She was not dead yet. She collapsed at Valmar’s feet, holding a hand ineffectually across the gaping wound, but her eyes still flashed at him. “They will kill you when they find what you’ve done to me!” she croaked.
He stared at her aghast, his sword dangling from his hand and still incongruously singing. Blood ran across the grass, staining her armor and matting her hair.
“The rest of the Hearthkeepers,” she said in a slightly stronger voice when he did not answer. “They are coming. Go!”
The horned riders were closer now, and the piercing blast of the horn came again.
“If you still want to serve your Wanderers,” she gasped desperately, “you cannot let the Wanderers’ enemies kill you! Go! Go now!”
Her words finally penetrated. She was right. The Hearthkeepers were the Wanderers’ enemies and-since he had just killed one-his. It would be not honor but utter folly to try to fight a whole band.
He thrust his sword, still all bloody, into its sheath and whirled, half-blind, toward the stallion. He had just destroyed whatever shred of honor he might still have had by killing a woman. The only spot of light left was that he might be able to warn the lords of voima that death was already present in their realm, warn them before their enemies found them.
“Valmar!” she called weakly behind him. “Take me with you!”
He had no time to argue, consider, or even think. The steel-clad riders were only a few hundred yards away and coming fast. He scooped her up and threw her across the horse’s neck. She seemed now to weigh almost nothing. The stallion began to run even before he was fully into the saddle.
With a leap, they were across the stream and running all out. Valmar dared a glance over his shoulder to see the riders stop, with cries and exclamations, at the pool of blood. While they hesitated the white stallion gained another quarter mile on them.
For this, he realized, was a true horse of voima. Far faster than it had run yesterday (yesterday?), they soared across the Wanderers’ realm, over hills and hedgerows, through woods and valleys. Most of the time they seemed airborne, as if the horse scarcely needed to put down a hoof to remind itself of earth. Not even Goldmane, Valmar thought, could have kept pace now.
He held the woman to him with one arm, his other hand on the reins but not really guiding, for this horse seemed to know where it was running. Her head, still helmeted, drooped, and the blood flowed from her neck onto the stallion’s mane. Then slowly the flow of blood ceased.
He expected her to go cold and stiff against him, but she still felt warm, and his hand on her breastplate could feel a beating as of her heart. Unless it was his own.
The stallion’s pace gradually slackened. Valmar realized he had not seen the band of Hearthkeepers in what must be hours. Maybe when they realized a mortal could kill one of them they had hesitated in their pursuit.
He pulled up on a hilltop from which he could see miles in all directions and where a spring broke gurgling from the earth. He slid from the stallion’s back and gently lifted the woman down.
She smiled, eyes bright as mirrors, and slipped her arms slowly around him. “I hope you are satisfied, Valmar Hadros’s son!” she said with a faint smile. “You terrified me as I have never before been terrified.”
He lowered her carefully to the grass and removed her armor and clothing. She still seemed very weak, and when he brought water from the spring in his helmet to wash away the congealed blood she lay still, watching his movements, letting him rinse the blood from her skin and hair.
“Don’t forget to wash yourself, including your sword,” she said, trying to laugh. “And your horse!”
There was now no wound at all on the side of her neck. His shirt, protected by his mail, was the only piece of clothing either of them had that had not been splashed with blood. It was much too big for her, but he slid it over her head and rolled up the sleeves. Karin, he realized with a pang, had sewn that shirt herself; there was the tiny crown embroidered on the hem which she put on everything she made for him.
“How about you terrifying me?” Valmar asked, helping the woman sit up. He found bread and cheese in the horse’s pack, food the Wanderers had sent with him, and offered it to her. “I thought I had killed you!”
“Remember?” she said, smiling wider now. Just for a second, there was terror again in her eyes, but she was doing her best to deny it. “I am immortal!”
The wind out of the sunset blew softly and steadily. “So you knew I could not harm you?”
“I did not know. And you did harm me, Valmar-when I saw my blood, which I had thought no mortal could draw, I too thought you had killed me. When I challenged you I was fairly sure you could not, but I thought there was only one way to be certain that death had not yet reached this realm.”
“You would have let yourself be killed for knowledge?”
“Knowledge to help the Hearthkeepers,” she said almost complacently, munching on bread. “Let me have some water to drink-this is dry.”
He too had been eating, but the cheese went tasteless in his mouth. “For your people, for your honor, you tried to make me kill you. To serve those to whom you are pledged you were willing to experience a death an immortal should never experience.” She nodded, taking another piece of bread. “But why,” he added after a moment, “when your own people were there to help you, did you tell me to take you with me?”
She swallowed and looked at him soberly, with no trace of laughter. “This dealing with mortals has consequences I had not expected. Over the years a few Hearthkeepers have left, tired of waiting for triumph, and joined themselves with mortal men, but I had never thought to be among them. I love you, Valmar Hadros’s son.”
He put his face in her lap, wrapped his arms around her waist, and sobbed. She gently stroked his hair until finally his tears and trembling ceased.