Owlknight

me.”

There it was, out in the open. The confession hac slipped out before she could stop herself. She pushec away from him, as he considered her words.

“You might say the same thing about me,” he finally answered. “When it’s cold and raining, and we haven’t had any luck hunting, or when we’re trying to sleep knowing that there’s something prowling around at the foot of our tree, just waiting for a ropt to snap or a limb to break. Or when I order you around - you might wish me on the other side of the world.”

“I might,” she agreed. She’d meant it to sound teasing; it came out as a bit waspish.

“So we’re even.” He didn’t pay any attention to her sharp tone; he just grinned and shrugged. “We’ll deal with it when it happens. In the meantime, we’ve other things to think about. What is going on witli Steelmind?”

That’s certainly changing the subject! “Why are you asking me? I don’t have any more clues than you do,” she replied, making no effort to conceal her own confusion. “I suppose it might have something to do with Shandi, but you know that he’s far too steady to be doing this on a whim, or halfheartedly. Does it matter why he’s coming?”

“Actually - no.” He looked down into her eyes. “As long as I know why you are.”

Once again, words came from her mouth that she hadn’t intended to say. “For you,” she whispered. “Just - for you.”

It seemed to be the right thing to say.

Thirteen

Keisha fingered the talisman at her throat and stared at the mountains before her in disbelief, drawing comfort from the little clay owl figure on her necklace. Since Owl Knight Darian’s induction into the clan, the Elder Women had been making the talismans along with their dyheli figurines. Each of them in the traveling group had one of the clan’s talismans - given to them by Shaman Celin before they left, strung on sliding thongs in the Northern fashion. Hywel’s featured cat claws, understandably enough; both Keisha and Darian had little handmade owl figurines and semiprecious stone beads on theirs. Hers featured the color green in its beads as a reminder of her status as a Healer. Shandi’s had an odd sort of charm - a Tayledras-made chiming ball, enameled with a white horse. Steelmind’s was a silver hawk on a crystal arrowhead shape. Wintersky’s was a pair of hawk talons in stone, with a stone knot between them.

These talisman necklaces were meant to identify them to other northerners as friends to at least one of the tribes. Celin and Vordon had advised them not to wear their Ghost Cat costumes, at least not at first; the relationships among the tribes were complicated, and it was better to be thought of as traders and healers first, and allies of a particular clan second.

They were now altogether out of familiar territory; for the past several days they had been taking a barely discernible track through hills that had been plenty tall enough for Keisha, but today they had come up over a particularly lofty range to see the real mountains.

Keisha could only sit slackly in her saddle and stare. Between the top of the hill where they were and the beginning of the mountain range was a wide river valley, a meandering river running through it that they would have to ford.

“Is there snow on the tops of those?” she asked Hywel incredulously, pointing to the white-dusted peaks looming against the blue sky.

“Probably,” he replied, shrugging his indifference. “It doesn’t matter; we won’t be going up that high.” The young tribesman was in his element now. So far as he was concerned, this trip was the height of pure pleasure. Not that he disliked living on the border of Valdemar, but here he was, ranging and hunting rather than staying in one place and herding, and doing it all by dyheli instead of his own two feet. This was a much superior form of travel, and Hywel very much enjoyed the experience.

Keisha had mixed feelings; she was finding more pleasure in this form of travel than she had expected, but that was leavened by the fact that she seemed so much clumsier at rough-camping than anyone else. Steelmind, Darian, and Wintersky were already part of a functioning “team.” They had worked and traveled together for four years before Keisha had ever met them. That left Keisha, Shandi, and Hywel to fit themselves into the pattern somehow.

Hywel had insinuated himself into the working trio within a day; his role was clear cut, after all. He was the guide. Between everything that he had absorbed from his elders and the Snow Fox folk, and his own memories, he had a fair idea of where he was going. Between Hywel and the sole dyheli doe that had come as Tyrsell’s representative - who served as their scout - they had clear courses marked out for them every day.