Just as vaguely, the pair turned and sauntered off. Dwer glanced at Mudfoot.

“Why not make yourself a bit useful and keep those pests away?”

The noor just grinned back at him.

Dwer pulled the blanket over his chin, trying to settle down. He was tired and ached from sore muscles and bruises. But slumber came slowly, freighted with troubling dreams.

He woke to a soft touch, stroking his face. Irritably, he tried to push the noor away.

“Quit it, furball! Lick a donkey turd, if you want salt so bad.”

After a surprised pause, a hushed voice answered.

“Reckon I never been welcomed to a man’s bed half so sweetly.”

Dwer rolled onto an elbow, rubbing one eye to make out a blurred silhouette. A woman.

“Jenin?”

“Would you prefer her? I won the toss, but I’ll fetch her if you like.”

“Lena! What — can I do for you?”

Dwer made out a white glint — her rare smile.

“Well, you could invite me in from the cold.” Her voice sounded soft, almost shy.

Lena was buxom and sanguinely female, yet soft and shy were two words Dwer had never linked with her before. “Uh — sure…” Am I still dreaming? he wondered as she slid alongside, strong hands working to loosen his clothes. Her smooth skin seemed to blaze with ardent heat.

I must be. The Lena I know never smelled this good.

“You’re all knotted up,” she commented, kneading his neck and back with uncanny, forceful accuracy. At first, Dwer’s gasps came from released muscle strain. But Lena somehow also made each jab or digging twist of her calloused fingers seem feminine, erotic.

She got halfway through the massage before Dwer passed his limit of self-control and turned over to gently but resolutely reverse their positions, taking her beneath him, repaying her vitality with a vigor that welled from weeks of pent-up” tension. Hoarded worry and fatigue seemed to explode into the air, into the forest, into her as she clutched and sighed, pulling him closer.

After .she slipped away, he pondered muzzily — Lena thinks I may die, since my job is to be up front in any fight. This might be the last… the only chance…

Dwer drifted into a tranquil, dreamless repose — a slumber so blank and relaxing that he actually felt rested by the time another warm body slid into the bedroll next to him. By then, his unconscious had worked it out, crediting the women with ultimate pragmatism.

Danel will probably be around later, so it makes sense to use whatever I have to give, before it’s gone.

It wasn’t his place to judge the women. Theirs was the harder job, here in the wilderness. His tasks were simple — to hunt, fight, and if need be, to die. Theirs was to go on, whatever it took.

Dwer did not even have to rouse all the way. Nor did Jenin seem offended that his body performed but half awake. There were all sorts of duties to fulfill these days. If he was going to keep up, he would simply have to catch what rest he could.

Dwer woke to find it already a midura past midnight. Though he felt much better now, he had to fight a languid lethargy to get dressed and check his gear — the bow and quiver, a compass, sketch pad, and hip canteen — then stop by the dim coals to pluck the leaf-wrapped package Jenin left for him each night, the one decent meal he would eat while away.

For most of his adult life he had traveled alone, relishing peace and solitude. Yet, he had to admit the attractions of being part of a team, a community. Perhaps, under Ozawa’s guidance, they might come to feel like family.

Would that take some of the bitter sting out of recalling the life and loved ones they had left behind, in the graceful forests of the Slope?

Dwer was about to head off, following the urrish track farther in the direction of the rising moons, when a soft sound made him pause. Someone was awake and talking. Yet he had passed both women, snoring quietly and (he liked to imagine) happily. Dwer slipped the bow off his shoulder, moving toward the low speech sounds, more curious .than edgy. Soon he recognized the murmured whisper.

Of course it was Danel. But who was the sage talking to?

Beyond the bole of a large tree, Dwer peered into a small clearing where satiny moonlight spilled over an unlikely pair. Danel was kneeling low to face the little black creature called Mudfoot. Dwer couldn’t make out words, but judging from tone and inflection, Ozawa was trying to ask it questions, in one language after another.

The noor responded by licking itself, then glancing briefly toward Dwer,’ standing in the shadows. When Ozawa switched to GalTwo, Mudfoot grinned — then twisted to bite an itch on one shoulder. When the beast turned back, it was to answer the sage with a gaping yawn.

Danel let out a soft sigh, as if he had expected to fail but felt it worth an effort.

What effort? Dwer wondered. Was the sage seeking magical aid, as ignorant lowlanders sometimes tried to do, treating noor like sprites in some fairy tale? Did Ozawa hope to tame Mudfoot, the way hoon sailors did, as agile helpers on the river? Few nonhoon had ever managed that feat. But even if it worked, what use was one noor assistant? Or would Dwer’s next assignment — after dealing with urrish sooners and then Rety’s band — be to run back and collect more of Mudfoot’s kind?

That made no sense. If by some miracle the Commons survived, word would be sent calling them all home. If the worst happened, they were to stay as far from the Slope as possible.

Well, Danel will tell me what he wants me to know. I just hope this doesn’t mean he’s gone crazy.

Dwer crept away and found the urrish trail. He set off at a lope that soon strained forward, pulling him with unwilled, eagerness to see what lay beyond the next shadowy rise. For the first time in days, Dwer felt whole and strong. It wasn’t that all worries had vanished. Existence was still a frail, perilous thing, all too easily lost. Still, for this narrow stretch of time he pounded onward, feeling vibrantly alive.

The dream always ended the same way, just before she woke shivering, clutching a soft blanket to her breast.

She dreamed about the bird.

Not as it appeared the last time she had seen it — headless, spread across Rann’s laboratory bench in the buried station — but as she recalled first glimpsing the strange thing. Vivid in motion, with plumage like glossy forest leaves, alert and lustrous in a way that seemed to stroke her soul.

As a child she had loved to watch native birds, staring for hours at their swooping dives, envying their freedom of the air, their liberty to take wing, leaving their troubles far behind. Then one day Jass returned from a long journey to the south, bragging about all the beasts he had shot. One had been a fantastic flying thing that they took by surprise as it emerged from a tidal marsh. It barely got away after an arrow tore one wing, flapping off toward the northwest, leaving behind a feather harder than stone.

That very night, risking awful punishment, she stole the stiff metal fragment from the tent where the hunters snored, and with a pack of stolen food she ran off, seeking this fabled wonder for herself. As luck had it, she guessed right and crossed its path, spotting the fluttering creature as it labored onward with short, gliding bounds. In a throat-catching instant of recognition, Rety knew the bird was like her — wounded by the same man’s taste for senseless violence.

Watching it hop-glide ever westward, never resting, she knew they shared one more trait. Persistence.

She wanted to catch up with it, to heal it, talk to it. To learn its source of power. To help it reach its goal. To help find its home. But even disabled, the bird soon outdistanced her. For a heart-aching time, she thought she had lost it forever…