and ambushes, and had some of her confidence back.
It wasn’t in him to go tale-telling, so the girl would not have to face the Heralds’ version of censure . . . where everyone understood, of course we understand. When what they meant was, we understand you failed, and then the duties got easier after that. You were still a Herald, but not quite in the same league as those hadn’t let down the side. He’d sipped from that bitter cup himself and saw no reason to pass it to another.
It was better in the Guards, where the senior Sergeant took you behind the woodshed and just beat the dung out of you when you screwed up. The thrashing fixed all and let you back in the platoon’s good graces.
He pulled up as the sun was eaten by the hills to the west. Full dark would be here soon, with some hours before moonrise. Rath found a good campsite, well back in a valley, with close overhead trees, a steep rill that would provide a way out in an emergency, and good water. Gonwyn’s camp-picking ability remained a running joke between them, at least since the flashflood and the beehive.
He turned in the saddle back to where she followed.
“It’s getting too dark to continue,” he said, “with all of these Tedrels in the hills. We’ll rest here until the moon comes up. Until then, it’ll be too dark to be blundering about. We should have a couple of candlemarks to eat and sleep, then we’ll press on.”
He dismounted with a grunt and loosened Rath’s bellyband.
He could see her in the failing sunlight, copying him, her brow puzzled.
“Why do you do that?” she asked.
“Do what? Ever tried to put a saddle on in the dark, when arrows are flying?”
“No. I got that. I don’t understand why you usually talk to your Companion, to your Rath. Why don’t you just Mindspeak, as I do with my Enara?”
He looked at her as he leaned into Rath, crossing his elbows on the saddle-bow. “I’m almost totally head- blind. I can hear Rath, and she can read me, but I can’t send worth a damn. If I buckle down and really focus, I can just about get a whisper out. It’s just easier to do it this way.”
Her expression appeared no more than half-believing. “What’s your Talent?”
:Drinking?: Interjected Rath.:Wenching?:
Gonwyn ignored the Companion. “I don’t really have one. I was already a Guards officer, nearly twenty-one when I was Chosen. The masters said I was too old to learn Mindspeech, which is why almost everyone who is Chosen is a child.” Alberich hadn’t been the first adult chosen, though clearly the oldest. He wasn’t comfortable with this topic or its memories and wanted to change the subject. “What’s your Talent, then?”
“Oh, me?” she replied. She looked around and found a stick as long as her forearm, and as thick as her finger. She snapped it, green wood splintering along the ends of the break. She held the stick between her hands and stared at it in intense concentration. Gonwyn was just convinced she was having him on when a thin wisp of smoke emerged, and the splintered ends burst into flame.
Gonwyn thought she looked a little relieved.
“You’re a Firestarter,” he said.
“I’m not very good. I can just about manage this stick, and it doesn’t always work.”
“Well, I’d bet it beats my flint, steel, and profanity when I can’t get my tinder to light.”
She smiled then, showing dimples.
:Uh oh.:
The girl had turned back to her saddlebags and had pulled out a bedroll when she abruptly laughed. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Enara tells me I am in the presence of a notorious womanizer and flirt. She is worried you’re going to seduce me.”
Gonwyn turned his head and gave Rath a long stare. Rath contrived to look innocent, a dead giveaway.
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Seducing me.”
Gonwyn gave her a disgusted look.
“All right, all right” she said taking her bedroll, and heading toward their campsite. “How about now? Are you seducing me now?” She smiled again. “If you were, I wouldn’t want to miss it.”
Gonwyn managed to convey his response in a single snort that encompassed Rath, Enara, and Danilla.
“I mean, at your age, you probably would want to give it a good running start.”
Gonwyn took his blanket out of his rather thin field pack and followed. “Did you have to?” he asked Rath as he passed.
:You do have a certain reputation.:
He gathered such small wood as he could find as he crossed to where the stream burbled down underneath a widespread oak. She had already dug a narrow, deep hole in the dirt and had started the side vent to let in air. The fire would burn hot and small within its deep pit, cook well, and throw out little light. Her campcraft seemed good enough, even if it looked more like a final exam than a field rig.
She still smiled in good humor but kept her attention on her work. He moved to one side and gutted the rabbits, using the skins to lay the carcasses on while he jointed them. He dug a second pit for the offal and trash, deep enough for scavengers to be put off the scent, at least until what they left began to rot.
Their camp preparations went quickly, both moving with an efficiency driven by the quickly fading light. He took a small leather bucket from his bags and soaked it in the creek water to thoroughly wet it, then set it on a small tripod to boil. He began cutting small pieces of meat from the rabbit and dropping them in the water.
She made a face at his filthy hands, then frowned as a drop of blood fell from between his fingers and onto the rabbit pelt.
“Damn,” he said, seeing the blood. He reached up under his surcoat and adjusted the rag he had stuffed under the hauberk to try to contain the bleeding.
“You’re hurt,” she said. Not a question.
“Took an ax in the fight this morning. It split the mail.”
She crossed to where he knelt to work and knelt in front of him. She pulled back the surcoat and pulled the dirty rag out of the cut in the chain where Gonwyn had pressed it back in. Blood streaked the chainmail links and stained the linen undertunic.
Her expression told him what she thought of his efforts. “No, no no” she said. “This just won’t do. That wound may need to be stitched.”
Gonwyn felt his stomach drop. “Stitched? Don’t I need a Healer for that?”
She glanced around. “Do you see any Healers? My dad raised cattle, and I’ve stitched lots of bulls after they’d gored each other.”
Gonwyn did not find this reassuring. Nonetheless, he slid out of the dirty remains of his White surcoat, then winced as he moved his arm back to unlace the hauberk. She moved to help him.
“Oh, that’s interesting. The footloops here allow the laces to be drawn with one hand and tied off. One person can do it one handed, and while the metal doesn’t overlap, it does let you loosen it to let in some air if you have to.”
She took the weight of the hauberk as he slid out of it, then felt the heavy weight drop onto his blanket. The armor was already dirty and would need a good scouring in the sand barrel, but more grime wouldn’t do it any favors.
Gonwyn was surprised and more than a little concerned at the amount of blood that soaked his undertunic. The wound had not seemed that bad.
She looked at the blood on his side, then at his face, which he kept carefully expressionless.
“I need to see it.”
He started to unlace the tunic, then gave it up as his arm wouldn’t reach.
“I’ll need your help.”
She smiled at him. “Don’t get any ideas.”
They both laughed at the joke, however thin.
She helped him out the tunic when he couldn’t raise his arm above his shoulder. Now that they’d stopped moving, the shoulder was stiffening quickly, and the movements threatened to cause the pain he’d banked away to break through.
“Gods, Gonwyn,” she said, as the undertunic came away.
