Take A Thief

Head bobbing with each step, she ambled down the path, and then, with no more warning than when she'd started this run, she stopped.

Skif looked up through eyes blurring with exhaustion and tears of frustration and fear.

Now what?

They stood in a tiny clearing, in front of the smallest building he had ever seen. They were completely surrounded by trees, and the only other object in the clearing was a pump I next to the building with a big stone trough beneath it. He couldn't hear anything but birds and the wind. If there were any humans anywhere around, there was no sign of them. For I the first time in his life, Skif was completely alone.

He'd have given anything to see a single human being. Even a Watchman. If the Watch had showed up, he'd have flung himself into their arms and begged them to take him to gaol.

Every muscle, every bone, every inch of Skif's body was in pain. His nose and eye hurt worst, but everything hurt. He sat in the saddle, blinking, his bad eye watering, and choked back a sob. Then he slowly pried his fingers, one at a time, away from the pommel of the saddle.

He looked down at the ground, which seemed furlongs away, and realized that he couldn't dismount.

It wasn't that he didn't want to, it was that he couldn't. He couldn't make his cramped legs move. And even if he could, he was afraid to fall.

Then the mare solved his problem by abruptly shying sideways.

He didn't so much slide off the saddle as it was that the horse and her saddle slid out from underneath him. He made a grab for the pommel again, but it was too late.

He tumbled to the ground and just barely managed to catch himself so that he landed on his rump instead of his face, in a huge pile of drifted leaves.

It hurt. Not as badly as, say, hitting hard pavement would have, but it still hurt.

And it knocked what was left of his breath out of him for a moment and made him see stars again.

When his eyes cleared, he looked around. He sat in the middle of the pile of old, damp leaves, dazed and bewildered at finding himself on the ground again. “Ow,” he said, after a moment of consideration.

The mare turned, stepping lightly and carefully, and shoved him with her nose in the middle of his chest.

He shoved back, finally roused to some sensation other than confusion. “You get away from me, you!” he said angrily. “ 'f it wasn't for you, I — ”

She shoved at him again, and without meaning to, he looked straight into her eyes. They were blue, and deep as the sky, and he fell into them.

:Hello, Skif,: he heard, from somewhere far, far away. :My name is Cymry, and I Choose you.:

And he dropped into a place where he would never be alone or friendless again.

* * * * * * * * * *

When he came back to himself, the first thing he did was stagger to his feet and back away from the Companion. Never mind the wonderful dream he'd been in — it was a dream. It couldn't be real. Something was terribly wrong.

His Companion Cymry looked at him and he felt her amusement.

His Companion. And that was just not possible.

“Are you outa your mind?” he croaked, staring at her.

:No,: she said, and shook her head. :I Choose you. You're a Herald — well, you will be after you go through the Collegium and get your Whites. Right now, you're just a Trainee.:

“Like hell!” he retorted feelingly. “You are crazy! Or — I am — ” It occurred to him then that all this might just be some horrible dream. Maybe when he'd jumped onto the horse, it had thrown him, and he was lying on his back in that park, knocked out cold and hallucinating. Maybe he hadn't even seen the horse, the heat had knocked him over and he was raving. None of this was happening — that must be it —