style="font-size:15px;"> Where are you going? Nighteyes asked lazily. He lay deeper in the shade and his coat camouflaged him surprisingly well there.
Water.
I went to the stream, splashed sticky rabbit blood from my face and hands, and then drank deeply. I washed my face again, dragging my nails through my beard to get the blood out. Abruptly I decided I couldn’t stand the beard. I didn’t intend to go where I expected to be recognized anyway. I went back to the shepherd’s hut to shave.
At the door, I wrinkled my nose at the musty smell. Nighteyes was right; sleeping inside had dampened my sense of smell. I could hardly believe I had abided in here. I padded in reluctantly, snorting out the man smells. It had rained a few nights ago. Damp had got into my dried meat and soured some of it. I sorted it out, wrinkling my nose at how far gone it was. Maggots were working in some of it. As I checked the rest of my meat supply carefully, I pushed aside a nagging sense of uneasiness. It was not until I took out the knife and had to clean a fine dusting of rust from it that I admitted it to myself.
It had been days since I had been here.
Possibly weeks.
I had no idea of time’s passage. I looked at the spoiled meat, at the dust that overlay my scattered possessions. I felt my beard, shocked at how much it had grown. Burrich and Chade had not left me here days ago. It had been weeks. I went to the door of the hut and looked out. Grass stood tall where there had been pathways across the meadow to the stream and Burrich’s fishing spot. The spring flowers were long gone, the berries green on the bushes. I looked at my hands, at dirt ingrained in the skin of my wrists, old blood caked and dried under my nails. At one time, eating raw flesh would have disgusted me. Now the notion of cooking meat seemed peculiar and foreign. My mind veered away and I did not want to confront myself. Later, I heard myself pleading, tomorrow, later, go find Nighteyes.
You are troubled, little brother?
Yes. I forced myself to add, You cannot help me with this. It is man trouble, a thing I must solve for myself.
Be a wolf instead, he advised lazily.
I did not have the strength to say either yes or no to that. I let it go by me. I looked down at myself, at my stained shirt and trousers. My clothing was caked with dirt and old blood, and my trousers tattered off into rags below my knees. With a shudder, I recalled the Forged ones and their ragged garments. What had I become? I tugged at the collar of my shirt and then averted my face from my own stink. Wolves were cleaner than this. Nighteyes groomed himself daily.
I spoke it aloud, and the rustiness of my voice only added to it. ‘As soon as Burrich left me here, alone, I reverted to something less than an animal. No time, no cleanliness, no goals, no awareness of anything save eating and sleeping. This was what he was trying to warn me about, all those years. I did just what he had always feared I would do.’
Laboriously I kindled a fire in the hearth. I hauled water from the stream in many trips and heated as much as I could. The shepherds had left a heavy rendering kettle at the hut, and this held enough to half-fill a wooden trough outside. While the water heated, I gathered soapwort and horsetail grass. I could not remember that I had ever before been this dirty. The coarse horsetail grass scrubbed off layers of skin with the grime before I was satisfied I was clean. There were more than a few fleas floating in the water. I also discovered a tick on the back of my neck and burned him off with an ember twig from my fire. When my hair was clean, I combed it out and then bound it back once more in a warrior’s tail. I shaved in the glass Burrich had left me, and then stared at the face there. Tanned brow and pale chin.
By the time I had heated more water and soaked and pounded my clothes clean, I was starting to understand Burrich’s fanatical and constant cleanliness. The only way to save what was left of my trousers would be to hem them up at the knee. Even then, there was not much wear left in them. I extended my spree to my bedding and winter clothing as well, washing the musty smell out of them. I discovered that a mouse had borrowed from my winter cloak to make a nest. That, too, I mended as well as I could. I looked up from draping wet leggings on a bush to find Nighteyes watching me.
You smell like a man again.
Is that good or bad?
Better than smelling like last week’s kill. Not so good as smelling like a wolf. He stood and stretched, bowing low to me and spreading his toes wide against the earth. So. You do wish to be a man after all. Do we travel soon?
Yes. We travel west, up the Buck River.
Oh. He sneezed suddenly, then abruptly fell over on his side, to roll about on his back in the dust like a puppy. He wiggled happily, working it well into his coat, and then came to his feet to shake it all out again. His blithe acceptance of my sudden decision was a burden. What was I taking him into?
Nightfall found me with every garment I owned and all my bedding still damp. I had sent Nighteyes hunting alone. I knew he would not soon return. The moon was full and the night sky clear. Plenty of game would be moving about tonight. I went inside the hut and built up the fire enough to make hearth cakes from the last of the meal. Weevils had got into the flour and spoiled it. Better to eat the meal now than to waste it similarly. The simple cakes with the last of the grainy honey from the pot tasted incredibly good. I knew I had best expand my diet to include more than meat and a handful of greens each day. I made an odd tea from the wild mint and the tips of the new nettle growth, and that, too, tasted good.
I brought in an almost-dry blanket and spread it out before the hearth. I lay on it, drowsing and staring into the fire. I quested for Nighteyes, but he disdained to join me, preferring his fresh kill and the soft earth under an oak at the edge of the meadow. I was as alone, and as human, as I had been in months. It felt a little strange, but good.
It was when I rolled over and stretched that I saw the packet left on the chair. I knew every item in the hut by heart. This had not been here when last I was. I picked it up and snuffed at it, and found Burrich’s scent faintly upon it, and my own. A moment later I realized what I had done and rebuked myself for it. I had best start behaving as if there were always witnesses to my actions, unless I wished to be killed as a Witted one again.
It was not a large bundle. It was one of my shirts, somehow taken from my old clothes chest, a soft brown one I’d always favoured, and a pair of leggings. Bundled up inside the shirt was a small earthenware pot of Burrich’s unguent that he used for cuts, burns and bruises. Four silver bits in a little leather pouch; he’d worked a buck in the stitching on the front. A good leather belt. I sat staring at the design he’d worked into that. There was a buck, antlers lowered to fight, similar to the crest Verity had suggested for me. On the belt, it was fending off a wolf. Difficult to miss that message.
I dressed before the fire, feeling wistful that I had missed his visit, and yet relieved that I had. Knowing Burrich, he’d probably felt much the same at hiking up here and then finding me gone. Had he brought me these presentable clothes because he wanted to persuade me to return with him? Or to wish me well on my way? I tried not to wonder what his intent had been, or his reaction to the abandoned hut. Clothed again, I felt much more human. I hung the pouch and my sheath knife from the belt and cinched it around my waist. I pulled a chair up before the fire and sat in it.
I stared into the fire. I finally allowed myself to think about my dream. I felt a strange tightening in my chest. Was I a coward? I was not sure. I was going to Tradeford to kill Regal. Would a coward do that? Perhaps, my traitor mind told me, perhaps a coward would, if it was easier than seeking out one’s king. I pushed that thought from my mind.
It
