The most of the Colderwild contingent left Andrastir over the next two days, in groups of three or four when they did not simply slip off without ceremony, alone. Rory took off by himself, sighing that he had better get on with Master Lee’s challenge. The Earl of Maldan, she learned, was King Odhru’s strong right arm, lately blood-sworn to destroy the upstart Deorgard; why Leoff wanted his latest mistress, no one could fathom.

“But that a’n’t my business,” he shrugged. “Master Lee’s not even Maldan: he’s out of Elomar, like Dav. Wish me luck, Sugar.” She did; and kissed him soundly, as well.

She herself was sent home in the company of two knights, neither of whom she knew. The one, a muscular man of about forty, had not been home to Colderwild in over a year; he gave his name as Istander, claimed the outlands of Feillantir as home, and sounded so much like the Loremaster that she now placed Merrithorander’s unfamiliar accent. Not that Istander used it much; she quickly discovered that he could go for days without bothering to speak. As for their companion, he was wholly Silent. Not till their second day of travel did she realize that he was the very same boor she first met in the library, his black and torrid scorn abandoned, and he only grinned when he saw Rothesay recognize him at last. Istander called him Stormath.

They travelled easily, making no great speed, idling up the Maldan side of the Holywell and openly flouting Geillan ire. Nearly every night they called at some holding, naming themselves strangers. The Geillari owed three nights’ hospitality to anyone, friend or foe, who made such a claim; only such a guest’s striking the first blow released them from that geas. Every hall welcomed them, stinting nothing, indeed sometimes seeming bent on killing them by filling them till they burst. Thus bearded, the Geillari did their utmost to provoke the Runedaur into making that first, freeing strike, only to have the deadly cheer of Stormath and the implacable contentment of Istander twist frustration’s knife deeper. Rothesay felt as if she might suffocate in the smoke of smoldering Geillan rage.

In one holding, however, a queer, cold taint roiled beneath the anger. The Geillari seemed distracted, sullen and edgy, unable to properly hate the three unwelcome guests; temper broke out in erratic shards, swiftly blunted, and though often aimed at the Runedaur, seemed meant for some other target. One man broke courtesy so far as to hurl his eating dagger at Stormath; Stormath’s placid civility, taking the knife from the air as if it had only been offered for the guest’s use, allowed the masque of hospitality to lurch harmlessly on.

Rothesay slept in fits that night. Once, she bolted to a stand, ears ringing with a fragment of a far-off scream; it might have been only dream-sound, but at her feet, Stormath rose silently onto one elbow and for a long time they listened together. The quiet breathing of fifty men whispered through the great hall. Lulled at last into embarrassment at taking such fright, Rothesay eased back down onto her blanket. Stormath did not move.

They accepted hot broth at dawn, to depart before the sun was full up. The other halls they had antagonized had offered effusive protest when they wanted to leave, in some to the edge of belligerence, as though to force them to overstay their three days’ grace. Here, though not a murmur objected to their departure, a dull, hopeless pleading seemed to well from the kin-thralls who fed them and fetched their horses. And all three horses shied and danced as they approached the lapping arms of the palisade, and in the half-light Rothesay could see why. If the living made no objection to their going, the dead did: pale shivering forms filled the gate and the passage beyond, and reached and grabbed for the three riders. She wondered what they wanted, but Stand-in-grass demanded her whole attention to pass them.

Istander and Stormath set a slow pace that day. Rothesay thought they were as sleepy as she. Istander mused aloud about their queer lodgings. “A loud ’un, th’ chief o’ they folk. But his son, quiet as a stane. Didsta mark him?”

She had indeed. “Once I saw this wolf caught in a trap. I thought he kind of looked like that wolf.”

Stormath nodded. “Aye,” said Istander as if in reply, and pulled out a gold coil of three wraps. “Midnight.” Stormath chuckled darkly, tossing his head in dismissal, and Istander put his rejected bet away.

Her companions seemed not the least bit drowsy, yet they idled through the forested hills. She yearned to put as many miles as she could between her and that creepy village, but Istander would stop and meticulously examine and sketch out every other weedy flower, and Stormath read a book as he let his horse follow Istander’s, Rothesay’s, or its own appetite. At long last, just before she had made up her mind to scream with frustration, Stormath cocked a brown eye at the westering sun, an orange star pricking through the thick roof of leaves. Istander picked out a camping site where a thicket of young hazel edged a clearing, and sent Rothesay to find water. They could not have come more than two leagues from the holding. “Hey,” he chuckled as she looked aghast, “at least tha canst sleep early, then!”

The shadow of evening spread slowly through the forest. Rothesay did sleep early, pillowed on moss, blanketed by heavy warm air smelling of trees and horses, comforted by crickets. If she never slept in a bed again, she thought, drifting off, she could count it no great loss if this were the gain. Except she could do without the erratic thunk, thunk of her fellow travellers amusing themselves with a knife-throwing contest.

She woke abruptly, wondering how they were even seeing their target, for they had made no fire, the evening being so warm. But they had stopped their game; instead, from some way behind her came a man’s voice, a grovelling voice, and as she strained for the words, she saw the forest before her gleaming as if every twig and leaf had been crafted of copper and gold. There was a fire—must be a veritable bonfire!—behind her, somewhere near the voice. Before she could leap up in surprise, a hand squeezed her shoulder and shook it gently. Stormath put a finger to his lips.

“Ye maun help us, masters,” she heard the Geillan voice say, heavy with surrender. “We can take na more.”

“Iiif youu cann take noo morrre,” returned a weird, echoing boom of a voice that sounded mostly like Istander, through some sort of speaking-tube, “then rise, rise annd strike with yourrr own haaand!”

There was a pause. Then, in tones lower still and yet suddenly less dreary, the Geillath grumbled, “Easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with it.”

“WHAAT?” roared the unearthly Istander-voice. Rothesay sat up silently, and twisted about to see, six yards and as many old trees away, the great fire in the clearing where she had left their horses tied. On his knees, a man in Geillan garb flopped to his face before it. No horse stood there now, nor could she see Istander. His voice seemed to come from all points at once.

But the visitor seemed to have regained some spine. He sat up again, and though he spread his hands as if in supplication to the flames themselves, he repeated, more boldly, “You do not pay our price. For us to strike, ’t is kinslaying, and the very crime we would see punished!”

Only silence replied. The man—she recognized him now, a warrior of only modest rank from the holding—made no move, his hands still held out to the fire, waiting. There was nothing else he could do. He had passed his own hall’s ghosts, dared the night and the wood-spirits and all the entrapments of Dagn and Dere, to risk the ire of the Runedaur. He had paid too dearly to depart empty-handed—whatever it was that he wanted.

Istander seemed to materialize beside Stormath, in the shadow of one great tree. He must, she thought, have spent no little time with Raven’s Trace, to pass so soundlessly. The two knights exchanged glances that suggested some sort of concord, and then they looked expectantly at her. Startled, she waved vague hands, Istander grinned, and raised his curled fingers as a tube to his mouth.

“And ourrr price? Whaat will youu offer DEATH!”—he shouted the word, and the man jumped so hard he came to his feet, and Rothesay almost joined him—“to take yourr kinnsmaaaaann fromm youu?”

The man shuddered, and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Then slowly he knelt again and reached to a leather sack that slumped at his side, and with obvious effort hauled it in front of him. He loosened its thongs, stretched its mouth wide, and poured onto the bare earth before the fire a stream of seeming flames: gold rings, gold chains, gold amulets, golden brooches.

Stormath nudged Istander, passing to him a cloth bag no bigger than his palm. Istander stood and lobbed it high; it dropped as if from the branches, or the sky, right between the Geillath’s knees. The man leaped once again to his feet, and looked wildly about.

“Gooo hooome,” Istander intoned. “Pooour that inn thy evenning’s meead. Annd then—as you love your claan!—see that none stirr fromm their cots tillll Dawnn’s trumpet call! Heeed nooo sounnd norr cry! Annyone abrooad the night muust DIIIIIE.”

Rothesay’s last glimpse of Istander was of his one hand swirling in a pattern of magic, and the vast fire snuffed out like a single candle.

What am I doing? she thought frantically. Well, yes, fine, I’m sneaking outside the chief’s house of a strange clan in the middle of the night and talking the dogs into thinking we’re all family here, to help a couple of really strange men I hardly even know sneak into said house to steal said chief’s son. A year ago, a season ago, I was learning to keep a house and wondering if I’d ever have a son or daughter of my own and would they be pretty and strong and now I’m a warrioress in training who’s about to have someone else’s son who is by all accounts raving mad, and if his family wakes up to it, we’re all dead.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Just when I think life can’t get any stranger, it does.

Good boy! Who’s a fine dog, then? Yes, yes, I’ve got a bit of rabbit for you, too, love.

She thumped the shoulders of—well, approximately ‘Bite Squirrels’—affectionately, and sighed. At least this part made sense, simple sense. The dogs knew them, after all. She had visited more with them anyway, when here as a guest, than with their uneasy masters; and she had learned that Stormath and Istander had a habit of seducing the canines wherever they visited, “for never dosta know when tha mayst want a friend.”

A low, eerie hoot barely crossed the threshold of hearing, from the darkened chief’s hall off to her right. Her head snapped around. All but invisible, Stormath beckoned to her from the doorway: she could only just make out his face and hand, as his dark clothes were below the grasp even of her night-sight, and then that too vanished. She patted the dog again, urged him to stay where he was, and hurried after Stormath. Bite Squirrels trotted cheerfully after.

Why the rooftree carvings of the family spirits did not scream aloud at their trespass, she did not know. Perhaps Istander had some magic to keep them silent. They seemed strangely inattentive. Or perhaps it was something to do with the strange speech he had made all that day:

He had started at breakfast, breaking his bannock thoughtfully and musing aloud, “A devil’s bargain, it is, the chief’s. He cannot forswear his own son, for his other folk must think, ‘If he turn agin his own boy, how shall I know him stand by me?’ Nor yet can he let it a’ go on, for then still his people must doubt him!”

“Let all what go on?” she had asked, having missed the most of last night’s doings, and with Istander’s explanation, wished she had never asked. The young man, it seemed, was a blithe horror: having tortured kittens and piglets to death as a child, he now did the like by the clan’s slaves, kin-thralls and fine-thralls, anyone too lowly to be championed against the chief’s only son.

“And, and that warrior in the night? He came to ask us to, um, kill the killer for them?”

Stormath had made a pensive noise. Istander shrugged. “Came to ask us to relieve them of the burden. They said not how.”

“But they’ll assume we’ll, er, kill him,” she observed. “Er. Uh. Will we?”

“Might. Might not.”

Stormath tipped his head meaningfully towards the south. She understood: they would take the creature with them, home to Colderwild, and worry about it there. Her stomach sank at the thought of the long trek in such horrid company.

“Er. But it’s still not right, stealing him away from his home and all.”

“So it is not. Nor yet right to leave him among those powerless to stay him.”

Stormath flipped a pretty brooch to her. Ah, yes: especially not when we’ve been paid to remove him.

“We are priests,” Istander went on. “Who better than us, to hear prayers for release?” He winked at the reminder of the Silent One’s power.

“Prayer!” she spat, flinging the brooch back at Stormath. “It’s assassin’s pay!”

“Is it?” Istander asked mildly, ducking as Stormath deflected the brooch at him. “Didsta hear him, last night? Tha’st never seen a killer’s contract made, girl, a man’s right to breathe weighed out with no more passion than tips a tradesman’s scale. ’T was not that, that brought our supplicant out in the mirk!

“Think on’t: what wouldsta do, theyself, if tha wert ane of they?”

“Err, lock him up?”

Stormath growled. In his dark face she saw clearly that he, at least, would rather die: that, to his mind, killing a man was less an evil than hobbling him.

For the rest of that day, Istander came back again and again to the challenge of the clan’s point of view, until it seemed to her as though he were trying to make her, by sheer force of talk, into blood-kin at that accursed hall, or at least heart-kindred. She did not want their dilemma. Chance had made it theirs, not hers, and she felt sorry for them in direct proportion to her relief that it was so. Istander, and Stormath too in his odd wordless way, seemed bent on making it her problem. Only when the two of them turned now and again to consider tactics, did she have any relief from them.

Stand-in-grass was no help. Once he grasped that a member of that human herd had gone bad, hurting the herd, he saw the way clear. Why did not the great mare of the herd drive the crazed one away? The wolves might get him, but that was the bad one’s problem: he himself had broken what bound him to the safety of the others.

Because that’s not—that’s not human. Because that’s like doing just what he did, even if it is for a better reason. Or it seems like a better reason. And that’s not good enough.

Abruptly, she wondered if she could talk to Stormath like this. Excusing herself from the vaguely baffled horse, she marched back to the silent Runedaur where he lay reading his book again, plucked it away from him (which he must have permitted, she reflected later), and asked him what in hell they were doing.

Stormath was impressed, but he wasted little time being so. They assume we will kill him, he replied far clearer and far more quickly than any horse or dog; but they do not know that we will: that is their one solace. Driving him out is all but certain death, to him or to whomever he might later take up with, and that must be on their hands if they take that course. But surrendering him to us: what do they know, but that we might make him Runedaur? Stormath laughed. Surely they must think him a likely enough candidate!

Then he’ll be our problem, she brooded. Then it’s us who get to worry about what to do with him.

We have more powers than they. And yet, we might kill him. But if we do, it will not be as they would kill: not in fear, nor anger, nor loathing; not for revenge nor even as prevention.

And that makes it better somehow?

Stormath shrugged. Death comes. If through our hand, then at least He comes without evil intent, that the soul may be the sweeter when it returns.

Rothesay thanked him, returned his book, and edged away. There was something he was not saying, even in this wordless way, something that seemed as large and important as the earth under their feet, but she could not give it a name.

Now she looked up in the dim night at the carvings of the clan’s gods. Istander had done a fair job of talking all three of them into something close to sworn fealty here; she could almost believe he loved this Geillan holding nearly as dearly as his own kin. Indeed, if she had not known that he had only met them but three nights since, she would have thought so. And maybe the guardian spirits themselves had been tricked. Though for her part, it was not wholly trickery. The more she had thought about it, the sorrier she felt for these people, and memory of the wretched kin-thralls who had brought them breakfast-broth wrenched at her heart and drove her to a silence and a caution she had not before achieved.

She tiptoed among the sleeping men—men who, if she and her friends succeeded, would wake to peace once more. Bite Squirrels followed, making the braided rushes crackle, and now and again someone snorted and brushed a wagging, hairy tail out of his nose. Her heart leaped to her throat, but no one woke, all bound securely in the heavy arms of the Runedaur herbs in their mead.

Stormath pointed out a larger cot under a window, and she looked down on the face of their horrible prize. Istander stood opposite. She saw his teeth flash pale in the darkness, and he mimed lifting.

Oh, right, well, at least I’m good for something, she thought sourly, and lifted the man as silently as she could. For all her care, his head lolled suddenly and struck the cot frame with a whack that sounded like a thunderclap to her wild nerves, but he never stirred.

Her companions guided her safely back out through the maze of men. Stormath opened the great gate. Bite Squirrels barked one indignant demand for more rabbit as she walked out with her prize and with Istander, and Stormath shut the gate again. She heard the huge log bar slide home within, a soft scrabble as Stormath climbed the wall, and then they all started back through the midnight forest to their waiting horses. Finding her burden well and truly drugged, irritably she draped him shawl-like over her shoulders, nor took much care to spare his head a banging.

The only virtue to the rest of their trip home was that it was swift. She thought she had travelled fast and hard with Dav; she erred. Their miserable baggage made for miserable company, if he were given his voice, cursing his captors with the most obscene words Rothesay had ever heard. So the two knights shut him up by tethering him to one saddle or another and travelling too briskly to leave him breath to spare for it. When they made their brief camps, they gagged him till mealtime, and if he preferred to curse than eat, why, they gagged him again and let him starve.

Strangest to Rothesay was the air of the Runedaur. They might have been malicious, spiteful, vengeful, to such a hurtful creature as this; might have mocked him with his new powerlessness, or devised a hundred partial payments for the crimes of which his own clan accused him. Instead, as they bound or unbound him, saw to his feeding, his toilet, or his bedding, he might have been only an odd two-legged horse for all the feeling they displayed. Istander made no more effort to bespeak him—whose name they never asked, and he never volunteered—than he did to Rothesay.

On reflection, she could think of only one instance wherein they made any effort to communicate something to the man. As they sat about their first camp (already beyond Carastloel, so quickly had they fled his clan’s land), Istander and Stormath made a game of fetching logs, ever thicker and heavier, for Rothesay to break with her hands for their fire. They played, entirely ignoring the prisoner, but long after, it finally sank in on her that the game had been staged for him. Surely he had seemed just a little more cautious after that.