I smelled the smoke before I ever saw the place where Bold Berthold’s hut had been. It was the smell of burned leather, a lot different from wood smoke. As soon as I got wind of it, I knew I was too late. I had come to tell him that there were Angrborn around, and I was going to try to get him to hide, and going to hide Disira and her baby in a place I knew where there were big thornbushes all around. But when I smelled burning leather, I thought the Angrborn had been there already.

After that I found some footprints and knew it had not been Angrborn after all. They were human-sized, made by feet in boots—feet turned in, for one pair. After that I heard Ossar crying. I looked for him and found his mother. Dead, she was still holding him. I never found out why Seaxneat had not killed him too. He had hit Disira in the head with a war-ax and left his little son there to die, but he had not killed him. I suppose he lacked the courage; people can be funny like that.

I had to pry Ossar out of her hands, and I kept saying, “You have to let him go now, Disira.” I knew it did no good, but I kept saying it just the same. I can be funny too, I guess. “You have to let him go.” I tried to keep my eyes on her hands, and not look at her face.

Right after that, Ossar and I found the place where Bold Berthold’s hut had been. They had taken what they wanted and burned the rest, a circle of smoking ash in the wild violets that had stopped blooming while it was still spring.

I took off Ossar’s diaper and cleaned him up as well as I could with river water, and wrapped him in a deerskin that had only burned at one edge. I looked everywhere for Bold Berthold’s body, but I never found it. I wanted to bury Disira, but there was nothing to dig with. Eventually I cut a big stick and whittled it flat at the wide end. There was a stub I could put my foot on, and I dug a shallow little grave down by the Griffin with that, and covered her up, and piled stones from the river on her. I made a little cross by tying two sticks together to mark the grave. It is probably the only grave marked with a cross in Mythgarthr. It was pretty late by then, but I started for Glennidam anyway. I had nothing but water to give little Ossar, and I knew I had to get him to somebody who had cow’s milk or goat’s milk in a hurry; besides, I thought I might find Bold Berthold in Glennidam. I wanted to find Seaxneat, too, and kill him. That night, when it was so dark we had to stop, I heard something that was not a wolf howling at the moon. I knew it wasn’t a wolf and I knew it was big, but I had no idea then what it was.

Here is something I cannot explain. I am tempted to leave it out altogether; but if I leave out everything I cannot explain I will be leaving out so much you will get no idea of what it is like here, or what my life has been like since I came here. One was the doe. I saw a doe and a fawn the next day, and I was hungry and I knew I had better get some meat and cook it—for me, because I was getting weak, and so I could chew some up good and give it to little Ossar before he starved to death. He had not had anything but water since his father killed his mother. So when I saw the doe I knew that I ought to shoot her or the fawn, but I remembered the brown girl, and somehow I knew this was her again, and I could not do it. I found blackberries instead, and mashed them, and gave them to Ossar; but he spit them up.

I had been hoping to get to Glennidam before night. We did not, and I think I knew we would not. Glennidam was an easy two days from where Bold Berthold’s hut had been, but I had not had two days, only three or four hours the first day, and a day after that, and Ossar had slowed me down. So we camped again, and I could see he was getting weak. I was, too, a little, and although I had eaten all the blackberries I could find, I was hungry enough to eat bark. I wanted to go out looking for something to eat; but I knew it was a waste of time in the dark, and the best thing for us to do was sleep if we could and hope no bear or wolf found us, and get to Glennidam as fast as we could in the morning.

“Sir Able?”

I sat up, suddenly wide awake, shivered, and rubbed my eyes. A north wind was in the treetops, and there was a full moon that seemed almost as bright as the sun, with no warmth at all in it. I stared up at it the way you do sometimes, and I thought I saw a castle floating in front of it, a castle with walls and towers sticking up out of all six sides, merloned walls and pointed towers with long, dark pennants streaming from them.

This is something else I cannot explain, although I did it myself. Disira was dead, Ossar was likely to die, and Bold Berthold was gone; and all that hit me then, harder than it ever had before. I did not know who owned that castle that had brought me here, or why I ought to ask for anything from him. But I raised my arms and shouted for justice, not just once, but maybe twenty times.

And when I finally stopped and put some more wood on our little fire, I heard somebody say, “Sir Able?”

There was nobody there but Ossar, and Ossar was too young to talk, starved and worn out and sound asleep. I picked him up and told him we were leaving, night or not. With the moon as bright as it was, I knew I could follow the path, and maybe three or four more hours would get us to Glennidam.

Just as we started out, a little voice right behind me said, “Sir Able?”

I turned as fast as I could. Getting big as suddenly as I had made me clumsy, and I still was not entirely over that. I was pretty fast just the same, and there was nobody.

“There is a lamb.”

This time I did not look.

“There’s a lamb,” repeated the little voice. It sounded as if he were right in back of me.

“Please,” I said. “If you’re afraid of me, I won’t hurt you. If you want to hurt me, just don’t hurt the baby.”

“Upstream? A wolf dropped it, and we thought ... We hope ...”

I was trotting upstream already, with my bow in one hand and Ossar in the other. I found the wolf first, just about tripping over it in spite of the moonlight, If there was an arrow in it, I couldn’t see it. I laid Ossar down and felt around. No arrow, but its throat was torn. Hoping that the person who had told me about it had come with me, I said, “We could eat this, but the lamb would be better. Where is it?”

There was no reply.

I picked up Ossar, stood up, and started looking for it. It was only a dozen steps away, just harder to see than the wolf because it was smaller. I put it behind my neck the way I did when I killed a deer, and carried it back to our fire. That had almost gone out, and by the time I had built it back up and skinned the lamb, the sky was getting light.

“There is something we have to give you.”

Without looking around, I said, “You’ve already given me a lot.”

“He is rather large.” The speaker coughed. “But not valuable. I do not mean valuable. Well, he is, but not like gold. Or jewels. Nothing like that.”

I repeated that he did not have to give me anything.

“Not only me. All of us, our whole clan. I am our spokesman.”

A new voice said, “And I am our spokeswoman.”

“Nobody appointed you,” the first protested.

“I did. We want to make it plain that it is not only the Woodwives, just as it is not only the Woodwives in the wood. We are in this too, along with them, and we are not powerless.”

“Well said!”

“Thank you. Not powerless no matter what anybody says. We do not have to hide, either.”

“Be careful!”

“He has seen me twice, and he did not shoot either time, so what are we frightened of?”

“Suppose he does not like it?”

“He is too polite to give it back.”

“Well, it is of the best breeding. A whelp from the Valfather’s own pack.”