The sun was down and the night dark before Heffam appeared. He seemed as disgruntled as his men, and announced brusquely that we’d ride swiftly to First Ford, relieve the guard there tonight, and begin our regular tour of patrol of the highways in the morning. His men seemed very familiar with this duty. We fell in behind him in two ragged lines. I took care to take a place well to the back. Then he led us out of the gate and into the night and storm. For a time, our road led us steeply downward. Then we turned and took the river road that would lead us east along the Buck River.
When we had left the lights of Buckkeep far behind us, I began to hold Myblack in. She was not pleased with the weather or the dark, and was just as glad to go more slowly. At one point I pulled her in completely and dismounted on the pretext of tightening a cinch. The patrol rode on without me into the cloaking storm. I mounted again and rejoined it, now the last man of the troop. As we traveled, I held my horse back, letting the distance between us and the rest of the troop gradually lengthen. When at last a bend in the road took them out of sight, I pulled Myblack to a halt. I dismounted and again began to fuss with saddle straps. I waited, hoping that my absence would go unnoticed in the foul weather. When no one returned to see why I tarried, I turned my cloak, remounted Myblack, and headed her back the way we had come.
As Chade had bid me, I hastened, yet there were inevitable delays. I had to wait for the dawn ferry across the Buck River, and then the winds of the storm and the ice that coated the lines and the decks slowed our loading and passage. On the other side, I discovered that the road was wider and better tended, as well as more traveled, than I recalled. A prosperous little market town clustered alongside it, the taverns and houses built on pilings to be beyond the reach of both ordinary and storm tides. By midday I had left it far behind.
My journey back to my home was uneventful in the ordinary sense. I rested several times in smaller, nondescript inns along the way. At only one was my night’s rest disturbed. At first the dream was peaceful. A warm fireside, the sounds of a family at their evening tasks.
“Umph. Off my lap, girl. You’re far too big to sit on me now.”
“I’ll never be too big for my papa’s lap.” There was laughter in her voice. “What are you making?”
“I’m mending your mother’s shoe. Or trying to. Here. Thread this for me. The firelight makes the needle’s eye dance until I cannot find it. Younger eyes will do better.”
And that was what had awakened me. A sudden wash of dismay that Papa was admitting his sight was failing. I tried not to think of that as I fell back into a guarded sleep.
No one seemed to remark my passage. I had time with Myblack to improve her manners; we tested each other’s wills in any number of small ways. The weather continued foul. The nights were blowing snow and sleet. When the storm did let up briefly during the day, the watery sun only melted enough snow to turn the roads into mud and slush that became dirty treacherous ice by the next morning. It was not pleasant traveling weather.
Yet part of the cold that assailed me through this journey had nothing to do with the weather. No wolf ranged ahead of me to see if the road was clear or circled back to see if we were followed. My own senses and my own sword were all I could rely on for protection. I felt naked and incomplete.
The sun broke through the clouds on the afternoon when I reached the lane to my cabin. The snow had paused, and the day’s brief warmth was turning the most recent fall into heavy wet mush. Irregular thumps from the forest were the sounds of trees dropping their heaped burdens. The lane to my cottage was smooth and undisturbed save with rabbit tracks and pits from fallen snow loads. I doubted that any had passed here since the snow had begun falling. That was reassuring.
Yet when I reached my cabin, all of my uneasiness returned. It was obvious that someone had been here, and recently. The door stood open. Uneven lumps beneath the snow were the rounded shapes of furniture and possessions thrown out into the yard in a heap. Fragments of vellum thrust up from the snow that here was trampled and uneven beneath the smoothness of the most recent fall. The pole fence around the kitchen garden had been torn down, as had Jinna’s charm on its post. I sat my horse a time in silence, trying to be impassive as my eyes and ears gathered information. Then I dismounted silently and approached the cabin.
No one was inside. It was cold and dark. It reminded me of something, and then a prickling of foreboding helped me seize the memory; it reminded me of when I had returned to a cabin that had been raided by Forged Ones. The failing daylight showed me the muddy tracks of a pig’s trotters on the floor. Several curious animals had investigated the cabin. There were muddy boot tracks as well, a crisscrossing passage that indicated someone had made many trips in and out.
