"What of your lord?"

"The war," she said. "He's not come home."

"His name?"

"Bryaut."

His breath stopped in him. He looked about the hall beyond her shoulders for some crest, some device—there was none. "Not Dain's son—"

"You know him? You have news of him?"

"Dead," he said harshly. The lovely eyes filled with tears. The mouth trembled. "In the war," he said.

"Bravely?"

She asked that much. He stared past her, saw the trampled, half-naked man on the ground, the eyes slid unseeingly uninterested toward the campfire. Saw the boy he had known at Lugdan ford, the rain and the silence and the heaps of dead, raindrops falling in the bloody water. Men puking from exhaustion. A horse screaming, worse than any man. The fire again, and the forest, and rape. "Bravely," he said. "In battle. I saw him fall. His face toward the enemy. Five of them he took down; and they kept coming. We pushed them back too late for him. But he saved that day."

Tears fell. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and blotted at her eyes. "You were his friend," she said.

"I knew him."

A second time she wiped at her eyes, and put on a smile greatly forced and sad. "You're twice kind."

"You'll be alone."

"Willow and I."

"I might stay a time."

She rose from the table. He got up from his place. "Please," she said. "I'll make you a bed." Her voice trembled. "You'll sleep the night and go your way in the morning."

"Lady—"

"In the morning." She turned away, toward the stairs, her unbound hair a cloud about her bowed head and shoulders. She turned back and looked at him where he stood staring after her.

"Come."

She took a candle from its sconce, paused by the stairs. He unrooted his feet from where he stood and came after, cold inside from remembering Bryaut, bones crushed beneath the horse's hooves, and white flesh, Bryaut's possession; Bryaut, who had died half-naked and in such a moment—before or after? Dubhan wondered morbidly—to die like that and to be cheated too .

. .

He followed her, up the narrow stairs designed for the tower's last defense, so narrow a wooden winding that his shoulders nearly filled the way side to side, and she must bend double to pass the doorway at the top, the candle before her. The light cast her body into relief, the shadow of a breast, of slim legs against the white linen, and he found his breathing harder than the climbing warranted—followed after into a hall where they could both stand upright, a wooden raftering, a maze among the timbers where the candle chased shadows, doors on either side. She opened the first door and brought him within a room, touched her candle to another's stub—another flaring, another shadow through the loose linen gown—doubling the light, upon a pleasant wide bed with flowers on the table beside it. The linens were rumpled, the down mattress bearing the imprint of a body. "Mine," she said. "I'll make up the room next door for myself tonight. Rest. I'll bring you water for washing."

She came back to the doorway to pass him and leave, glanced down at such close quarters, denying him her eyes. "Lady," he said so that she would look up, and she did, close to him, almost touching body to body, and kept looking. He reached out his hand to the black cloud of her hair and stroked it because it was female and beautiful. The wine he had drunk sang in him, laid a haze on all else but her. He took her hand up, blew out the candle it held, rested both hands on her shoulders, on thin lines which eased downward, on smoothness and curving softness. "No," she said, and a weak hand pushed at him. He put his arms about her and drew him to her bed and sank down on the feathers and her gentle softness. "No," she said a second time, struggling under him, and he stopped her mouth with his, kissed her eyes, her smooth flesh.

"No," she wept, screaming, and of a sudden the heat froze in him. He felt her heaving sobs and heard her, and saw that other, pale figure in the dark, the hurtling rush of limbs, dead eyes staring at the moon. He did not move for the moment. Her hands made pathetic gestures toward covering her nakedness. She pushed at him to be free. He got off her and drew her shift up about her, smoothed her hair. It in no wise mended the wanting; but the doing—

"You are my guest," she said. "In my hall. Let me go." Her eyes glistened, dark and bright He had lost, he thought, lost everything with his rashness. Might take, still; her, the tower, the wealth downstairs. He might live here, with Willow's madness. Might have her too. He was strong and they could do nothing; could never drive him out. They would fear too much to lift a hand to him, and they would understand they were better off with him. No cold winters, no death on the road. Every evening she would serve him food on silver plates; and every night they would lie here where the linens smelled of rosemary and the bed was soft. He would ride into that village she named, gather men to build a gate and wall, levy taxes, fear nothing. . . .

"Let me go," she said. Not pleading. Not fearfully. Just like that-asking.

"Some man," he said, "will come down this road . . . and take it all from you. Your lord's not coming back. Think how it will be."

"Do you intend to take it from me?"

His hand lifted toward her hair. He touched it compulsively and stopped it short of her breast, drew it away. "I'd see you were safe."

"From you?"

"I'd not force you. Go out of here. Talk to me tomorrow. Will you do that?"

"If you wish. But if I say no?"

"Think of me. Think that I wish you well. Good night,lady." She rose and slipped away, her white robe trailing past him, across the floor, toward the door, and closed it after. He got up, drew a great breath, drove his fist against the wooden wall and clutched it to him, eyes shut from the pain, from the madness, but the blood welled up there and in his arm and diminished that elsewhere, and he worked his bruised hand and paced the creaking floor until his heart had stopped pounding.

He washed then, in water she had used. The cool water from her bedside bowl smelled of lilies and numbed the pain of his hand, numbed the ache of his shoulders and his ribs and left him shivering. He stripped, and used the linen towels and found the chamberpot beneath the bed, crawled at last between the rosemary-smelling sheets marvelously clean and comforted, leaned out to blow out the candle and blinked in a dark which, accustomed as he was to the stars at night and the moon, seemed fearsomely dark indeed. But his eyes closed a time, and a smile settled on him as he rolled and settled amid the scented sheets, until he had found just that hollow which suited him, and rest closer than he would have thought a while ago. A step creaked in the hall, outside: the boards were old. The Lady? he wondered, dreaming dreams; the door opened, and the blackness was such that even lifting his head and looking, he could see nothing at all. A step crossed the boards, their creaking alone betraying its bare softness. A rustling of cloth attended it. "Who is it?" he asked, not entirely liking this dark and the visiting. A weight sank onto the foot of his bed and he jerked his foot from its vicinity realizing in one rush that sword and armor were downstairs, the cautions of a lifetime wine-muddled, woman-hazed. "Who? Lady?"

He moved to sit up all in a rush, but a gentle touch stole up his sheeted leg, a whisper of cloth leaned forward, and a woman's perfume reached him. "Lady?" he said again, beginning to have different thoughts. And then another, colder: "Or is it Willow?"