her nakedness. There was a look of utter contentment on her face. He smiled.
The hart stood at the edge of the clearing. It wasn't alone. It seemed almost as though all of the creatures of the forest had come to witness their coupling. He saw dozens upon dozens of birds, all manner of them, lining the branches around the grove. He saw foxes and badgers and voles, rats, moles and ferrets hiding in the shadow- fringe of the trees, watching. It was the most unnerving thing he had ever witnessed. Not one of them moved. Not once did their gazes waver. They only had eyes for him.
'You could do one more thing for me,' she said, not looking at him.
'You need only ask it,' he said.
'Do not be so eager to make promises you cannot keep,' she chided him lightly.
'There is no promise I cannot keep,' Alymere said earnestly. 'There is nothing you could ask of me that I would not willingly do, without a second thought.'
Blodyweth shifted slightly in the long grass, and turned to look at him.
'You really mean that, don't you?'
'With all of my heart.'
And with that rash promise, he took his first step on the road to becoming the man he was always destined to be. He was no longer Alymere the Undecided.
'Be my champion,' she said. 'Save me.'
Alymere traced a finger down her cheek to her lips, and leaned in and kissed her. 'No-one will harm you while there is a breath in my body.'
'You are so sweet, my little knight,' the Crow Maiden met his kiss with her lips and for a moment they chapped and hardened, betraying her true age, though again Alymere was too lost in the moment to notice the disparity between what he saw and what he felt. 'My fearless and brave hero. Lying here in your arms like this, I almost believe that you could protect me from anything.'
'On my life,' Alymere swore, leaning in to kiss those lips again.
'But you cannot save me, the bones are already cast. No-one can.'
'Hush,' he said, pressing his finger to her lips. 'Didn't you just say nothing is writ in stone?' He teased a flower from her garland, and held it between two fingers as though it were the most precious thing in the whole world. 'He loves me, remember?' He scattered the petals with one breath.
And for a heartbeat her resolve crumbled, the cunning of the crow creeping to the surface for all the world to see, in her eyes and in her predatory smile, as she drew him closer and said, 'Hold me.' He did. And because of that, he missed the truth.
'That is not such a hard promise to keep,' he said.
'If only it were so easy,' the Crow Maiden breathed in his ear.
'Talk to me, Blodyweth. There is nothing you can say that will scare me away. I am yours.' It was said with all of the earnest honesty of youth; the same sort of youth where mountains are there to be climbed and fears to be conquered.
'I know,' she said, soothing him. 'I know, my sweet, sweet knight.' When at last he began to doze sleepily in her arms, and she judged him receptive, she whispered: 'Our fates are entwined now, just like our bodies. You are my champion. I love this land as though it were my own flesh, and her rivers flow through my veins like blood, and you love me, don't you?' he nodded. 'Here,' she tore a strip of fine linen from her discarded dress, tying it around his forearm, 'so that I am always close to you, wherever you may be. Close your eyes, my love. Rest, dream of me.'
He did.
And while he slept, she planted the suggestion in his mind:3 'Do this one thing for me, Alymere. Find the blind monk whose skin is impervious to blades and steal the Devil's book4 from his hands… do not fail me, or all of this will be lost. Promise me now, make this the one promise you keep.'
He grunted and shifted in his sleep.
'Promise me,' she insisted, letting go of her beautiful face. Feathers fell from her lips to tickle his. He sighed, his lips parting.
'Promise,' Alymere said sleepily, sealing his fate once and for all.
The Crow Maiden leaned down and kissed him like lovers do. His mouth opened to take her in. Finally she broke away from that last kiss and told him, 'Follow the smoke. When the time comes, you will understand. You must be strong. True. If there is a weakness in you, he will exploit it. If there is evil in your heart, he will stoke it, and all will be lost. Stay true. Save me, my champion. Save me, or the Devil take both our souls.'
Eleven
Sir Lowick found Alymere naked and shivering in the snow, his clothing scattered around the clearing. His eyes had rolled up inside his head and he appeared to be in the grip of some manner of fit or seizure. He knelt beside the young man, cradling his head in his arms and holding him firm until the convulsions had passed.
He fetched his cloak and wrapped it around him.
'Come on, lad. Come on,' he repeated over and over, turning the demand into a mantra, willing Alymere to come back to his senses. He was sweating despite the cold. Some sort of fever sweats. He smoothed the matted hair away from the lad's brow. There was a scrap of linen tied around his forearm. Lowick couldn't tend to Alymere here. He put all thoughts of reivers5 and missing guards from his mind. One thing at a time; he needed to get Alymere to a fire, and get some warmth back into his blood. Anything else could wait.
He started to gather the discarded clothes and dressed his nephew, pulling his undershirt and shirt on over his head and his hose on one leg at a time. His mail shirt lay in the soft mud where the melt had soaked into ground, softening it up. Lowick thought long and hard about leaving it there, but knew that out of the cover of the trees where the blizzard was still raging any extra layers could be the difference between life and death. The mail would serve to lock in what little heat his body generated, so the added burden of it couldn't be measured in pounds and ounces.
Besides, the boy would be wretched if he woke to find it had been left behind in the forest.
The knight man-handled his nephew into the mail shirt and gathered him into his arms. Following their muddy tracks back to the road, Lowick carried him the mile and more back through the trees.
The horses were tethered where he had left them.
When his nephew hadn't caught up with him down the road he had turned his horse around and come looking for him. He hadn't known what he expected to find, but certainly not this. Alymere's mount was loose, but well- trained. It hadn't strayed too far from where Alymere had left the road, and the knight had been able to find his tracks and follow them. 'Thank the Lord for small mercies,' Lowick grunted as he hoisted Alymere up into the saddle. He draped his nephew's limp body over the animal's back, checked he was indeed still breathing, so grey and pallid was his complexion, and then draped his own cloak over his nephew's back before climbing into the saddle himself.
With the reins of both horses in his hands, the knight spurred his mount into motion, and led them back out of the trees into the cutting wind and swirling snows.
He knew this land well — he had ridden it every day for the forty-seven years he had been on this earth — but even so, with the snow storm raging, it would have been all too easy to get turned about and lose his way. The cost of that, though, was beyond anything he was prepared to pay. Shivering against the freezing cold, and with his head down against the icy sting of the snow as it abraded his cheeks, the knight guided the horses back through the blizzard to the abandoned mile house.
He threw the door open and staggered into the room, laying Alymere down on one of the unmade bedrolls closest to the fire, and then threw off his gloves and knelt at the hearth. He set about banking up the coals quickly and fed two new logs into the grate. He fumbled with the tinder, trying to get a spark. His frozen fingers refused to obey him as he struggled to light the fire and get some blessed warmth into the place. It wouldn't light. Again and again he sparked the tinder but couldn't get a flame to catch.
The answer, of course, was in the brazier outside; the knight braved the storm one last time to gather two logs from beneath the brazier's cover. They had been soaked in oil to withstand the elements, and to light no
