes caught a trace of wood smoke on the wind. We were expected:
The buildings were not old. They looked as if they had been recently completed. There was an ample barn. Wagons and all, we led the horses down into it, for the earth had been dug away so that the barn was half underground. This low profile was why we had not seen this place from the road, and I didn't doubt that was the reason for it. Unless a man knew this place was here, he'd never find it. The earth from the digging had been heaped up around the barn and other buildings. Inside the thick walls with the doors shut, we could not even hear the wind. A milk cow shifted in her stall as we unhitched the horses and put them in stalls. There was straw and hay and a trough of fresh water.
The pilgrims had got out of the wagon, and I was helping Kettle down when the barn door opened again. A lithe young woman with a mass of red hair piled on her head came storming in. Fists on her hips, she confronted Nik. "Who are all these people and why have you brought them here? What good is a bolthole if half the countryside knows of it?'"
Nik handed his horse to one of his men and turned to her. Without a word, he swept her into his arms and kissed her. But a moment later, she pushed him away. "What are you …"
"They paid well. They've their own food, and can make do in here for the night. Then they'll be on their way to the Mountains tomorrow. Up there, no one cares what we do. There's no danger, Tel, you worry too much."
"I have to worry for two, for you haven't the sense to. I've food ready, but not enough for all this lot. Why didn't you send a bird to warn me?"
"I did. Didn't it get here? Maybe the storm delayed it."
"That's what you always say when you don't think to do it."
"Let it go, woman. I've good tidings for you. Let's go back to your house and talk." Nik's arm rested easily about her waist as they left. It was up to his men to settle us. There was straw to sleep in and plenty of space to spread it. There was a dug well with a bucket outside for water. There was a small hearth at one end of the barn. The chimney smoked badly, but it sufficed to cook on. The barn was not warm, save in comparison to the weather outside. But no one complained. Nighteyes had stayed outside.
They've a coop full of chickens, he told me. And a pigeon coop, too.
Leave them alone, I warned him.
Starling started to leave with Nik's men when they went up to the house, but they stopped her at the door. "Nik says all of you are to stay inside tonight, in one place." The man shot a meaningful glance at me. In a louder voice, he called, "Get your water now, for we'll be bolting the door when we leave. It keeps the wind out better."
No one was fooled by his comment, but no one challenged it. Obviously the smuggler felt the less we knew of his bolthole, the better. That was understandable. Instead of complaining we fetched water. Out of habit, I replenished the animals' trough. As I hauled the fifth bucket, I wondered if I would ever lose the reflex of seeing to the beasts first. The pilgrims had devoted themselves to seeing to their own comfort. Soon I could smell food cooking on the hearth. Well, I had dried meat and hard bread. It would suffice.
You could be hunting with me. There's game here. They had a garden this summer and the rabbits are still coming for the stalks.
He sprawled in the lee of the chicken house, the bloody remnants of a rabbit across his forepaws. Even as he ate, he kept one eye on the snow-covered garden patch, watching for other game. I chewed a stick of dry meat glumly while I heaped up straw for Kettle's bed in the stall next to her horse. I was spreading her blanket over it when she returned from the fire carrying her teapot.
"Who put you in charge of my bedding?" she demanded. As I took a breath to reply, she added, "Here's tea if you've a cup to your name. Mine's in my bag on the cart. There's some cheese and dried apples there as well. Fetch it for us, there's a good lad."
As I did so, I heard Starling's voice and harp take up a tune. Singing for her supper, I didn't doubt. Well, it was what minstrels did, and I doubted she'd go hungry. I brought Kettle's bag back to her, and she portioned me out a generous share while eating lightly herself. We sat on our blankets and ate. During the meal, she kept glancing at me, and finally declared, "You've a familiar cast to your features, Tom. What part of Buck did you say you were from?"
"Buckkeep Town," I replied without thinking.
"Ah. And who was your mother?"
I hesitated, then declared, "Sal Flatfish." She had so many children running about Buckkeep Town, there was probably one named Tom.
"Fisherfolk? How did a fisherwoman's son end up a shepherd?"
"My father herded," I extemporized. "Between the two trades, we did well enough."
"I see. And they taught you courtly courtesies to old women. And you've an uncle in the Mountains. Quite a family."
"He took to wandering at an early age, and settled there." The badgering was beginning to make me sweat a little. I could tell she knew it, too. "What part of Buck did you say your family came from?" I asked suddenly.
"I didn't say," she replied with a small smile.
Starling suddenly appeared at the door of the stall. She perched on the edge of it and leaned over. "Nik said we'd cross the river in two days," she offered. I nodded, but said nothing. She came around the end of the stall and casually tossed her pack down beside mine. She followed it to sit leaning against it, her harp on her lap. "There are two couples down by the hearth, squabbling and bickering. Some water got into their travel bread, and all they can think to do is spit about whose fault it is. And one of the children is sick and puking. Poor little thing. The man who is so angry about the wet bread keeps going on about it's just a waste of food to feed the boy until he stops being sick."
"That would be Rally. A more conniving, tightfisted man I never met," Kettle observed genially. "And the boy, Selk. He's been sick on and off since we left Chalced. And before, like as not. I think his mother thinks Eda's shrine can cure him. She's grasping at straws, but she has the gold to do so. Or did."
It started off around of gossiping between the two. I leaned in the corner and listened with half an ear and dozed. Two days to the river, I promised myself. And how much longer to the Mountains? I broke in to ask Starling if she knew.
"Nik says there's no way to tell that, it all depends on weather. But he told me not to worry about it." Her fingers wandered idly over the strings of her harp. Almost instantly, two children appeared in the door of the stall.
"Are you going to sing again?" asked the girl. She was a spindly little child of about six, her dress much worn. There were bits of straw in her hair.
"Would you like me to?"
For answer, they came bounding in to sit on either side of her. I had expected Kettle to complain at this invasion, but she said nothing, even when the girl settled comfortably against her. Kettle began to pick the straw from the child's hair with her twisted old fingers. The little girl had dark eyes and clutched a puppet with an embroidered face. When she smiled up at Kettle, I could see they were not strangers.
"Sing the one about the old woman and her pig," the boy begged Starling.
I stood up and gathered my pack. "I need to get some sleep," I excused myself. I suddenly could not bear to be around the children.
I found an empty stall nearer the door of the barn and bedded down there. I could hear the mutter of the pilgrims' voices at their hearth. Some quarreling still seemed to be going on. Starling sang the song about the woman, the stile, and the pig, and then a song about an apple tree. I heard the footsteps of a few others as they came to sit and listen to the music. I told myself they'd be wiser to sleep, and closed my own eyes.
All was dark and still when she came to find me in the night. She stepped on my hand in the dark, and then near dropped her pack on my head. I said nothing, even when she stretched out beside me. She spread her blankets out to cover me as well, then wiggled in under the edge of mine. I didn't move. Suddenly I felt her hand touch my face questioningly. "Fitz?" she asked softly in the darkness.
"What?"
"How much do you trust Nik?"
"I told you. Not at all. But I think he'll get us to the Mountains, For his own pride, if nothing else." I smiled in the dark. "A smuggler's reputation must be perfect, among those who know of it. He'll get us there."
"Were you angry at me, earlier today?" When I said nothing, she added, "You gave me such a serious look this morning."
"Does the wolf bother you?" I asked her as bluntly.
She spoke quietly. "It's true then?"
"Did you doubt it before?"
"The Witted part … yes. I thought it an evil lie they had told about you. That the son of a prince could be Witted … You did not seem a man who would share his life with an animal." The tone of her voice left me no doubt as to how she regarded such a habit.
"Well. I do." A tiny spark of anger made me forthright. "He's everything to me. Everything. I have never had a truer friend, willing without question to lay his life down for mine. And more than his life. It is one thing to be willing to die for another. It is another to sacrifice the living of one's life for another. That is what he gives me. The same sort of loyalty I give to my king."
I had set myself to thinking. I'd never put our relationship in those terms before.
"A king and a wolf," Starling said quietly. More softly she added, "Do you care for no one else?"
"Molly."
"Molly?"
"She's at home. Back in Buck. She's my wife." A queer little tremor of pride shivered through me as I said the words. My wife.
Starling sat up in the blankets, letting in a draft of cold air. I tugged at them vainly as she asked, "A wife? You have a wife?"
"And a child. A little girl." Despite the cold and the darkness, I grinned at those words. "My daughter," I said quietly, simply to hear how the words sounded. "I have a wife and a daughter at home."
She flung herself down in the darkness beside me. "No you don't!" she denied it with an emphatic whisper. "I'm a minstrel, Fitz. If the Bastard had married, the word would have gone round. In fact, there were rumors you were for Celerity, Duke Brawndy's daughter."
"It was done quietly," I told her.
"Ah. I see. You're not married at all. You've a woman, is what you're trying to say."
The words stung me. "Molly is my wife," I said firmly. "In every way that matters to me, she is my wife."
"And in the ways that might matter to her? And a child?" Starling asked me quietly.
I took a deep breath. "When I go back, that will be the first thing we remedy. It is promised to me, by Verity himself, that when he is king, I should marry whomever I wished." Some part of me was aghast at how freely I was speaking to her. Another part asked, what harm could it do for her to know? And there was relief in being able to speak of it.
"So you do go to find Verity?"
"I go to serve my king. To lend whatever aid I may to Kettricken and Verity's heir-child. And then to go on, to beyond the Mountains, to find and restore my king. So he may drive the Red-Ships from the Six Duchies coast and we may know peace again."
For a moment all was silence save for the slicing wind outside the barn. Then she snorted softly. "Do even half of that, and I shall have my hero song."
"I have no desire to be a hero. Only to do what I must to be free to live my own life."
"Poor Fitz. None of us is ever free to do that."
"You seem very free to me."
"Do I? To me it seems as if every step I take carries me deeper into a mire, and the more I struggle, the more firmly I embed myself."
"How is that?"
She gave a choked laugh. "Look about you. Here I am, sleeping in straw and singing for my supper, gambling that there will eventually be a way to cross this river and go on to the Mountains. And if I get through all that, have I achieved my goal? No. I still must dangle after you until you do something song worthy."
"You really needn't," I said in some dismay at the prospect. "You could go on your way, making your way as a minstrel. You seem to do well enough at it."
"Well enough. Well enough for a traveling minstrel. You've heard me sing, Fitz. I've a good enough voice, and nimble enough fingers. But I am not extraordinary, and that is what it takes to win a position as keep minstrel. That's assuming there will be any more keeps in five years or so. I've no mind to sing to a Red-Ship audience."
For a moment we were both quiet; considering.
"You see," she went on after a time, "I've no one anymore. Parents and brother gone. My old master gone, Lord Bronze gone, who was partial to me mostly for my master's sake. All gone when the keep burned. The Raiders left me for dead, you know, or I'd truly be dead." For the first time, I heard hints of an old fear in her voice. She was quiet for a time, thinking of all that she would not mention. I rolled to face her. "I've only myself to rely on. For now, for always. Only myself. And there's a limit to how long a minstrel can wander about singing for coins in inns. If you wish to be comfortable when you're old, you have to earn a place in a keep. Only a truly great song will do that for me, Fitz. And I've a limited amount of time in which to find one." Her voice grew softer, her breath warm as she said, "And so I shall follow you. For great events seem to happen in your wake."
"Great events?" I scoffed.
She hitched herself closer to me. "Great events. The abdication of the throne by Prince Chivalry. The triumph against the Red-Ships at Antler Island. Were not you the one who saved Queen Kettricken from Forged ones the night she was attacked, right before the Vixen Queen's Hunt? Now, there's a song I wish I had written. To say nothing of precipitating the riots the night of Prince Regal's coronation. Let's see. Rising from the dead, making an attempt on Regal's life right inside Tradeford Hall, and then escaping unscathed. Killing half a dozen of his Guard single-handedly while manacled … I had a feeling I should have followed you that day. But I'd say I've a good chance of witnessing something noteworthy if I but held on to your shirttail from now on."
I'd never thought of those events as a list of things I'd caused. I wanted to protest that I had not caused any of them, that I had merely been caught up in the grinding wheels of history. Instead I just sighed. "All I want to do is go home to Molly and our little daughter."
"She probably longs for the same thing. It can't be easy for her, wondering when you'll come back, or if."
"She doesn't wonder. She already believes me dead."
After a time, Starling said hesitantly, "Fitz. She thinks you dead. How can you believe she will be there waiting when you return, that she won't find someone else?"
I had played a dozen scenes in my head. That I might die before I returned home, or that when I returned, Molly would see me as a liar and a Witted one, that she would be repelled by my scars. I fully expected her to be angry at me for not letting her know I was alive. But I would explain that I had believed she had found another man and was happy with him. And then she'd understand and forgive me. After all, she was the one who had left me. Somehow I had never imagined returning home to find she had replaced me with someone else. Stupid. How could I not have foreseen that might happen, simply because it was the worst possible thing I could imagine? I spoke more to myself than Starling. "I suppose I'd better get word to her. Send her a message, somehow. But I don't know exactly where she is. Nor who I'd entrust with such a message."
"How long have you been gone?" she demanded to know.
"From Molly? Almost a year."
"A year! Men," Starling muttered softly to herself. "They go off to fight or to travel and they expect their lives to be waiting for them when they get back. You expect the women who stay behind to keep the fields and raise the children and patch the roof and mind the cow, so that when you walk back in the door, you can find your chair still by the fire and hot bread on the table. Yes, and a warm, willing body in your bed, still waiting for you." She was beginning to sound angry. "How many days have you been gone from her? Well, that's how many days she has had to cope without you. Time doesn't stop for her just because you're gone. How do you think of her? Rocking your baby beside a warm hearth? How about this? The baby is inside, crying and untended on the bed, while she's out in the rain and wind trying to split wood for kindling because the fire went out while she was walking to and from the mill to get a bit of meal ground."
I pushed the image away. No. Burrich wouldn't let that happen. "In my mind, I see her in many ways. Not just in good times," I defended myself. "And she isn't completely alone. A friend of mine is looking after her."
"Ah, a friend," Starling agreed smoothly. "And is he handsome, spirited, and bold enough to steal any woman's heart?"
I snorted. "No. He's older. He's stubborn, and cranky. But he's also steady and reliable and thoughtful. He always treats women well. Politely and kindly. He'll take good care of both her and the child." I smiled to myself, and knew the truth of it as I added, "He'll kill any man that even looks a threat at them."
"Steady, kind, and thoughtful? Treats women well?" Starling's voice rose with feigned interest. "Do you know how rare a man like that is? Tell me who he is, I want him for myself. If your Molly will let him go."
I confess I knew a moment's unease. I remembered a day when Molly had teased me, saying I was the best thing to come out of the stables since Burrich. When I had been skeptical as to whether that was a compliment, she had told me he was well regarded among the ladies, for all his silences and aloof ways. Had she ever looked at Burrich and considered him? No. It was I she had made love with that day, clinging to me although we could not be wed. "No. She loves me. Only me."
I had not intended to say the words aloud. Some note in my voice must have touched a kinder place in Starling's nature. She gave over tormenting me. "Oh. Well, then. I still think you should send her word. So she has hope to keep her strong."
"I will," I promised myself. As soon as I reached Jhaampe. Kettricken would know some way by which I could get word back to Burrich. I could send back just a brief written message, not too plainly worded in case it was intercepted. I could ask him to tell her I was alive and I would return to her. But how would I get the message to him?
I lay silently musing in the dark. I did not know where Molly was living. Lacey would possibly know. But I could not send word via Lacey without Patience finding out. No. Neither of them must know. There had to be someone we both knew, someone I could trust. Not Chade. I could trust him, but no one would know how to find Chade, even if they knew him by that name.
Somewhere in the barn, a horse thudded a hoof against a stall wall. "You're very quiet," Starling whispered.
"I'm thinking."
"I didn't mean to upset you."
"You didn't. You just made me think."
"Oh." A pause. "I am so cold."
"Me, too. But it's colder outside."
"That doesn't make me the least bit warmer. Hold me."
It was not a request. She burrowed into my chest, tucking her head under my chin. She smelled nice. How did women always manage to smell nice? Awkwardly I put my arms around her, grateful for the added warmth but uneasy at the closeness. "That's better," she sighed. I felt her body relax against mine. She added, "I hope we get a chance to bathe soon."
"Me, too."
"Not that you smell that bad."
"Thank you," I said a bit sourly. "Mind if I go back to sleep now?"
"Go ahead." She put a hand on my hip and added, "If that's all you can think of to do."
I managed to draw a breath. Molly, I told myself. Starling was so warm and near, smelling so sweet. Her minstrel's ways made nothing of what she suggested. To her. But what was Molly, truly, to me? "I told you. I'm married." It was hard to speak.
"Um. And she loves you, and you obviously love her. But we are the ones who are here, and cold. If she loves you that much, would she begrudge you an added bit of warmth and comfort on such a cold night?"
It was difficult, but I forced myself to think about it a bit, then smiled to myself in the darkness. "She wouldn't just begrudge me. She'd knock my head off my shoulders."
"Ah." Starling laughed softly into my chest. "I see." Gently she drew her body away from mine. I longed to reach out and pull her back to me. "Perhaps we'd better just go to sleep, then. Sleep well, Fitz."
So I did, but not right away and not without regrets.
The night brought us rising winds, and when the barn doors were unbolted in the morning, a fresh layer of snow greeted us. I worried that if it got much deeper, we'd have serious problems with the wagons. But Nik seemed confident and genial as he loaded us up. He bid a fond farewell to his lady and we set forth again. He led us away from the place by a different trail from the one we had followed to get there. This one was rougher, and in a few places the snow had drifted deep enough that the wagon bodies gouged a path through it. Starling rode beside us for part of the morning, until Nik sent a man back to ask her if she'd come ride with them. She thanked him cheerily for the invitation and promptly went to join them.
In the early afternoon, we came back to the road. It seemed to me that we had gained little by avoiding the road for so long, but doubtless Nik had had his reasons. Perhaps he simply did not want to create a beaten track to his hiding place. That evening our shelter was crude, some tumbledown huts by the riverbank. The thatched roofs were giving way, so there were fingers of snow on the floors in places and a great plume of snow that had blown in under the door. The horses had no shelter at all other than the lee of the cabins. We watered them at the river and they each got a portion of grain, but no hay awaited them here.
Nighteyes went with me to gather firewood, for while there was enough by the hearths to start a fire for a meal, there was not enough to last the night. As we walked down to the river to look for driftwood I mused on how things had changed between us. We spoke less than we once had, but I felt that I was more aware of him than I had ever been before. Perhaps there was less need to speak. But we had also both changed in our time apart. When I looked at him now, I sometimes saw the wolf first and then my companion.
I think you have finally begun to respect me as I deserve.
There was teasing but also truth in that statement. He appeared suddenly in a patch of brush on the riverbank to my left, loped easily across the snow swept trail, and somehow managed to vanish in little more than snow dunes and leafless, scrubby bushes.
You're no longer a puppy, that's true.
Neither of us are cubs anymore. We've both discovered that on this journey. You no longer think of yourself as a boy at all.
I trudged wordlessly through the snow and pondered that. I did not know quite when I had finally decided I was a man and not a boy any longer, but Nighteyes was right. Oddly, I felt a moment of loss for that vanished lad with the smooth face and easy courage.
I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf.
Why not wait until you've been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.
The track we followed was barely a cart wide and visible only as a swatch where no brush poked up above the snow. The wind was busy sculpting the snow into dunes and banks. I walked into the wind, and my forehead and nose soon burned with its rough kiss. The terrain was little different from what we had passed for the last few days, but the experience of moving through it with only the wolf, silently, made it seem a different world. Then we came to the river.
I stood on top of the bank and looked across. Ice frosted the edges in places, and occasional knots of driftwood washing down the river sometimes carried a burden of dirty ice and clinging snow. The current was strong, as the swiftly bobbing driftwood showed. I tried to imagine it frozen over and could not. On the far side of that rushing flood were foothills dense with evergreens that gave onto a plain of oaks and willows that came right down to the water's edge. I suppose the water had stopped the fire's spread those years ago. I wondered if this side of the river had ever been as thickly treed as that.
Look, Nighteyes growled wistfully. I could feel the heat of his hunger as we eyed a tall buck that had come down to the river to water. He lifted his antlered head, sensing us, but regarded us calmly, knowing he was safe. I found my mouth watering with Nighteyes' thoughts of fresh meat. Hunting will be much better on the other side.
I hope so. He leaped from the bank to the snow-swathed gravel and rock of the river edge, and padded off upriver. I followed him less gracefully, finding dry sticks as I went. The walking was rougher down here, and the wind crueler, laden as it was with the river's cold. But it was also more interesting walking, somehow laden with more possibility. I watched Nighteyes range ahead of me. He moved differently now. He had lost a lot of his puppyish curiosity. The deer skull that once would have required a careful sniffing now got no more than a swift flipping over to be sure it was truly bare bones before he moved on. He was purposeful as he checked tangles of driftwood to see if game might be sheltering underneath it. He watched the undercut banks of the river as well, sniffing for game sign. He sprang upon and devoured a small rodent of some kind that had ventured out of a den under the bank. He dug briefly at the den's entrance, then thrust his muzzle in to snuff thoroughly. Satisfied there were no other inhabitants to dig out, he trotted on.
I found myself watching the river as I followed him. It became more daunting, not less, the more I saw of it. The depth of it and the strength of its current were attested to by the immense snaggle-rooted logs that swung and turned as the waters rushed them along. I wondered if the windstorm had been worse upriver to tear loose such giants, or if the river had slowly eaten away their foundations until the trees had tottered into the water.
Nighteyes continued to range ahead of me. Twice more I saw him leap and pin a rodent to the earth with his teeth and paws. I was not sure what they were; they did not look like rats exactly, and the sleekness of their coats seemed to indicate they'd be at home in the water.
Meat doesn't really need a name, Nighteyes observed wryly, and I was forced to agree with him. He flipped his prey gleefully into the air and caught it again as it somersaulted down. He worried the dead thing fiercely and then launched it once more, dancing after it on his hind legs. For a moment his simple pleasure was contagious. He had the satisfaction of a successful hunt, meat to fill his belly and time to eat it unmolested. This time it went winging over my head, and I leaped up to catch the limp body and then fling it up higher still. He sprang high after it, all four legs leaving the ground. He seized it cleanly, then crouched, showing it to me, daring me to chase him. I dropped my armload of wood and sprang after him. He evaded me easily, then looped back to me, daring me, rushing past me just out of arm's reach as I flung myself at him.
"Hey!"
We both halted in our play: I got up slowly from the ground. It was one of Nik's men, standing far up the riverbank and staring at us. He carried his bow. "Get some wood and come back now," he ordered me. I glanced about, but could see no reason for the edgy tone to his voice. Nevertheless, I gathered my scattered armload of wood and headed back to the huts.
I found Kettle squinting at a scroll by the firelight, ignoring those who were trying to cook around her. "What are you reading?" I asked her.
"The writings of Cabal the White. A prophet and seer of Kimoalan times."
I shrugged. The names meant nothing to me.
"Through his guidance, a treaty was wrought that put an end to a hundred years of war. It enabled three folk to become one people. Knowledge was shared. Many kinds of foods that once grew only in the southern valleys of Kimoala came into common usage. Ginger, for instance. And kim-oats."
"One man did that?"
"One man. Or two, perhaps, if you count the general he persuaded to conquer without destroying. Here, he speaks of him. `A catalyst was DarAles for his time, a changer of hearts and lives. He came not to be hero, but to enable the hero in others. He came, not to fulfill prophecies, but to open the doors to new futures. Such is ever the task of the catalyst.' Above, he has written that it is in every one of us to be a catalyst in our own time. What do you think of that, Tom?"
"I'd rather be a shepherd," I answered her truthfully. "Catalyst" was not a word I cherished.
That night I slept with Nighteyes at my side. Kettle snored softly not far from me, while the pilgrims huddled together in one end of the hut. Starling had chosen to sleep in the other hut with Nik and some of his men. For a time, the sound of her harp and voice were occasionally. borne to me on gusts of wind.
I closed my eyes and tried to dream of Molly. Instead I saw a burning village in Buck as the Red-Ships pulled away from it. I joined a young lad as he put on sail in the dark, to ram his dory into the side of a Red-Ship. He flung a burning lantern on board her and followed it with a bucket of cheap fish oil such as poor folk burned in their lamps. The sail blazed up as the boy sheered away from the burning ship. Behind him the curses and cries of the burning men rose with the flames. I rode with him that night, and felt his bitter triumph. He had nothing left, no family, no home, but he had spilled some of the blood that had spilled his. I understood the tears that wet his grinning face only too well.