“Maybe we should wash it out again,” I suggested.

“With no clean bandages, there’s no point to that,” he replied.

I helped him into his saddle and we set off again. He was quieter, giving all his attention to sitting his horse. The day was a repetition of our first day together, save that we left the river behind and began a steeper climb into the foothills. About midday, the quality of the road sharply declined. A few hours later, it had degenerated to a rutted wagon track, deeply muddy and very unpleasant for the horses. Riding to one side of it was nearly as bad.

“Shouldn’t there be a crew at work along here, extending the road?” I asked Hitch.

He lifted his head suddenly, as if I’d awakened him. “What?”

“Where are the road crews, the prisoners building the King’s Road?”

“Oh.” He looked vaguely around him. “They’ll have taken them on to the prisoner camp outside Getty. The weather is starting to turn. They won’t get any more miles of road until spring comes again. Not that they got many while the weather was good. Can we stop for food and water?”

I wasn’t sure that stopping was a good idea. I was afraid that if he got off his horse, I wouldn’t get him back on it. But I’d underestimated his toughness. He dismounted and stood by Renegade, holding onto his saddle while he drank deeply from his water skin. I took out the other half of the smoked rabbit, and we made short work of it standing there. Lieutenant Hitch sucked a stubborn bit of meat from a bone and then gestured at the low hills to our left. “If we left the road and cut across those hills, we could save half a day’s travel time.”

I looked at him and then spoke frankly. “I think I should stay to the road. It’s plainly marked and takes the easiest path there. If I get you up in those hills and you reach a point where you can’t tell me where I’m going, we’re both going to be lost. And you’ll pay for it with your life.”

He set his hand briefly to his chest, winced, and then said, “We’re racing against time now. Half a day might mean I live. I’m willing to gamble it. Are you?”

I thought for a few moments. “It’s your life,” I said reluctantly. I didn’t want to take a relative stranger into unknown territory and have him die on me. But it did seem to me that he had the right to make the decision.

“That’s right. It is,” he said.

When we were mounted again, he turned Renegade’s head away from the road. I followed him. He cleared his throat. “Renegade knows the way home. If I die, you sling me across his saddle, and let him lead. Don’t you leave me in the woods to rot.”

“Of course not. One way or the other, I’ll take you to Gettys.”

“Good. Now talk to me, Never. Keep me awake.”

“My name’s Nevare, not Never. What do you want me to talk about?”

“Anything. Women. Talk to me about women you’ve had.”

I thought back. “Only one worth mentioning,” I said, thinking of the warm-hearted farm maid.

“Only one? You poor bastard! Well, tell me about her.”

So I did, and then he told me a rambling and feverish tale of a Speck maiden who chose him as her own and fought two other women over him, and how she had ridden him “like a lord riding to the hunt” for fifteen nights in a row. It seemed wildly improbable to me, and yet parts of his tale rang true with some hidden truth within me. Somehow I knew it was the custom of Speck women to be the instigators of such a relationship, and that they jealously possessed the men they chose. He talked until his mouth was dry, and then drank all the water that remained in his bottle, and most of what I had. All the while, he, or perhaps Renegade, led us further and further from the road, up into rolling hills. The lower slopes were thick with bracken and buckbrush, but as we went higher, we entered an open forest of deciduous trees. We crested the first row of hills, descended into a shallow valley, and then began a second, steeper ascent. The vistas were astonishing. Some of the bracken had gone scarlet with early frost. The buckbrush was thick with its seasonal white berries, while the leaves of the alders and birch of the open forest were scarlet and gold. The day had stayed clear but the air was moist, and the smell of the forest with rich and gentle. Something inside me relaxed and felt a sense of homecoming. I said as much to Hitch.

He was swaying in his saddle as he rode now, holding unabashedly to the horn with his one good hand. A smile crossed his pained face. “Some men feel it. Others don’t. Me, once I got away from houses and streets and bricks and noise, I suddenly knew that I’d never belonged there in the first place. There’s men that need that, you know. They need the shouting and the crowds. They get two nights away from an alehouse, and think they’ll die of boredom. They need other people to make them think they’re alive. They only feel like they’re important if someone else tells them they are.” He snorted out a laugh. “You can always tell who they are. They aren’t happy just living their own lives. They want to control yours, too. You know the men I mean…”

I smiled stiffly. “My father.”

“Your father. You don’t even have to tell me, Never. He’s still got his boot on your neck. I can just about see it if I squint.”

“Explain yourself.” I spoke abruptly, stung by his words. He laughed at me.

“I don’t have to, Never. You feel it yourself, don’t you?”

“I left my father’s home. And when I did, I left him behind as well.”

“Sure you did.” His tone was mocking.

I reminded myself that he was a very sick man. But in the depths of my soul, I suspected that Hitch had always been a needler and a digger, always a man who took pleasure in provoking others. I made no response.

The silence lasted a bit. Then he laughed oddly, long and low. In a reedy, childish voice he said, “I know you. I see you, Never. You can’t hide from Buel Hitch. He’s been too long in the forest. You can’t hide behind the trees.”

“I think your mind is wandering from the fever,” I said reasonably.

“No. I can see a part of you that ain’t no soldier son. I see something stronger than your pa’s boot on your neck. You’re going to the Specks, ain’t you? You got the call to be a Great Man.”

I knew it was a sick man’s rambling thoughts. Nonetheless, it stood the hair up on the back of my neck and on my arms. “We’d best start looking for a place to camp tonight,” I said uneasily.

“Very well,” Hitch replied agreeably. For a time we rode in almost companionable silence. Renegade moved steadily along, and the horse truly seemed to know where he was going. There was no true trail; instead we had followed a deer track up a hill, diverged to follow a stream as it wound down the next slope, traversed a valley beside it, and then climbed the next hill on a game trail. We had been following a ridge as the sun moved ever closer to the horizon. Now, as we descended again, the shadow of the hill falling across us made evening seem much closer.

“You don’t much like it, do you?” he asked me. Then, before I could ask him what he meant, he gestured at a stand of mixed trees. “There’s a good place. There’s a spring down in those rocks beyond the trees. You don’t much like the magic telling you what to do.”

“We’ll camp there, then,” I said, ignoring the words I didn’t want to hear from this stranger.

“It’s a good spot. The evergreen trees break the wind. You don’t need to be ashamed. I don’t like it, either. It was a poor bargain. Not that I had much say in the terms of the bargain. You decide you want to live, and then it’s got you. One way or another. I was sent to fetch you. I said no. But you don’t say no to the magic, do you?”

“You’re raving, Hitch. Ride quiet. Save your strength.”

He coughed, and it was too weak a sound for a grown man. “I don’t have any strength left, Never. Save what the magic gives me. I said, ‘No, I don’t have time.’ And the magic sent me the cat, and I knew that if I wanted to live, I had to do what it wanted. And I always want to live. Looks like you do, too. But I think you got a dirtier shake of it than I did. Them Specks and their diseases. You know, they don’t call them diseases. Or even sicknesses. No. To them, they’re magic spells. Well, that’s not quite the way they’d call them. The word doesn’t translate. But it means like a gate or a funnel. The magic sends it, and the people go through it, and they come out dead or changed. Even fevers from wounds, like I got. Even this fever now, they’d say it’s a melting. A burning to purify the body and the spirit. If a Speck does something really bad, they’ll put a fever in him to cure him. Scratch him with something that makes him sick, or put him in a hut with a fire in the middle and build fires all around, to fever the wickedness out of him. You got any more water, Never? I’ve talked myself dry.”