LAW LINKS

Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER SEVEN

The twelfth day of October in the 940th year a.g.l.

I am in the mountains now, camped along the pass to Emor, beside a prickly mountain bush. It is dawn, and I have just finished eating some of the food that I bought yesterday. Ever since my last journal entry, I have been hurrying to escape Koretia, lest my blood kin discover what I have done and track me down. But I had to stop at Blackpass in order to buy more food and to wait until dark before crossing the border. I had no fears that I would meet anyone I recognized in Blackpass; it is a big town, nearly as big as Koretia's capital, I have been told.

I had only been to Blackpass once before, and that was several years ago. My father brought Hamar and me along when Blackwood summoned the priests and noblemen of the borderland – all of them, no matter what their kinship – to a full council about the changes King Rawdon was making to the gods' law. Since Hamar and my father were busy at the council meeting during most of our visit, I was free to wander the streets and marvel at how people could stand to live jammed so close together.

On that visit, I remember, I was struck by the fact that so many people in Blackpass spoke Common Koretian. Most of the people in our village know the language, of course, since we deal with so many tradesmen and peddlers from Koretia proper. But I had always assumed, without thinking about it, that Common Koretian was the language everyone used to make bargains in, while Border Koretian was the language that everyone talked the rest of the time. It was not until I visited Blackpass that I realized that most Koretians never even learn Border Koretian; it is as foreign a language to them as Emorian is to me.

Blackpass is in the borderland, I feel obliged to note for my Emorian reader, but it is visited by many Koretians from the rest of the land. Fenton did not accompany us on that trip, since he was living in the priests' house at that time, but when I told him last year about the trip, he had me compare some sentences in Border Koretian, Common Koretian, and Emorian, so that I could see how Common Koretian and Emorian are both descended from Border Koretian. Fenton says that it is mainly the borderland accent that makes Border Koretian hard for others to understand; otherwise Emorians and Koretians alike could probably understand Border Koretian to a certain extent, and it might become a trade language.

It is still hard for me to write about Fenton in this journal. A question arose in my mind a moment ago about whether Border Koretian is ever written down; all the documents I have ever seen have been written in Common Koretian or Emorian, which use the same alphabet. I found myself thinking that I must ask Fenton when I saw him again. Then I remembered, and it was as though I was watching him die again.

On this trip, it is the Emorians that I found myself watching and listening to. I met a group of them on one of the Blackpass streets, visiting Koretia on business, and I shamelessly tracked them halfway across town, eavesdropping on their conversations. I was delighted to find that I could easily understand what they were saying, which is not surprising, since I had Fenton to teach me the language. I did realize, to my embarrassment, that Emorians use many contractions in their speech, whereas I have been using almost none in these journals. For some reason, I had assumed that Emorians were always stiffly formal in the way they talked. Now I am— Now I'm going to try to write this journal closer to the way I heard the Emorians speaking.

At the end of my hunt, I went up to the Emorians and greeted them casually, as if I were simply interested in welcoming visitors to my land, though in fact I wanted to see whether they could understand my Emorian.

They could, though I thought for a moment that they would ignore me altogether. But one of the men noticed the silver edging along my tunic and muttered something about this to the others, so that they all ended up giving me a stiff version of the free-man's greeting. It so happens that they were noblemen, but I don't see why that would have made a difference as to whether they answered a friendly greeting. But perhaps they come from the Emorian capital. I understand that city dwellers are more careful about matters of rank.

This did remind me, though, that my tunic was too obvious a clue as to who I was, so I spent the last of my money to buy a lesser free-man's tunic, one that was black, so that I would blend in with the mountains.

The tunic came in handy when I crossed the Koretian border a few hours ago. I stood for a while near the border yesterday, watching the guards at the entrance to the mountain pass. I soon came to the conclusion that they posses no authorization to do anything except stop people travelling along the pass, so it was easy in the end to cross the border. I simply waited until after dark, and then I climbed over the side of the mountain next to the pass. I could see the guards in the moonlight below, and they gave no indication that they heard me, even when my foot slipped and I sent a shower of rocks down the mountainside.

I wish that I could believe that getting past the mountain patrol will be that easy.

It's nearly dusk, and I must hurry to finish this entry before the sun sets, for I dare not build a fire yet, though my flint-box will come in handy if it grows unbearably cold in the mountains. So far it feels pleasant; it's warm here, like at home.

It's very quiet here, aside from the winds and the mountain birds that travel the winds, sending their cheerful chirps down toward me. I've seen only one beast since I arrived here – a jackal that had strayed from its usual territory – though I've seen a large number of birds and insects. The blood-flies are growing lesser in number the further north I go; Fenton once told me that Emor is too cold a place for the flies to survive. I hope that Emor isn't too cold a place for a homeless Koretian to survive.

But first I must worry about the border mountain patrol, and since there's nothing else for me to do as I walk, I spend my time practicing softly the whistles Fenton taught me. I don't think that I've forgotten any of them. I've also been remembering everything Fenton ever told me about the patrol, and have been trying to use that information to formulate a plan.

The patrol is made up of a single unit of twelve men, I remember, and this is divided into a night patrol and a day patrol. The night patrol is led by the lieutenant of the unit; the day patrol is led by his sublieutenant. I spent a while debating with myself whether to try to breach the Emorian border in daytime or nighttime. Obviously, I would have the advantage of surprise in the nighttime, since it's likely that most of the Koretians that the patrol encounters aren't as good as I am at moving through the mountains at night. On the other hand, Fenton said that the patrol tracks border-breachers mainly through sound, so a lack of light wouldn't give me any advantage. I finally decided that it would be better to try my skills against the sublieutenant, who would be less of a challenge than the lieutenant.

Then there's the question of where I should travel. If I stay along the pass, I'm sure to be sighted by the patrol eventually, but if I travel along the mountainsides next to the pass, it will take me weeks to reach Emor, and I don't have enough food to last that long. In addition, the sound of my travel along the rocky slopes will probably alert the patrol to my presence in any case.

I rejected without inner debate the idea of going further into the mountains. I have Fenton's example to dissuade me against that idea.

I'm beginning to understand why so few people make it past the patrol. Obviously, the only way in which to do so is by a trick. One idea I have is to try to pass the patrol while the guards are busy pursuing another border-breacher, but I suspect that in such a case, the guards would simply split into two parties.

I have another day in which to think before I reach the first of the patrol points that Fenton told me of.

The thirteenth day of October in the 940th year a.g.l.

It's dawn again. I awoke in the middle of last night covered in sweat, as I have every night since I left Cold Run.

The dream is always the same – always vivid, like a memory. I see Fenton, and he is standing next to the altar, his back naked to Cold Run's hunter. I cry out to him and try to warn him, but when he turns to me, his face is already afire, being eaten by the Jackal.

The image fills me with such horror that I fall to my knees, gasping. Then I become aware of dark shapes around me – trees, I think at first, but then I realize they are hunters. Not Cold Run's hunters – Mountside's hunters, seeking me. I try to stand, and then I realize that my hands and feet are bound. I am already captured, and the priest is pronouncing the curse over me.

Then I hear my father's voice; he is kneeling behind me, speaking to me. I feel a rush of relief, but before I can beg him to help me, I feel a cold blade touch my throat. The blade is my father's.

That is when I awake. I only wish that I could believe that the dream is an imagining rather than a shadow of the future.

I reach the patrol tomorrow, so all day I've been frantically trying to think of a new plan. Just when I was about to give up, one came to me, as though sent by the gods.

I'd been thinking of myself as the prey until now, pursued by six jackals, which is not good odds. But what if I were to reverse the picture? What if I were to become the jackal and pursue one of the guards? Two of the guards, I mean; Fenton said that the guards patrol in pairs. If I stayed close to my prey, the other guards would attribute any noise they heard from me to the guards I was following. As for my prey, they would assume that I was a wild animal, for they couldn't imagine that any Koretian would be bold enough to follow closely behind them.

Fenton says— Fenton said that the guards patrol up and down the pass in an area close to the border. Thus, if I follow a pair of guards on their patrol, and if we aren't interrupted by another border-breacher, I will be able to come close enough to the border to make my break.

Tomorrow I see whether my plan works. I must remember to pray to the Jackal for my safety tonight.

I had closed my journal and placed it in my back-sling before I realized what nonsense I had written above. I'm going to Emor to get away from the Jackal and the other gods. In any case, I imagine that I'm too close to Emor now for any prayers to reach the god.

The fourteenth day of October in the 940th year a.g.l.

My plan fell to pieces before I could even try it, for the simple reason that I miscalculated how far I had travelled, so the patrol guards heard me before I heard them. I will never forget – assuming I live long enough to have any memories of this – the chill that went through me when I heard the faint sound of the Hunted is Heard whistle and knew that I was the hunted.

I'm still on the run, and have paused only long enough to eat and rest, as I mustn't grow exhausted. Thus I will not record in detail here my efforts to dodge the patrol, and my realization that the efforts were not working when I heard the signal for Form the Circle.

There are many more whistle-codes than Fenton taught me, but the ones he did teach me seem to be the important ones, and they helped me to know what was happening. Even more important, I knew where it was happening, and when I heard the Acknowledgment whistles for the sublieutenant's order, it was easy enough for me to identify the gap in the forming circle and to race through it. That's how I was able to escape, at least momentarily.

All of my running was back and forth along the mountains, so I'm no nearer to Emor than I was when I was sighted. Now I'm going to see whether I can tell where any of the guards are and try again to carry out my plan.

A second failure, this time a more dangerous one, for the guards reached the point of closing the circle on me. As I saw them coming forward, I was greatly tempted to draw my blade, but I remembered what Fenton had told me and instead identified the weakest guard along the chain closing in on me. He was about my age, and it was easy enough to get past him; he was no better than Drew at his hunting.

The other guards are considerably better, though I'm surprised by how young they are. The eldest is the sublieutenant, and he looks only a few years older than me. I didn't come close enough to him to see any identifying mark of his rank on his uniform, but I could tell that he is the sublieutenant because he gave a brief whistle as we came forward. I have been hearing his whistles all day, and I'm beginning to realize how distinctive a man's whistle can be.

So now the patrol has seen me, and there's no chance of my being able to go up to the guards now and pretend that I have legitimate business in Emor. I'm closer to Emor than I was, but I still have—

I broke off the last entry because I was able to identify for the first time where a pair of guards was located. For most of today, I haven't been able to do this, for the guards climb the mountains as quietly as I do, except when they are in pursuit.

I tracked the noise, and found to my delight that I had located the sublieutenant and another guard. Nothing could be better, for no Koretian in his right mind would try to hunt the sublieutenant of the border mountain patrol. (Whether I am in my right mind in trying all this is a matter I will leave to my Emorian reader to decide.)

I hid in a hollowed-out area next to a ledge where the two guards were standing. The hollow was easy to hide in, for it was screened by one of the mountain bushes that grow to a man's height and are thick with twigs and needles. I have scratches all over me now. I was in a shadow so dark that I could barely see myself, but I could catch glimpses of the sublieutenant and the other guard, who were standing on the side of the mountain, trying to listen for me.

It was my first close view of Emorians, aside from the ones I saw in Koretia. They don't look much different from Titus and Fenton, except that the Emorians I've seen before this all shaved their faces, and these men had beards. I suppose that it's hard to find time to shave yourself if you are a soldier. The sublieutenant is a red-haired man, so white of skin that I wondered briefly whether he was sickly, but he has given no indication of illness during his pursuit of me. He has a very odd smile, one that looks as though he's uncertain whether to smile, but his laugh, which I heard briefly, is quite energetic. He is light-framed, but I had already learned that this allows him to run faster than any of the other guards, and the muscles in his thighs and arms are hard. His voice, which I've only heard talking softly so far, is pleasant in timbre, and is less distinctive than his whistle, which has an emphatic tone to it.

The other guard, whose name is Fowler, is less remarkable in appearance. He appears to be about a year younger than the sublieutenant, and he has sandy-colored hair. He seems to be on friendly terms with the sublieutenant, for he addresses him by his name, without his title.

I was interested in overhearing their conversation, not only so that I would be able to find out how they planned to hunt me, but also in hopes that they would mention the man named Quentin whom Fenton thought might have joined the patrol. But though they mentioned the names of several other guards, that name never passed their lips.

Eventually, Fowler went off to the other side of the mountain, while the sublieutenant remained on the ledge, listening. I stayed very still during this, and apparently succeeded in making no noise, for when Fowler returned and said, "Any luck?" the sublieutenant shook his head.

"I surrender," he said. "We're going to have to bring the expert in on this." Without any more words, he let out a whistle.

It was a name-whistle, I knew; whenever the sublieutenant sends an order to a particular guard, he precedes it by a whistle that always begins with a trill. I identified these trilled whistles eventually as names, and by now I know the whistled names of every guard in the day patrol. But this was a whistle I hadn't heard before.

The acknowledgment came immediately, though it was faint. Fowler said, "By the spirits of the dead Charas, I'm tired," and he and the sublieutenant sat down on some rocks overlooking the slope and began chatting. Their backs were to me.

I was intent on hearing when the so-called expert arrived, but I never did. I saw him first, sliding along the side of the mountain so quietly that not even the two guards heard him coming. As I shrank further back into the hollow, I caught a glimpse of his face: it was light brown, and set into it were two sky-blue eyes.

For a moment I was simply confused. This could not be an Emorian, not with skin that dark. Then I remembered, and nearly laughed aloud at my puzzlement. Of course – this man was from the borderland, just like me. Not the Koretian borderland, but the Emorian borderland, where Emorians and Koretians intermarry, just like at home.

He was immediately behind the two guards now, but they were still unaware of his presence. He had a way of putting his feet down as gently as a mountain cat lowers its velvet paws; if I had closed my eyes, I would not have known that he was there. Yet there had been no tentativeness to his climb around the mountain; he had placed his feet with decisiveness and accuracy, exactly on the rocks that wouldn't give way under him. He hadn't been running, but he had moved almost as quickly as though he had been doing so.

I felt my heart beat inside me. The guards who had been hunting me were skilled, but until now, I had been certain that I was the best jackal here. Now I knew that I had met my true rival.

"What is the problem, sublieutenant?" The man had the softened vowels of a borderlander, but his words were spoken with an Emorian accent to them; he sounded like Fenton. The other guards stood and turned, but did not appear startled. Apparently they were used to being crept up on by this man.

"I apologize for disturbing your sleep, sir," said the sublieutenant. "We have a stubborn breacher on our hands – we have been chasing him all morning."

The lieutenant paused before replying. His face was very serious, with no trace of a smile to greet the two men smiling at him. He had a scar down his left temple and another along his neck – once I started looking, I could see that he had scars over most of his body. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties.

"Are you seeking my advice, or do you wish me to take over the mastership?" he asked. His voice was so quiet that it blended in with the wind, and I had to watch his lips to tell what he was saying.

"I would be grateful if you could take over the day patrol for this hunt, sir," replied the sublieutenant. "It is not a serious enough matter yet to justify calling out the night patrol, but the breacher has escaped us twice, and I fear that he is beyond my abilities."

The lieutenant nodded, then sent out a piercing whistle containing his name and another signal I could not identify, but that I tentatively labelled according to what the sublieutenant had said.

Four acknowledgment whistles chirped back; this has been occurring all day in the exact same regular manner, and so I've concluded that the guards are trained to respond in a particular order, though why this should be so is not clear to me.

"Now," said the lieutenant, "report."

The sublieutenant began telling him what had been happening all day. I was surprised when Fowler simply stood by, listening silently, but at the end the lieutenant said, "Report, Fowler," and I realized that this was a set routine known to the soldiers. I would have thought that it would have made more sense for Fowler simply to interrupt the sublieutenant's report whenever he had anything to add, but I reminded myself that Emorians probably have their own ways of doing things. It would be a great mistake for me to assume that Emorians always act like normal people; they are foreigners, after all.

(No, I am the foreigner now, I realized after writing the above sentence. I must adopt the Emorians' way of thinking and acting if I want to learn about their law.)

After Fowler had added his brief comments, the lieutenant said, "It sounds as though the breacher knows our signals."

"One of the King's spies, then?" Fowler said, lifting an eyebrow.

"Perhaps. It is too early to say." The lieutenant turned toward the slope overlooking the pass, and stood motionless, with his back toward me. Like all of the patrol guards, he wore a back-sling. These appeared no different from my own except that a leather strap hangs part of the way out of them; I had not yet figured out its purpose.

The lieutenant added, "He did not draw his blade, you say."

"No, though he had a chance to do so when we closed in on him," the sublieutenant replied.

The lieutenant nodded and turned back to look at the others; I caught another glimpse of his azure eyes. "Very well, then, we capture on sight. Every guard to stay with his partner at all times. We communicate by words only from this point on. If the hunted shows signs of drawing his blade, do not try to capture him by yourselves; retreat and call for help from the rest of the day patrol. Understood?"

The others nodded. Fowler said, "Our first problem will be finding the breacher, sir. He is as silent as a hibernating burrow-bird at the moment."

"I will take care of that," replied the lieutenant. "Spread the word to the others – and for love of the Chara, remember to stay with your partner. Just because this Koretian has refrained from drawing his blade yet, that does not mean he will refrain from changing his mind. I do not want any of you ending up like Byrd."

The sublieutenant gave one of his half-smiles, drew his sword, and held it flatwise against his face. I'd seen the soldiers at Blackpass make this gesture, so I knew it to be a salute. Then he sent out a series of whistle-signals to the other guards, none of which I could identify except for a request for locations. These locations the guards evidently gave, for the sublieutenant and Fowler were soon headed down the mountain in the direction of one pair of the guards.

The lieutenant resumed looking over the pass. His head turned slowly from one side to the next as he did so; after a moment, I realized that he was listening for the hunted. The sublieutenant had done the same thing not long before this, but something made me take shallower breaths and stay absolutely still.

He was a long time listening. It was hard staying still, and I could feel my nose beginning to drip. (I caught a cold last night, having finally reached a point in the mountains where the autumn air has already arrived.) I reached up and wiped the moisture from my nose, sniffing as I did so – then froze as the lieutenant's hand went to his sword hilt.

There was little sound as he drew his blade, for the sheath was made of leather. For a moment more, he and I stood fixed in our positions. Then he turned with a suddenness that made me jump, and walked swiftly and unerringly up to the bush.

"Come out," he said sharply in Common Koretian.

There was no use in pretending I wasn't there; he was close enough to see me now. I considered staying where I was and making him come in after me, but fighting amidst those thorns would do as much damage to me as to him. Better to appear to be a compliant prisoner.

I slid past the twigs, bowing my head, and trying to appear as much as possible like Siward in the moments after I bound him. I didn't look up at the lieutenant. All that I could see was his sword, pointed my way. I said in a trembling voice – it was not hard to produce such a tone – "Please don't hurt me."

My act worked; the lieutenant's voice was gentler as he said, "Turn around, sir."

He spoke this time in Border Koretian, having identified my accent from my few words, and it was clear from the ease with which he spoke that this was his native tongue as well. I was standing with my back against a cliff wall. Slowly I turned away to face the wall, but not before allowing a few tears to drip from my eyes – again, this effect was not hard to produce.

I even managed to tremble as he took my limp wrists and pulled them back behind me crosswise. He did so firmly but without any harshness. I felt the touch of leather against my wrists; this was the meaning of the strap in the back-sling.

A cold touch against my wrist told me that he was still holding his sword, but I knew that he would be doing so lightly, now that he was absorbed in binding his passive prisoner. I waited for the moment at which he began to draw the first knot together; then I brought my right elbow back hard against his stomach. In the same moment, I grasped the blade of his sword with my left hand.

I cut my palm in the process, of course, but I succeeded in wrenching the sword away from the lieutenant. I swung my left side around in order to force the lieutenant to back up to avoid being sliced open by his own blade. For a moment I caught sight of him; he was bent over from the pain of my jab, but his eyes had turned hard, and he did not appear frightened at what I had done. Then I threw the sword high and heard it clatter down the mountainside. I had no interest in harming anyone in the patrol; I simply wanted to disarm this guard, above all the others.

By the time the sword fell, I was already at the edge of the ledge, preparing to climb further down the slope. At the moment of my descent I looked back to see where the lieutenant was. He was standing where I had left him, still panting to regain his breath, but his right hand was raising the edge of his tunic with a smooth motion. Something brown was wrapped around the top of his right leg, and his hand touched it; then he withdrew his hand, and afternoon sunlight flashed off of a tiny object in his palm.

I had never before seen a thigh-dagger, but I had heard what injuries it could inflict. For a fleeting moment, I wondered whether I had been wise to strip the lieutenant of his sword.

Then there was no time to think, for I was scrambling down the mountain with the lieutenant in close pursuit behind me. He did not whistle to his men, but I knew that the sound of the hunt would alert the other guards to where we were. Somehow I had to find a hiding place before the others caught up.

I nearly discovered the place by falling into it. I had encountered this sort of ravine before, though, while travelling through the mountains near Mountside. Everything in the border mountains is black, but nothing is blacker than these fissures that occasionally occur between two mountains. If you aren't on the lookout for them, it is easy to fall straight into them, and Hamar and I had found pleasure in tossing pebbles down them and seeing how deep they were. Some were so deep that we never heard the pebbles strike the ground.

These clefts are deep, but they're also very narrow. As a result of some experimentation (and lots of dares), Hamar and I learned that it was possible to go down into these ravines by bracing our backs on one side of the cleft wall and propping our stretched legs against the other side; with a narrow enough ravine, we could work our way up and down without trouble.

I used this fact to my advantage to plan an elaborate practical joke on my brother one day: I ran straight into the path of a cleft and disappeared into the hole with a cry, leaving Hamar to surmise my death. Actually, I had caught the edge of the ground at the last minute and jammed myself into position, but it's impossible to see far into these ravines, even when you're standing straight over them. I nearly killed myself trying to keep from laughing when Hamar came forward to peer into the hole . . . until I looked up and saw his face turned moon-white. When I emerged from the hole, Hamar gave me the worst fist-beating of my life, but I never grudged him it.

Now I gave no elaborate thought to what I was doing, having done it before. I stripped off my back-sling, since I needed my back bare for this feat, and flung the sling under a narrow overhang at the foot of the mountain. Then I ran back around the curve of the hill to see where the guards were.

The lieutenant was very close behind, so close that I could see the razor-edged dagger in his hand. Not far behind him were the sublieutenant and Fowler; the rest of the guards were beyond sight, but I could tell from the sound of their footsteps that they were closing in fast.

I waited until I was sure that the lieutenant could see me; then I turned and began running around the mountain, toward the ravine, throwing my back-sling in a narrow opening between the rocks as I did so. I heard the lieutenant shout something behind me, but I paid no heed to his words, for I was concentrating on the difficult task of sliding, jumping, screaming, catching, jamming, and – hardest of all – freezing.

The panting of my breath nearly obscured the thunder of steps. I forced myself to take longer and shallower breaths and then looked up, despite the fact that I knew I shouldn't allow my reflective eyes to chance catching a bit of light.

The lieutenant was staring down the ravine; he was joined in the next moment by the sublieutenant and Fowler. Fowler took a long look at the black pit below, then backed away. I heard him say something to a pair of guards who had just arrived. The sublieutenant looked over at the lieutenant and said, "Anything?"

I resisted the temptation to hold my breath; any change in sound might alert the lieutenant to what had happened. The lieutenant was standing motionless. His thigh-dagger was now in his left hand, and his right hand was curled in a ball. After a moment he said quietly, "He's breathing – but it makes no difference. These ravines are too deep; we will not be able to get him out of there."

The sublieutenant glanced down at the lieutenant's hand, then reached into the lieutenant's back-sling and took out a face-cloth. He handed it to the lieutenant, who absentmindedly wrapped it around his right hand. As he opened his palm, I saw that it was covered with blood; he must have accidentally cut himself with his thigh-dagger during his final effort to reach me before I fell.

"Shall we call down to him?" asked the sublieutenant.

"No." The lieutenant's voice had turned flat. "There is nothing we can do for him. He has his dagger; he will use it when he realizes his situation."

"If he has the courage to do so." This comment came from Fowler, still standing beyond my view.

"He has it." The lieutenant's voice was clipped short. He glanced over to the side as another pair of guards arrived, their voices raised with queries. He cut short their questions with a decisive whistle.

It was an End of Hunt whistle that Fenton had taught me . . . although, he has explained with a half-smile, I would never hear it used if the hunt for me ended this way. The whistle means, "The hunted is captured dead."

"Return to patrol," the lieutenant added, and turned his head back to look down the hole. His face was in shadow, but what little I could see of it appeared to hold no expression.

There was soft murmur as the guards began to depart. Soon only the sublieutenant remained, still standing beside the lieutenant.

The latter said, without looking his way, "I said, Return to patrol."

"I was wondering whether you needed help in finding your sword, lieutenant," the sublieutenant replied in a matter-of-fact voice.

After a moment, the lieutenant said, "Thank you, yes. He dropped it down the north side of Mount Skycrest; I will be there to search in a minute."

The sublieutenant nodded; then he disappeared from my view. I heard his retreating footsteps and his whistle as he signalled something to his partner. The lieutenant remained where he was, staring down at me – to his knowledge, he was now alone. So only I saw his eyes close and his hands form into fists, and only I heard him whisper, "May I die a Slave's Death."

Then he walked away.

I've written all of this in my latest hiding place. When I worked my way out of the ravine and went over to place where I'd flung the back-sling, I found that the narrow opening between the rocks led to a tiny hollow that could barely be dignified with the title of cavern; it seemed to be the sole chamber of a cave. I've spent all afternoon here, at first because I needed to bandage my cut hand, then because I was too shaken by my experiences to move, and finally because I realized that I couldn't make it to the border before sunset, and I didn't want to be on the move when the lieutenant led his night patrol out.

Tomorrow morning I think I will have a good chance of reaching the border. Everyone here thinks I'm dead; as long as I remain quiet, I doubt that they will ascribe to me any sounds that they hear. So tomorrow I will be in Emor.

I haven't yet thought about what I will do when I get there. I will need food while I'm searching to know about the law, and that means I will need to seek out some sort of work. The obvious place to look for a job is in the Emorian borderland, where I won't be conspicuous, but I'm not sure whether the law is to be found there. Perhaps I should go to the capital city. I know that it isn't far from the border, and perhaps many visiting Koretians go there.

It seems too much to hope for: that I should make it past the patrol without being harmed, that I should reach Emor, and that I should actually have my chance to learn what the law is.
 

CHAPTER EIGHT

The seventeenth day of October in the 940th year a.g.l.

This is the first day that I have been well enough to write, and just sitting up causes me pain enough, but I have so much of importance to write about that I can't keep myself away from this journal any longer. I find myself smiling as I read the end of my previous entry, for nearly everything I hoped there failed to come true: I am not in Emor, I am not free from the patrol, and I have been badly injured. And yet my greatest hope has come true at the same time.

It was my curiosity that caused all this to happen – my curiosity on not one but three occasions, and the disastrous consequences of not following my common sense. But I need to go back to the start of the story. It was dusk three days ago, I was lying in the cave and trying to sleep in the cold, and I was listening with half an ear to the sound of whistles in the distance.

There had been whistles earlier in the afternoon when another border-crosser was sighted, but the hunt ended almost immediately, so I surmised that either the border-crosser had legitimate business in Emor – or Koretia, if he was going the other way – or else he was a far wiser breacher than me and had surrendered immediately. After that, there was quiet except for the periodic sound of the sublieutenant sending out a certain whistle that was routinely acknowledged by the other guards. I decided that this must be the way for the sublieutenant to tell that his men were still safely patrolling, and as I ate the last of my food, I found myself listening for the sublieutenant's signal when I expected it to come.

So it was the patrol's silence that drew me out of the cave, and it was the muffled sound of laughter that drew me cautiously around the mountain, toward the pass.

The laughter was coming from the other side of the pass, but the noise was so faint that I could not pinpoint its location. A half-moon was up now, and I stared at the mountains opposite: they were blacker than the night, reaching up to touch the vault of the sky. Aside from the muffled voices, I could hear nothing in the mountains but the sound of an occasional mountain bird. No slight rattle of rocks indicated that the guards were still patrolling.

Then, like a death spirit walking through walls, a guard emerged from the side of the mountain opposite. I was positioned in shadow, and I flattened myself against the rock I was leaning back against. The guard took no notice of me. A moment later, a second guard emerged, and then, in short order, three more guards. After that, there was quite a long delay, and I began to think that I should retreat to my cave before I was discovered, out in the open. But finally a sixth guard walked out of the mountain. I could not see his face, but I recognized his whistle as he signalled another guard: it was the lieutenant.

This was obviously the moment at which to retreat. The lieutenant was on his night-prowl, and anyway, I had learned as much as I needed to know. The mountain patrol had a secret hideout where the full patrol gathered at dusk; presumably, this would happen again at dawn, and during that valuable interval of time I could be well on my way to Emor. The best thing to do was to return to the cave and get a full night's sleep.

I waited until I was sure the lieutenant must be far away on his patrol. Then I walked forward to find the entrance to the hideout.

I justified it in my mind, of course; I told myself that I wanted to eavesdrop on the day patrol to learn what their plans were for the following day. But the truth was more complex. I had become intrigued by the patrol, and especially by its lieutenant and sublieutenant. I wanted to know what these men were like who spent their days hunting border-breachers in the mountains. And I wondered whether any of the guards might say something while off-duty that would tell me more about the law.

Even though I had seen the men emerge from the mountain, it took me a while to locate the entrance. This consisted of one rock wall overlapping another; though I am slender, I could barely squeeze my way through the entrance. The tunnel behind was wider but dark; I couldn't see any light at the other end. I began walking forward, first steadily, then more and more slowly as something about the echo of my footsteps made me uneasy.

At a certain point, the rock path beneath my feet began to tilt downward. Feeling my feet slip slightly, I stepped back and got down on my stomach to feel the ground ahead.

It was very clever; if I had been less cautious, I would have fallen straight into the trap. The tilting slab of stone which had been set in place was so slippery with algae that any attempt to back up would cause the visitor to slide forward instead, straight into the pit that had been dug for such intruders. I threw a pebble into the pit and ascertained from the sound of its fall that the pit was deep enough to trap a man, but not deep enough to kill him. Being captured, though, was a fate that had become as fearful to me as death, so I spent several nervous minutes ascertaining how far I would have to jump in order to reach the other side of the pit.

I managed the jump, but just barely; it was hard to be sure at what point I should leap into the air. Clawing at the wall of the tunnel to keep myself from falling backwards, my hand discovered a wooden plank. This, I supposed, was used when the guards brought visitors to their hideout.

I walked forward, the tunnel curved, and soon I could see light ahead and hear voices. Stepping soundlessly through the tunnel, which now flickered with golden-red light, I cautiously edged myself up to the exit of the tunnel. Then I stood a moment in the shadows, looking out at the scene.

There before me, like a cupped hand raised toward the sky, was a green hollow in the mountains. On all sides, the naked mountains rose in steep walls; down below, unlike any other part of the mountains I had seen, the ground was covered with grass and autumn flowers. A stream, splashing down in a waterfall from the mountainside, cut across the far end of the hollow before disappearing into the earth. Near it, a small and windowless stone cottage stood, barely more than a hut. Its door was open, but its interior was black with night.

I could see all of this, not only because of the moon's glow, but because a large balefire blazed to the side of the hut. Sitting around it in pairs were the six guards of the day patrol, drinking from flasks and idly tossing wood chips into the fire. One of the guards was saying something, but he was being interrupted by periodic interjections and laughter from the other guards.

It was very cold by now, and I found myself shivering; I hadn't possessed money enough to buy a cloak before starting on my journey north. The wind whistling into the hollow pushed toward me the sweet scent of smoke and the warmth of the fire, as though it were breathing upon me. I strained to hear what the guards were saying, but all I could catch were tantalizing phrases tossed my way by the wind. I stepped out of the entrance.

No one noticed me; the guards were absorbed in their conversation. Looking around, I saw that the hollow was ringed by a garland of thorny bushes like the one I had hidden behind on the previous afternoon. There were gaps between the bushes; through one of these I stepped. Then I began my silent crawl toward the guards.

I did not have to worry here about my body making any reverberating sound on the rocky ground; the grassy carpet went up to the edge of the mountain wall beside me. I concentrated on making as little sound as possible, and did not allow myself to pay attention to what the guards were saying until I had come within a short distance of the fire. Then I peered through the bare branches of the bush as though I were staring through the bars of a prison.

Directly opposite to me was the sublieutenant and his partner; the others I recognized from their one attempt to close the circle on me. I knew their whistles, and since I had heard the sublieutenant describe their hunt for me, I also knew their names. The guard to the right of Fowler was just finishing what sounded to me like a mysterious incantation, while the others applauded and cheered. The guard turned red as I watched, in the manner that light-skinned men do.

"By the souls of the dead Charas, Iain, you are a true lover of the law," said the sublieutenant, leaning forward to warm his flask over the fire. "I pity you, Fowler, trying to better that performance. What is your pleasure, Iain?"

"The Law of Interpretation," Iain replied promptly. He was sitting cross-legged, balancing his flask on one knee, and pulling his cloak closer as he shivered in the wind.

"The Law of what?" yelped Fowler; whereupon he endured the laughter of the other guards.

"It is the interpreters' law," said the sublieutenant, grinning as he sipped from his fire-warmed flask. "You know that one; I taught it to you last summer."

"You taught me six dozen cursed laws last summer," muttered Fowler.

"Watch your language," said the sublieutenant. "We have a child in our midst." He ducked in a mock manner, as though to avoid the wrath of the guard sitting on his other side, the one my age who had been unable to stop me from escaping from the day patrol's closing circle.

Iain had already begun saying, "'And being as it is more grave that a man talented in tongues should reveal secrets which are given to him under the shield of interpretation—'" He stopped and looked expectantly at Fowler.

There was a pause, and the guard named Jephthah suggested, "Turn the chain, Fowler."

"No, I remember this one," Fowler replied, stretching out his legs toward the fire. "'—the sentence for such a crime shall be mercy or branding or death.'"

"Death! Is that right?" said the guard named Hoel. Iain nodded, and Hoel asked, "Why death?"

"Listen to the Justification," said the sublieutenant. "Jephthah, if you flick one more piece of wood in my face, I swear that the next time you call for help, I'll leave you to your doom."

Jephthah, smiling, tossed another wood chip in the sublieutenant's direction as Fowler said, "For those who have been entrusted with the work of interpretation, and who have therefore been allowed to hear secrets which they could not otherwise lawfully hear, have a greater duty than most men to remain silent, even when threatened with pain or death. For the interpreter is an intermediary between men of different lands, enabling the Chara and his people to spread knowledge of the Law to others in the Three Lands and beyond. And should the interpreter fail to keep to his duty, the Law will— It will—' Oh, may you die a Slave's Death, Iain. Complete the link."

It took a while for Iain to be heard over the laughter. Finally he said, "'And should the interpreter fail to keep to his duty, the Law will die in the end, for the Lawmaker ordained that the Law should be given to all people. This is Emor's gift to the other lands, and so the interpreter, because he stands between two lands, is granted a role almost as great as that of the Chara, since he alone has the ability to show Emor to other lands, and other lands to Emor.'"

"Did he get that right?" Fowler turned for confirmation to the sublieutenant, and then sighed heavily and dramatically as the sublieutenant nodded. Fowler dragged his body back until it was outside the tight circle of guards surrounding the fire.

The sublieutenant said, "One link missing, but you relinked the chain nicely, Iain. It is Jephthah's turn again."

"Not again!" protested Jephthah, who was sitting beside Iain. "I swear, sublieutenant, you arrange it this way every time: the chain always turns when it reaches you, and you win the game purely because it is never your turn."

"It makes no difference if the sublieutenant does play," said Hoel. "He never breaks a link."

The sublieutenant gave a faint smile. His smile still intrigued me: one half of his face turned upward while the other remained serious. "I have broken more than enough links in my time," he said. "Just ask the lieutenant. But I will be glad to take the next turn if you insist. Iain?"

"Hold your attack," said Iain. "I still cannot think of a linking law."

"The Law of Ambassadors," suggested Hoel, turning his flask upside down to confirm that it was empty. "That is another law about intermediaries."

"The Law of Peace Settlements," offered Fowler from outside the circle. "Ambassadors are mentioned in that one."

"Only in the Definition, not in the Justification," said the sublieutenant. "What about the Law of the Border Mountain Patrol, Iain? I am sure that I cannot remember that one."

His suggestion was hooted down amidst the laughter. Iain said, "No, I know which one to use; there is a mention of interpreters toward the end. I have been saving this one for you, sublieutenant – you will never complete the link. 'And being as it is gravest of all that anyone should disobey the Great Chara—'"

"It is bound to fail, Iain," said Jephthah. "He knows all of the Great Three by heart."

"Not entirely," said the sublieutenant, "and I still have to memorize most of the Law of Grave Iniquity. But I know the subsection that you are going to cite."

"You only think that you know it," said Iain. "Subsection Thirty-Four, 'On Obedience of Witness.'"

The sublieutenant smiled and tossed a twig into the flames. Through the fire I could see his eyes, bright green like the grass around him. There was an odd intensity about his gaze as it rested upon Iain – odd because his voice was light as he said, "'—the sentence for such a crime shall be mercy or enslavement or the high doom of death by the sword. Subsection Thirty-Four. It is also important that at all times the Emorian people give true witness to the Chara, not only in his court, but even when he speaks with them outside of the court. And this remains true if a man should meet with the Chara in private—"

Iain's howl cut short the sublieutenant's recital. Hoel said, "I have no memory of that sentence."

"The Chara revised the subsection last year," said the sublieutenant, patting Iain on the back with a show of commiseration as the guard buried his face in his hands. "He changed it so that it would conform with the proclamation he issued in connection with the charge brought against the court summoners' clerk who lied to him. It was the first time that the Chara had been obliged to interpret whether this subsection should be applied to private conversations."

"Is that the clerk whom Neville replaced?" asked Jephthah.

"Neville told me about the revision," Iain said, tossing his head up. "He said that the revision hadn't been published yet, and he swore that he hadn't told you about it. May the high doom fall upon you, sublieutenant – how did you know about the change?"

The sublieutenant replied calmly, "Because unlike the rest of you, I spend my winters studying the law rather than dissipating my time in wine, women, and song. I do not waste my evenings in taverns filled with crooning bards singing sickly sentimental songs about murder and suicide – unlike a certain guard I could mention." His gaze turned toward Jephthah, who silently toasted him amidst the laughter. "Nor do I spend my time hand-in-hand and lip-to-lip with loose women, as does our junior-most guard, judging from the volume of letters he receives—"

"We are betrothed!" the youngest guard said indignantly.

"The more fool you for getting yourself betrothed when you could be spending your leisure time practicing swordplay and the law."

"We all practice swordplay during the winters, sublieutenant," volunteered Fowler from the half-light where he sat.

"I assume so, or you would all be dead," replied the sublieutenant. "But if Chatwin does not spend more time learning the law and less time sighing over his betrothed's picture, he is likely to take another misstep into lawbreaking one of these days. I swear, Chatwin, you know as little law as a god-loving Koretian."

Chatwin's partner, Hoel, looked angry, but Fowler interjected his voice first. "Be gentle on him, sublieutenant. He has only been with us for three months. Anyway, you still need to finish your link."

"Do not bother," said Iain, pulling himself out of the circle. "He knows the rest of the subsection; I have heard him recite it. What is your next link, sublieutenant? The Law of False Witness is an obvious choice."

"I am not sure I know that one," said Chatwin in a subdued voice.

He was staring at the ground, and the sublieutenant looked his way, then smiled again suddenly. "This one you know," he said. "'And being as it is more grave that a soldier should be disobedient to his official—'"

"'—the sentence for such a crime shall be mercy or reprimand or beating,'" Chatwin replied promptly. "'For however small an order it may be that the soldier refuses to obey, his obedience is necessary in all things . . .'"

I was beginning to feel very cramped, crouched as I was behind the bush. Part of me knew that I should leave while the guards were still absorbed in their conversation; it was clear by now that they would not be discussing their patrolling plans. But nothing could have driven me from where I was. Here at last I had found what I was seeking: information about the law. And though I didn't understand most of what was being said, I knew two things: that the mountain patrol was learned in the law, and that the patrol's sublieutenant was more learned in such matters than anyone else here.

At that moment, the sublieutenant, still listening to Chatwin's recital, leaned forward to throw a few final drops of his flask-liquid onto the fire. As the flames sizzled and steamed, his eyes rose, and for a brief moment I thought that he could see me, but his gaze continued to rise until he was staring straight up at the stars above, leaning back on his hands.

There was a pause in the conversation. Chatwin had finished his recital; now he said, "Did I get that right?"

"Quite right," said the sublieutenant, still staring up at the stars wheeling above. "Except that you said 'obedience toward the Chara' rather than 'to the Chara.' That makes a great difference in the law, you know."

"How so?" asked Fowler.

The sublieutenant finally looked down again to stare at his empty flask. He made no reply to his partner's question, but said, "I am out of wine, and so is Hoel. Will you fill our flasks, Fowler?"

"Let Hoel go," responded Fowler. "I want to hear what the difference is."

Again, the sublieutenant did not reply, but he hummed a short phrase of music that sounded vaguely familiar. The other guards' heads swivelled in the sublieutenant's direction, and after a moment, Fowler grinned and said, "Oh, very well, I will take on the duty. Where did Devin put the new cask?"

"At the south end of the storeroom, in the direction of the door. If you are going to open a cask, though, you had better clean that blood-dirtied blade of yours."

Fowler obediently came up to the fire and held his blade over the fire to cleanse it, then sheathed it once more as Iain said between yawns, "Good hunting in finding that cask, Fowler. The way Devin hides our goods, you will be at it all night."

"Five minutes at most," said Fowler, looking toward the hut. "I place a day's wages on it."

"Wager accepted," said Iain as Fowler walked away. "All right, sublieutenant, I surrender. What is the difference between 'to' and 'toward'?"

The sublieutenant tossed his empty flask to one side. "As a term of the law, 'to' indicates a difference of rank: we are obedient to the Chara because we are all subject to him. But if you were obedient toward the Chara, that would imply that you were of the same rank as he was, and that your obedience to him was voluntary. That is why, in the Law of Vengeance—"

All of the guards present groaned, and Jephthah said, "Not the Law of Vengeance again. I thought we would be able to spend one evening without hearing you mention that law."

"It is relevant." The sublieutenant glared at Jephthah. "In the law's Justification, in the passage on the burdens of the Chara, it is stated that the Chara has no equals, but it also says that the Chara is obedient to the law of which he is the embodiment. That shows that not even the Chara is as high as the law, and that even he must be obedient to its consequences. Thus the Chara's only master is the law, just as our greatest masters are the Chara and his law . . ."

We were reaching here closer and closer to the center of all my questions: what the law was, who decided what it said, why it existed. Yet something continued to tap at the back of my mind, and in a single instant I recognized the two thoughts that were trying to break through to my consciousness. One was the realization that Fowler had not taken any flasks with him when he walked away from the fire. The other was the realization that I knew what tune the sublieutenant had been humming: it was a whistle-code, and it meant, 'The hunted is sighted.'"

I stood and whirled, but it was too late; Fowler was standing beside me, blocking my path to the tunnel. His sword was out, and in the dim shadows where we stood, I could see that he was smiling.

"So you are back from the dead," he said in strongly accented Common Koretian. "Well, you will have no further opportunity to trick us, Koretian."

I had only a moment to think. Behind us, the sublieutenant had stopped talking; I knew that he and the other guards were poised to leap forward. I couldn't climb the sheer wall next to me; if I went toward the fire, the guards would capture me; if I ran toward the back of the hollow, there would be no place for me to hide. My only hope was to reach the tunnel, and Fowler was between me and the tunnel.

I had only a moment to think. Then I was past him, and in my hand was my dagger, now wet with blood.

I did not pause until I reached the point where I would break out of the bushes and reach the tunnel. I could hear that the guards were just starting to run forward in response to Fowler's grunt; now I looked back to see how far ahead of them I was.

I barely noticed the guards near the fire, for what I saw was closer than them: the sublieutenant, leaning over Fowler, his hand drenched with blood as he tried to staunch the wound in the side of his motionless partner. He looked up. For a moment I thought that he would pursue me and that he would succeed in catching me, since he was so far ahead of the others. Instead, from his shadow-dark lips there emitted a sound unlike any I had ever heard a human make. It was a whistle, but it was as high and blazing as a shooting star in the sky. It pierced the still night air with such force that I thought the mountains would crack, yet it was higher in tone than any bird's call.

Fenton hadn't taught me this whistle, but I could guess its meaning. I turned, and began my escape from death.

By the time I reached the other end of the tunnel, a deluge of whistles was pouring through the mountain air, all overlapping each other so that I could barely tell where they were coming from. Above them all, I could hear the whistle of the lieutenant, close to where I stood. I turned, and ran in the opposite direction, toward Koretia.

It didn't take me long to realize my folly. I might save my life in this way, by returning to Koretia, but of what use was my life if I spent it in a land where I would never learn about the law? Stubbornly, I turned and began racing east into the mountains. The whistles around me were closer; my only chance was to do as Fenton had done and leave the safe territory of the mountain passes.

The guards around me were racing toward me much faster than they had throughout the day. No attempt was being made to safely encircle me; no caution was being shown toward me any more. Every guard, I could guess, now had his blade drawn, and every one of them was prepared to use it on me the moment I was captured. I had drawn deep blood; I was as much in danger now as I had been when I hunted in Cold Run.

I ran, I swerved, I dodged, and at a certain point I found myself in a narrow cleft, with three mountain walls around me. I turned, and found the lieutenant at the entrance to the cleft.

The moon had risen high, and though the shadows draped darkly upon us, I could see the moon's glitter upon the lieutenant's eyes and his sword. He had paused, but the angle of his sword told me that he was on the point of attacking. The pause was longer than it had been when I faced Fowler, and this time I felt pain well up inside me, and the feel of the trap's jaws close upon me. I must kill him, or be killed. I had no choice, no choice at all.

I had only a moment to think. Then I flung the dagger from my hand, and with a sob escaping from my throat, I turned and tried to climb the mountain wall.

I was no more than an arm's length up the wall when I felt my collar seized, and I was flung onto the ground, back-first. My head hit the rock, and for a moment I lay stunned. Only one whistle-code echoed through the air now, one that sounded familiar. With my head still sick with dizziness, I tried to rise, but something sharp against my chest held me back. I opened my eyes and saw the lieutenant, calmly pressing his sword against my heart.

The hunt was ended; the hunted was captured alive.
 

CHAPTER NINE

The eighteenth day of October in the 940th year a.g.l. (entry continued)

I lay very still. My hands were still raised above my head, the way they had been when I tried to climb, and I felt my wrists and ankles being pinned to the ground by unseen guards. I didn't resist them. I was afraid that if I moved in the slightest, the lieutenant's sword would miss the spot he was aiming for, and I would die a more painful death than already awaited me.

There was a pause while a soft shuffle of footsteps gathered round me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that there were more than six guards here; I had been right in thinking that the full unit was after me. My gaze, though, was on the lieutenant, staring down at me with dark hatred in his eyes, and my one thought, outside of terror, was my growing concern as to how long he was going to make me wait like this before he finished his deed.

Softly he said, "Search him."

Instantly, on both sides of me, I felt hands touching my body, swiftly and firmly. I resisted an impulse to flinch away, mainly because I was uncertain as to what they were doing. What did it matter to them whether I had another weapon? I'd have no chance to use it. The hands ceased to touch me on my front, and then I was rolled over onto my stomach, and I could feel myself being touched again. Still I did not move, for now I could feel the lieutenant's blade against my spine.

God of Mercy, I thought. Is he really going to kill me in the back? For the first time I felt the impulse to speak – not to plead for my life, which was clearly forfeit, but to ask the lieutenant to give me an honorable death. Then I stifled the impulse. What did I know of Emorian honor? Perhaps in Emor there was no shame attached to being stabbed in the back, as a fleeing man might be killed.

"He is naked," said one of the guards, meaning of course that I was unarmed. There was another pause, and my shoulder-blades began to draw toward each other, bracing for the moment.

Then the lieutenant said, "All right, get him up. And bind his eyes too; we take no chances with this one."

My momentary bewilderment was ended by sharp pain as one of the guards jerked down my upraised hands down and began to bind them behind my back with a leather strap. Another guard was tying a cloth over my eyes. Then I was pulled to my feet.

This was worse than I had expected; I was not even going to be granted the quick death I had dreaded. They were going to take me some place where they could give me a slow, painful death – perhaps they would torture me for days. I felt myself begin to shiver once more, and this time I knew that it wasn't from the wind.

Given the fact that I had been travelling in near darkness, I ought not to have had any trouble travelling eye-bound, but there is a great difference between walking forward in the darkness on your own feet and being propelled forward without having a chance to feel the ground beneath you. I never fell; the hands holding me on either side wrenched me upward each time I stumbled. After a few minutes of this, I discovered to my fury that moisture was forming at the edge of my eyes. Death I could accept, pain I would endure somehow, but this march of humiliation seemed calculated to break my spirit.

Presently the hands released me, and someone pushed me sideways, then forward. On either side of me I could feel rocks brushing against my arms; from the hollowness of the footsteps before me and behind me, I could tell that we were in the tunnel leading to the hut. The patrol guards must have marched me over the wooden plank across the pit, for the echoes of my footsteps ceased. I felt grass under my feet for a while, then the hands took hold of me again, and I travelled through open air for a short space before being suddenly thrust forward. I stumbled and fell to my knees, just saving myself from falling entirely to the floor. The ground beneath me was dirt, the air felt warm, and there were low voices speaking around me that had a hollow tone to them. I must be in some sort of enclosure again.

I heard the lieutenant saying something soft to his men. I was raised to my feet, less harshly than I had been thrown forward, and the cloth was removed from my eyes.

I found I was standing in a small room – this must be the hut I had seen in the hollow. Immediately in front of me was an open hearth-fire that was the sole source of light in the room. Beyond it, most of the soldiers were crowded around a dark, open doorway. Then they stepped back, and from the room beyond the main chamber stepped the sublieutenant.

He took no notice of me. He went over to the lieutenant, who was standing near me, and pulled his sword from his sheath. For a moment, he held the blade flat against his face; then he sheathed his weapon once more.

"How is he?" asked the lieutenant in Emorian.

"He will live." The sublieutenant's gaze wandered over toward me for the first time, and his brows dived low. "He caught Fowler's side – the wound is bad, but his life's blood has not spilled without measure. Gamaliel says that he should be taken back to the city. He doubts that Fowler will recover before the snows fall."

The door in the back was closing, and the other soldiers had begun to turn my way. The lieutenant was looking at me now as well; his expression had not grown any lighter since he first captured me. I felt my lungs being squeezed short at the same moment that my breath quickened. Now, I thought, they will begin.

"Very well, sir," said the lieutenant to me in Common Koretian. "You obviously wanted badly to cross the border. You may as well tell us why."

I must have gaped – at least, that was what I was feeling inside. But perhaps my expression came across as defiance, for the next thing I knew the lieutenant had me pinned by both shoulders against the wall. "Listen, Koretian," he said, his voice still even and cool, though his hands were pressed hard against me, "you just wounded one of my best men. I am not in a mood to be patient. You will answer the questions I ask you."

My voice came out in a feeble sort of tremble. "You won't believe me."

"You have nothing to lose by telling me the truth," said the lieutenant, still very cool. "You have a great deal to lose by not speaking."

Blocked from my view by the lieutenant, the sublieutenant said, "He is probably going to say that his gods made him do it. That is what Koretians always say when they break the law."

The one, small part of me that was still functioning rationally put out an urgent message that I must not mention the gods in my reply. This created a difficulty – I had never before tried to censor all reference to the gods in my speech – but the lieutenant was clearly not prepared to wait long, so I switched over to Emorian, which gave me an excuse to stumble slowly through my speech. "I wanted to be Emorian," I said. "I knew that you wouldn't let me into your land without a letter of passage, but I wanted to become one of you. I wanted—" I hesitated before remembering what Fenton had said about the law. This was how I could find a substitute for speaking of the gods. "I wanted to take a vow of service to the Chara."

There was a good deal of murmuring going on between the soldiers now, but the lieutenant didn't move his gaze. He still had me pinned to the wall, and his face was but a hand's span from mine. "I see," he said. "Is there any particular reason you were so eager to do this?"

"My family is in a blood feud."

The side of the lieutenant's mouth quirked up, though his eyes remained angry. "You fled to Emor so that you would not be murdered?"

"No. So that I wouldn't have to murder."

The lieutenant made no reply; he still hadn't released me. I thought wildly to myself that I would never be able to explain. He must have heard of blood feuds, but he couldn't understand what it was like to take part in one. I wouldn't have understood if it hadn't happened to me. I might as well remain quiet and let them do whatever it was that they planned to do to me.

But I found myself saying, "I wanted to live in a land where there are no blood feuds. I heard about the Chara's law – about how murderers in Emor are brought to judgment, and no one has to kill out of blood-lust. I wanted to find out more about this law. It seemed to me that it must be more worthy of honor than—" I faltered, then concluded, "Than the gods."

The murmuring in the room had died out. The lieutenant straightened his elbows so that, while he was still holding me, he was further back from me now. "Carle," he said.

The sublieutenant's head appeared over the lieutenant's shoulder. "Sir?"

"Is he telling the truth?"

The sublieutenant looked into my eyes, peering as closely at me as I used to look at Emorian writings I was trying to translate. Sublieutenant Carle said slowly, "Yes, sir, I believe he is."

The lieutenant released my shoulders with a suddenness that startled me. "So you like the idea of Emorian law, do you?"

I nodded mutely.

"Do you think what you did just now was lawful?" asked the lieutenant softly.

I swallowed; my throat was so tightly closed that even that was painful. "I don't know, sir," I said. "I don't know any Emorian law."

"Let me try another question. Do you think that what you did was just? Do you think that it was right?"

"He has no understanding of justice, sir," said Carle with disgust. "He does whatever his gods tell him to do."

I could feel myself growing dizzy with bewilderment again. Was it right for me to have attacked a man who had been keeping me from doing what I wanted? The question would never have occurred to me. If I were in my village— No, that wouldn't do; if I were in my village, I would either be dead or undergoing torture by now. There must be some reason that the lieutenant was asking me these questions. Well, in the old days, would I have thought that the gods would approve of what I did? Despite Carle's statement, it seemed to me that that was closer to what the lieutenant was asking me, but I was still unsure of an answer.

"I don't know, sir," I said. "Perhaps it wasn't."

In the silence that followed, I could hear the crackle of the fire and the moan of the wounded man in the next room, but nothing more. Then the lieutenant said, "I will give you a choice, then. You can return to Koretia now and start your life over again. Or you can undergo judgment by Emorian law for what you did. The maximum penalty for your crime is death."

It wasn't clear to me what he was offering. On the one hand, he seemed to be offering to let me go, as long as I went back to Koretia . . . and that was a fate that I was not prepared to contemplate. On the other hand, he was asking me to accept certain death – or was it certain?

"Did you say 'maximum penalty,' sir?" I asked.

"Yes. You could be given a lesser sentence." Then, seeing my blank look, he added, "A lesser punishment. But I cannot promise that; you might be sentenced to death."

"The question is not which penalty is worse," said Carle. "By the law-structure, lieutenant, is it not clear that this boy has no understanding? He is just trying to find the easiest way out. He cares nothing about what he has done."

Somehow, Carle's words made it clear to me what I was being offered. I felt a burst of joy and said, "Will you do that? Will you show me how the law works?"

"It would not be a game," said the lieutenant. "You would be on trial for your life."

"That doesn't matter," I said impatiently. "I'd rather die than go back to Koretia. But if I could just know first what the law is—" I stopped, thought back to the words I had heard Carle speak at the fireside, and added, "It would be worth dying, to know what the law is and to be obedient to its consequences, even for a short time."

The soldiers' murmuring returned once more; I heard one of them mutter, "Heart of Mercy," but I did not hear the rest of this mysterious oath. The lieutenant was exchanging looks with Carle. After a moment he said, "Very well. What is your name?"

"Adrian son of Berenger," I replied.

"Adrian, since you are in the black border mountains, you are under my care and therefore under my judgment; I will be the judge for your trial. Carle, who is the witness?"

"Myself, sir."

"Devin, you are the herald, Payne is the clerk, and Sewell is the summoner; we may as well do this properly for the benefit of the prisoner's education. As for a guide— Adrian."

"Yes, sir?"

"Since you know little of the law, you are entitled to a guide to answer your questions during the trial and explain to you what is happening. Sublieutenant Carle is appearing as a witness against you, but he also happens to be the man in this unit who knows the most about Emorian law. Are you willing to accept him as your guide, or would you prefer that I appoint someone else?"

I looked over at the sublieutenant uncertainly. He no longer looked angry, but I couldn't read his look; it was as if a mask had appeared over his face. "He would be fine, sir," I said, "if – if he wishes to be my guide."

The lieutenant raised his eyebrows toward Carle in query. Carle said, with phrasing that appeared deliberate, "I would be glad to undertake this duty, sir. I want him to have a fair trial."

"Let me know when you are ready, then. I will be in the storeroom in the meantime." And the lieutenant, without looking my way again, walked over to the room in the back.

I looked around uncertainly. Most of the guards had withdrawn to the other side of the hut and were standing there, talking in low voices amongst themselves, but two guards came forward to join Carle and me. One, who appeared to be struggling to keep anger from his face, barely glanced at me as he pulled off his back-sling and rummaged in it. From it he took a pen, an inkwell, and a small wooden board that had paper pinned to it.

He knelt down onto the ground to open the ink, but my attention was distracted by the other guard who had come over to stand by us. His face was white, whiter even than Carle's, and his hair was the color of sun-bleached cloth. Even his eyelashes were blond, as though all bodily color had been stolen from him. He said, with an accent I could barely understand, "What is your pleasure, sublieutenant?"

Carle glared at him, as though the guard's light words were unfitting for the occasion. "I request a charge, Sewell," he said shortly. "I wish to charge Adrian son of Berenger, lesser free-man, with the murder of Fowler son of Serge, lesser free-man."

"Murder!" I exclaimed, taking a worried look at the door through which the lieutenant had left.

"Attempted murder," Carle amended. "It is the same charge, under the law."

"But—" I stopped to look at Sewell, who was watching the other guard scribble down some words as he rose to his feet, pen and paper in hand.

Sewell glanced over at me. "Do you wish to dispute the request?"

I looked uncertainly at Carle, who said, "He is not asking you whether you dispute the charge – whether you are innocent or guilty. He wants to know whether you think that he should charge you with a lesser crime. Sewell is the court summoner, and it is his job to decide whether you should be charged with a crime. The lieutenant, who is judge, can overrule Sewell's decision, but only if he justifies his actions to the higher courts."

"The higher courts?" I said in some bewilderment.

"There is only one court higher than the mountain patrol court," said Sewell, leaning over Payne's shoulder to see what he had written. "That is the Court of Judgment, the Chara's court. If the lieutenant overruled me, he would have to tell the Chara why he did that, so it is unlikely he will overrule me."

I stood where I had been this whole time, pressed against the wall, my hands bound behind me, and feeling increasingly foolish. My life depended on my saying the right words now, but I felt as though I had been asked to learn an entire language in just a few minutes. Sewell waited expectantly for me to reply, then raised his yellow-white eyebrows at Carle when I did not.

"Let us try it this way," said Carle. "Are you surprised that I would charge you with attempted murder? Is that the crime you were expecting to be charged with?"

"I wasn't trying to kill Fowler," I said in a small voice.

Around the hut, the mountain winds continued to whistle. One of the guards went to the door, which had been closed during this time, and opened it a crack before returning to where the other guards stood, murmuring together and occasionally glancing our way. The central fire painted leaping light upon Sewell's face as he said, "Sublieutenant, I am going to have to question the prisoner in private, since you are presenting testimony against him. You can give Payne your witness in the meantime."

Carle nodded, and I watched with concern as my guide and the pen-bearing guard went over into another corner. As they left, Sewell said softly, "Whatever you tell me won't be used in your trial. I just want to determine whether the right charge has been requested against you. What sort of charge did you expect the sublieutenant to make against you?"

"I wasn't trying to kill Fowler," I repeated. "I just wanted to get past him. I did wound him, but I tried not to hurt him badly."

Sewell nodded. "Then you believe that you should be tried under the charge of striking a free-man."

"Striking?" I said tentatively.

Sewell smiled suddenly. "It's a law term. It means any injury that isn't intended to kill."

I nodded wordlessly, and Sewell said, "Very well. You must be skilled with your blade to have breached Fowler's guard. If you didn't kill him, I'll assume that it was because you didn't intend to do so. In the name of the Chara, whose law I am sworn to serve, I charge you under the Law of Assault. The sentence for such a crime is mercy or beating or branding."

I felt what remained of my supper curdling within my stomach. Branding – and not a brand I could hide, as Fenton had hidden his old slave-brand under his sleeve, but a brand on my cheek, to show everyone I met that I had committed a terrible crime. If Emorians were great law-lovers, as Fenton had said, what hope would I have of being accepted in this land when I was branded with the symbol of my lawbreaking? The patrol might as well send me back to Koretia.

I said, struggling to keep my breathing even, "How does the judge decide which sentence to give me?"

"Carle!" The sublieutenant, who had been speaking all this while to Payne as the latter scribed words on the paper, raised his head as Sewell called to him. Sewell said, "The prisoner has a question about his sentences. Are you through there?"

Carle nodded. As he came over to stand by us, Sewell added, "I am charging him under the Law of Assault. Do you wish to appeal my decision to the lieutenant?"

Carle wordlessly shook his head. Then, to my dismay, he reached down to his thigh-pocket. I pressed myself further back against the wall, and a humorless smile flickered across the sublieutenant's face. "Be at peace," he said as he pulled out his thigh-dagger and turned it so that its hilt faced me. "You are not in Koretia – no one is going to murder you. I am releasing your hands. Prisoners are not bound unless they have been charged with a crime that carries a sentence of death. What is your question about the sentences?"

As he pulled me around and used the slender dagger-hilt to pry open the knot in the strap, I repeated my question. He replied, "The judge can find you innocent, or he can find you guilty to varying degrees. If you wounded Fowler willfully and with clear understanding – if you knew what you were doing and you had no excuse for doing it – then the lieutenant will sentence you to a branding. If you wounded Fowler without clear understanding – if you did not realize what you were doing when you committed the crime – then he will sentence you to a beating. If you wounded Fowler under provocation – if something or someone made you do it – then you will still be found guilty, but the judge will show mercy to you and will not sentence you to punishment. Is that clear? You have to decide how to plead your charge – whether or not to admit your guilt, and if you admit it, then to what degree you will say you are guilty."

I considered this as I rubbed my numb wrists. Finally I said, "Saying that something made me do it – what does that mean?"

Carle glanced over at Sewell, who had been murmuring to Payne as the other guard rapidly scribed words on the paper. Sewell looked Carle's way, raised his eyebrows again, and continued speaking to the guard who was acting as clerk.

"Well, you cannot blame your gods." Carle's voice, which had been neutral until now, took on a tinge of sarcasm. "Self-defense is considered provocation; if you thought that Fowler was going to attack you even if you surrendered yourself to him, you could use that as a way to defend yourself against the full charge. Or if you thought that the patrol was going to kill you unlawfully, that is a defense. For that matter, if you thought that you would be murdered in your blood feud if you returned to Koretia, you could use that as a defense." He would have spoken further, but I nodded quickly, and he said, "That is what you will plead? Guilty, but with provocation?"

"Yes," I said. "And then the lieutenant decides on my sentence?"

"After he has heard our witnesses. Devin, I think we are ready." He said this with raised voice to a guard standing next to the storeroom door, then added immediately, "No, wait. Listen, Adrian, we are informal in the patrol court; we use no more ceremony than a village court. But I know what informality means to you Koretians. You cannot just talk whenever you feel like it. You can ask me questions, and if you do not understand what I say, you can ask permission to speak to the judge. But otherwise, you only speak when the judge tells you to. Understand?" I nodded, and Carle said, "The prisoner is ready, Devin."

Devin opened the door a crack, murmured something across the gap, and then closed the door again and said in a booming voice, "All rise; the judge approaches."

Everyone was already standing, but I saw the other guards stiffen and fall silent as the storeroom door opened. The lieutenant looked different from when I had seen him last. He was wearing a cloak, though he had worn only a tunic a short time ago, and he was also wearing a gold chain that lay flat against his chest as he came over to stand against the far wall of the hut. But the greatest change was in his face, which was now drained of all anger and any other emotion. His eyes, cool and reserved, rested upon me briefly before settling upon Devin.

Devin, who had apparently been waiting for this signal, promptly proclaimed, "Let it be known that the Court of the Border Mountain Patrol in the Empire of Emor is now opened. This is the fifteenth day of October in the nine hundred and fortieth year after the giving of the law. The judge for the day is—" He hesitated, looked over at the lieutenant, and said quickly, "The Lieutenant of the Border Mountain Patrol is the judge. Let all who speak in this place do so with truth and with reverence for the law."

I waited for the lieutenant to speak then, to ask me why I had done what I did, but it was Payne who stepped forward and said, "Adrian son of Berenger, you have been brought here to answer a charge made against you by Carle, Sublieutenant of the Border Mountain Patrol. The charge is that you did willfully and with clear understanding strike a free-man, namely Fowler, Soldier of the Border Mountain Patrol. The witness in this charge is Sublieutenant Carle, and the sentence for such a crime is mercy or beating or branding. Do you—"

I had been trying for some time to interrupt; now I said rapidly, "Yes, I know all this. Soldier Sewell explained—"

I stopped; Carle had thrust his elbow into my ribs. I took a quick glance at his glowering face; then I looked over at Sewell, who had raised his eyes and was studiously watching the smoke disappear through a small hole in the ceiling. I bit my lip shut.

Payne said, as though I had not spoken, "Do you deny the charge?"

I looked hesitantly over at Carle. He nodded slightly, and I said, "I'm not sure— That is, I know that I'm guilty, but I wounded Fowler— I mean, I struck him under provocation. I think I did, anyway."

Carle hissed, "Do not look at me. Look at the judge."

I turned my attention back to the lieutenant. He was standing as still as before; only his cloak rustled from a breeze whistling through the doorway. Beside him, Payne said, "The prisoner pleads that he is guilty but states that his crime was done under provocation. Let the witness against the prisoner be called."

"Carle, Sublieutenant of the Border Mountain Patrol!" cried Devin in a booming voice.

Carle took one step forward, and I waited for him to speak, but the lieutenant's muteness seemed to have carried over to him as well, for he stood silently as Payne shuffled through some sheets in his hand. Then Payne said, "The witness against the prisoner is as follows—"

After a moment, I realized that Payne was reciting what Carle had seen after I attacked Fowler. The witness was dry and concise – so concise that it was over almost before it had begun, and Payne was soon saying, "Is this your witness against the prisoner?"

"It is," replied Carle in a voice as dry as his witness.

"Step forward, then."

Carle did so, and I watched with bewilderment as he took the scribing board and pen Payne offered him, and wrote something short on the page Payne had been reading. Then Carle stepped back and rejoined me.

My head was beginning to spin with uncertainty. I almost wished I was back in Koretia, being placed under trial for my broken vow. There, at least, I would have known what I was facing: a long, three-way argument between myself, my father, and the gods' representative, Fenton's successor. There would have been much shouting and no doubt tears as well, before the matter was settled, but at least I would have had the opportunity to defend myself. I was beginning to doubt that I would be allowed to do so here.

"Does any other witness stand in this court?" Devin paused, and I glanced to the where the other patrol guards were standing, but all of them continued to watch the proceedings silently. Devin cried, "The prisoner may offer his witness!"

"Address the judge," Carle whispered into my ear, perhaps doubtful by now that I could follow instructions unless they were repeated. "Keep to the point. Tell him only the relevant facts."

I wondered what the relevant facts were. I took a step forward awkwardly, cleared my throat, and said, "Sir, I—"

"Call him Judge," hissed Carle.

We proceeded slowly, me explaining that I had taken a blood vow to avenge the death of my blood brother, Carle correcting the manner of my witness at intervals. When we reached the point of the breaking of my blood vow, I hesitated, knowing that my next witness would condemn me in any trial of the gods' law. But I was here because I believed that the Emorians' law was a just law, so I told the entire tale of the breaking of my blood vow and of my decision to flee to Emor. I skipped forward to the moment when I struck Fowler with my dagger; then, having described that, I hesitated, uncertain.

The room was silent, but for the whistle of wind. The door of the hut had been eased further open by the wind's hand during the proceedings, and only the faint warmth of the fire ate away at the chill in my body. Yet sweat ran down my back.

The lieutenant had been utterly still during my witness, with no change of expression to help me assess what he thought of my tale. Now, in a voice as level as an altar, he said, "I wish to question the prisoner."

"The judge may interrogate you or the other witnesses if he has questions about the witness that has been given," Carle explained in a whisper.

Still with no movement but that of his mouth, the lieutenant asked, "If you had settled in another Koretian village, would your life have been in danger?"

I looked at Carle. He nodded, and I said, "If it was a village in the borderland, my family might have found me in the end. But if I'd travelled farther south— No, probably not."

"So you had a choice besides breaching the Emorian border."

I felt a lump forming in my throat, but I forced myself to say, "Yes."

"So you did not need to enter Emor in order to save your life."

"I didn't just come here to save my life— It was everything— I had to know— It was because of the law—" I abandoned my efforts and said in a dull voice, "No, I didn't have to enter Emor in order to keep from being killed."

The lieutenant allowed Payne barely enough time to scribe these words before he said, "You gave witness that you did not intend to harm any patrol guards. Why, then, did you strike Soldier Fowler?"

"I didn't mean to," I said miserably. "I was just frightened and – I didn't think. If I'd had time to think, I wouldn't have hurt him."

Another pause followed. Payne, I saw, was continuing to scribe all that the lieutenant and I were saying, while Devin appeared alert, apparently sensing the approach of the trial's end. Two of the guards had wandered over to the open doorway, as though fearing that I would attempt flight. There was a pause.

"I wish to give witness," said the lieutenant in a flat voice.

I stared. At my ear, Carle said, "The judge normally does not give witness, but if he believes that a judgment is in balance and that his own witness will tilt the balance, he is duty-bound to speak. You will have the opportunity afterwards to dispute the witness."

I acknowledged Carle's words with a nod, but my gaze had already fallen to the floor. I knew what witness the lieutenant would give. He was the only man who had seen me, not once, but twice with a blade drawn against him. This was the proof needed to condemn me as a dishonorable lawbreaker.

"On two occasions, the prisoner held a naked blade in his hand in my presence," said the lieutenant, his voice still curiously flat. "On both occasions, the prisoner discarded the blade rather than attack me, despite the fact that he was in imminent danger of capture. I offer this witness in support of the prisoner's witness that he did not intend to harm the patrol, and that his crime was undertaken without clear understanding of his deed."

Devin had been watching the lieutenant throughout his speech; now he turned to look at Payne and raised his eyebrows. Payne gave a slight shrug. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other guards exchanging glances.

I felt moisture trickling down from my mouth and realized that my mouth was hanging open. I rubbed my face against my sleeve, began to speak, and closed my mouth again hastily.

I missed whatever signal the lieutenant gave Devin. Devin announced to the far corners of the hut, "The prisoner may speak."

"I don't understand," I said. My eyes were now on the lieutenant, trying to read from his expression or his pose what his thoughts were. "You spoke for me. You didn't have to say what you did. You could have remained silent. Yet I nearly killed one of your guards. If we were in Koretia, you'd have killed me. Why . . ." My breath failed me momentarily. "What made you do this? What made you help me?"

"I could have spoken out of fear," the lieutenant replied in the same formal voice he had used before. "If any of my men knew or suspected that I was omitting important witness in a case I was judging, they would be duty-bound to place a charge against me with the Chara's court summoners."

I was already shaking my head before he finished speaking; I had seen the guards exchange glances again. "I don't think it was that," I said. "I don't think you told the others what happened between us – at least, not about the last encounter between us. Nobody else knew – not the soldiers, not the Chara. No one knew, so why did you tell?"

I could not have said whether the lieutenant's voice was still formal, for when he replied, it was in a soft voice that barely reached me. "I knew," he said. "And if I had broken my vow to the Chara, I would have known."

The door must have blown all of the way open at that moment, for I felt a chill cover me as though the famous northern snows had fallen upon me. I understood then what Fenton tried to tell me a month ago: I knew then why it was that the Emorians had no need for vengeful gods. What were the gods but the creators and upholders of the gods' law? And what kept men from breaking the gods' law? Not fear of the gods and their vengeance – that hadn't stopped me from breaking my vow.

What kept men from breaking the gods' law was desire for honor. I knew that, I who had stripped myself of all honor five days ago and had lived in dishonor ever since. I could never have had the courage to do that if I had not suspected that a greater honor lay beyond the gods' law. Here, in the land where I had fled to, so great was men's sense of honor that they did not even require gods to peer into their spirits and bring vengeance upon them if they went astray. Their own sense of honor kept them from breaking the law – the true law, the Chara's law.

The lieutenant had been watching my face all this time. Now he said, "I will not give you false witness as to the nature of Emor; Emorians exist who will lie in court. Lying occurs in this land, and murder, and all the misdeeds you know in Koretia. This is the Land of the Living, not the Land Beyond; you will not find perfection in Emor."

"I'm not looking for perfect men," I said, my throat tight. "Just a law that makes men try to be perfect. I'm looking for a law worthy of honor."

The lieutenant simply looked at me. I could not tell whether or not I'd said the right thing. I no longer cared whether I said the right thing. I'd said the truth – and here, here in this court where truth meant honor, that was all that mattered.

He found me guilty through lack of clear understanding and sentenced me to forty lashes. I had half expected that, after the witness he gave me on my behalf, but even so I felt a mixture of sickness and relief when he handed down the sentence: Sickness that, so new to this land, I had already committed a crime. Relief that I had not been judged to be worse.

"Do you wish to appeal my sentence to the higher court?" the lieutenant asked as he slipped off his cloak and chain and gave them to Devin. In exchange, Devin offered him something that flashed grey-bright, like a lake. As the lieutenant pinned closed his neck-flap, I saw what the clasp was: a silver brooch, whose open metalwork depicted a mountain barred by a sword. Now that I looked closer, I could see that the same picture was faintly woven upon his right sleeve, black against black. And all of the other guards here – I saw at a quick glance – wore the same brooches, though the metal differed from person to person: either copper or dull iron. Carle wore a copper brooch. Only the lieutenant wore a silver brooch.

I looked back to see that the lieutenant was watching me levelly, and I remembered the question he had asked me. I had a sudden vision of myself in the Chara's court, being stared upon by the ruler of the Emorian Empire, his expression as cold as the lieutenant's, or even colder . . . "Please, no!" I blurted out.

Devin put his hand over his mouth, and for a moment I even thought I saw the lieutenant's mouth twitch. But the lieutenant simply said, "Then wait outside, please. Carle, a word with you." He turned aside from me.

I looked round, but everybody was avoiding looking at me. After a minute of staring uncertainly, I followed the order I'd been given and left the hut.

When I got outside, I went to the corner-post of the cottage and leaned against it, shivering in the sharp wind as I remembered all the beatings I had witnessed as a child. There weren't many; beatings are a serious matter in Koretia, inflicted only on serious criminals, such as thieves. I remember one such thief, sobbing as the whip lashed open his bare skin.

The sky was turning grey with dawn. I wondered whether any Koretians were taking advantage of this moment to slip over the border. Then I wondered why I had been allowed to leave the cottage alone. Surely I could easily slip away from the patrol and escape my punishment.

But no, if I travelled in the direction of Emor, the patrol's sharp-eared lieutenant would surely catch me again. If I travelled in the direction of Koretia . . .

That was why the lieutenant had allowed me to come out here alone, I realized: to give me the opportunity to run away, to turn my back on the Chara's law. I straightened my spine and waited.

After a few minutes, patrol guards began to leave the cottage, one by one. None of them looked my way. They disappeared into the tunnel, four of them; then there was a space of time in which I waited for Sublieutenant Carle to leave for his daily patrol as well, but he didn't come. I wondered whether he had decided to spend the day sleeping, after his exhausting hunt the night before.

The cottage door opened again, and a man exited. It was Carle. In his left hand was a flask, and in his right hand was a whip.

My breath left me all of the sudden, and my knees felt as though they would give way. So quickly departed the courage I had hoped would sustain me. Carle reached me just as I was sure I would fall to the ground. With a grim look on his face, he took hold of my arm, so hard that I yelped. His look turned to contempt.

He pulled me round to the side of the cottage. There, crammed between two rocks high up on the cottage wall, was a rusted whipping ring. Carle released me, and I looked hopefully at the flask; was it perhaps drugged wine, meant to dull the pain of my punishment? But Carle simply placed the flask on the ground and ordered me to strip to my loincloth. When I had done this, he bound my wrists to the ring with the now-familiar leather strap. I had to stand on my toes to reach the ring; its creator had evidently assumed that all prisoners would be of a full-grown height.

I looked over at Carle, who had shifted to the side in order to inspect his handiwork. There was nothing reassuring about his expression. He looked like a dueller who plans that the first blood he draws should be the last.

His gaze dropped down to me. "The lieutenant showed you pity," he said. "Expect none from me."

No reply could be made to such a statement, and so I remained silent. Carle stepped back. I was shivering hard now from the chill of the autumn wind against my bare skin.

Then his lash bit into my back, and my body blazed with pain.

Forty lashes, the lieutenant had said. I tried to count them, as a way to focus my mind on something other than the red pain that gnawed at my back like a hungry animal. Soon I was gasping; then I was sobbing; and then, without warning, night swept down upon me.

In the next moment, I learned the purpose of the flask, as Carle dashed the flask-water into my face. I came back to my senses, sputtering from the water that had made its way into my nose and mouth. I opened my eyes to see Carle looking at me. This time, his contempt took the form of a dark smile.

"What weaklings you Koretians are," he said. "The lieutenant, in his pity, gave you twenty fewer lashes than he would have given an Emorian, and you cannot even bear those."

I mumbled my reply, and Carle's smile disappeared. "What did you say?"

I was afraid that, if I wasn't clear this time, I would not have the courage to say it again, so I shouted my reply: "Give me sixty lashes!"

Carle's face was like a thundercloud. He moved out of sight, and his whip whistled through the air before it tore into my back.

I counted the lashes till they reached forty, and then I kept counting, and then I lost all awareness of anything but the lash, slicing into my flesh with sickening thoroughness. Somewhere, dimly, I could hear a voice, calling upon the God of Mercy, and I realized with horror that the voice was mine.

I don't remember how Carle got me back inside the cottage. He must have carried me, I suppose. The next thing I remember is hearing myself scream as my back touched the pallet. Somebody said something, and I was lifted. Wine was forced into my mouth, and I choked on it but forced myself to swallow the liquid, because I could taste the heavy drugs that I knew would ease my pain.

I was pushed back onto the pallet, gently this time, being placed on my side rather than my back. After a minute, I opened my eyes.

Carle was nowhere in sight. A patrol guard I hadn't seen before was kneeling beside me, cutting out bandages with his dagger. Above him, looking down at me, was the lieutenant.

"Well, Adrian," he said, "what do you think of the Chara's law now?"

There was no mockery to his tone. With effort, I whispered, "Will you let me enter Emor?"

I could barely hear my own voice, but he nodded slowly. "You have earned the right."

I wasn't sure what he was saying – whether he was saying that my punishment had earned me the right, or that my conduct at the trial had earned me the right. It didn't matter. For it had come to me that, whether or not he let me enter Emor, I had known the Chara's law, and had seen its justice. That was all that mattered. I could die now.

I said something of this, I don't know what – I must have been incoherent. But whatever I said caused the lieutenant to suddenly kneel by me and put his hand on my shoulder. He looked over at the guard beside me. "Gamaliel?" he said.

"He will live." Gamaliel didn't look up from where he was cutting bandages.

The lieutenant's hand tightened on my shoulder, as though the other man's answer truly mattered to him. Then he looked back at me. "Sleep, Adrian," he said. "Nobody will send you back to Koretia against your will. I swear that."

He was not the sort of man, I knew, to treat an oath lightly. I felt myself relax, and my head began to swim, and then I fell into the deepest sleep I had ever known.
 

CHAPTER TEN

The nineteenth day of October in the 940th year a.g.l.

I awoke this morning feeling well enough to get up and walk around. Gamaliel, who is the patrol's physician, grudgingly allowed me to do so; he has been clucking his tongue each day as he tends my back. He keeps telling me that he has seen beaten men with much worse wounds, but one time when he said this, I looked over my shoulder and saw him glaring in Carle's direction.

I'm becoming accustomed to the rhythm of the patrol schedule: the times when the patrol guards sleep, the times when they work, the times when talk and entertain themselves, and the times at dawn and dusk when the full unit gathers together to exchange information. During my first day spent in the patrol hut, I was barely aware of this rhythm, for I drifted in and out of my drugged sleep like a burrow-bird bobbing his head in and out of his earth-hole. Occasionally I heard snatches of conversation or laughter. Once I opened my eyes and saw all the guards except the lieutenant and sublieutenant standing stiffly against the hut wall; even the sublieutenant, though he was apart from the others, was poised as straight as a nobleman's blade as the lieutenant spoke. Such interludes, though, were brief. The bitter wine soon pulled me back into a blackness where I was grateful to flee, for my back felt as though it were being ridden by the sun.

My first full wakefulness, then, came a day and two nights later, when the hut was silent except for the soft snore of a guard nearby.

Some time during my sleep I had been transferred onto a cot, for I was several inches from the floor. I was still lying on my side. I shifted my eyes – the only part of my body I could bear to move – and looked around me. All about the room I could see the dark shapes of men lying on the floor on thin pallets, covered by the same sort of rough blankets that now covered my back and scratched at my wound bandages. Red embers, as small as demon's eyes, glowed from the central hearth, casting a light as dim as twilight shadows. I was placed close to the fire, facing toward the open hut door that pulled wind-whistles in from the mountains. A sound behind me, as soft as a sigh, almost caused me to jerk my head around, but in the next moment, the source of the sound came round to my front, looked down at me for a moment silently, then sat down on the floor in front of me. He was holding two cups and two long flasks, as tall as pitchers.

"Wild-berry or wall-vine?" asked Carle, holding the flasks forward for my inspection. "We drink both here in the mountains; you have your choice."

"What is wall-vine?" I asked, trying to keep my voice as low as Carle's so that I wouldn't wake the others.

"It's an Emorian wine."

"I'll take that one," I replied quickly. I was aware that I was being tested, but I would have made the same choice in any case. My father has no taste for Emorian wine, so this was the first time I had been granted the opportunity to taste an Emorian vintage.

It was hard to tell from Carle's expression whether I had passed the test. He handed me the flask; it was so warm to the touch that I knew he must have heated it by the central hearth-fire nearby, which was filling the room with a mist of smoke. Somewhere above us, the smoke-hole whistled from the night wind.

Carle was sitting to the side of the cot, so I had not even needed to raise my head in order to see him. Now, with a movement that sent pain down my spine like white lightning, I propped myself up on one elbow and sipped from the flask.

I tasted green meadows. Green meadows, and dew shining under the dawn sun, and just a touch of the sweetness found in white clover. I looked up at Carle, who was sipping silently from his own flask, and I said with surprise, "This is good!"

He didn't quite smile, but I thought I saw a spark of satisfaction flare in his eyes. "I've always thought so," he replied. "Of course, it takes some Koretians a while to adjust to wall-vine wine. A lot of them think that the taste is too bland."

I shook my head, sipping from the flask again. The wine was like cool water compared to the fire of wild-berry wine; it blended well with the soft breathing of the sleeping patrol guards and the hushed sigh of the wind. Faintly on the border of the wind, I heard a short whistle, and the whistled reply.

"I lied to you, you know."

My gaze returned to Carle. He had set the flask upright on the floor and was sitting more stiffly than before. When I made no reply, he said carefully, "Emorian judges have leeway in how hard a sentence they impose. The lieutenant could have given you anything between twenty and sixty lashes. He chose to give you forty lashes; it had nothing to do with you being Koretian."

My mind was still befogged with the drugged wine; I groped toward a coherent thought. When I still did not speak, Carle said, with his spine now as stiff as a black mountain, "I told the lieutenant afterwards what I'd done, and he called the patrol together so that he could give me a public reprimand. He said that, the next time I disobeyed his orders in such a manner, he'd have me stripped of my rank." There was a pause, during which a fire-breath of smoke passed between us; then Carle concluded, "He didn't tell me I must apologize to you, but that was obvious enough. So I'm sorry. I behaved in a manner unworthy of one of the Chara's soldiers."

I couldn't think of anything to say at first. I had thought that Carle was approaching me of his own free will, but now it appeared that he was talking to me only out of a sense of duty toward his official. Carle was still sitting as rigidly, as though he were pinioned to a wall, though, so I finally said, in a stumbling manner, "Well, that's all right. It doesn't matter."

Carle's face grew as dark as the Jackal's face. "Of course it matters!" he said in a voice that might as well have been a shout, though both of us had been speaking softly all this while. "I disobeyed my army official. My crime is greater than yours, since you owed no duty to Fowler."

"No, I mean— I only meant that I've done things wrong before too. Gone against my duty."

Something melted in Carle's spine. He reached forward for his flask, though his gaze remained upon me. "You mean your broken blood vow?" he said. "Would you like to tell me about that?"

I did, very much – that is to say, I had wanted for days now to ask another person's opinion of what I had done. If I had still owed any duty to the gods, I would have sought out a priest before this. Still I hesitated, not wishing to bore a stranger with my life's troubles.

In the end, I gave him the minimum he needed to understand my tale: my friendship with Fenton, Hamar's death, the blood feud, Fenton's death, my father and the blood vow, and finally, my moment of revelation concerning the gods. By the time I was through, the fire-logs had settled lower in their bed, and Carle had his legs spread out upon the floor.

He was silent for a while after I finished, and I felt a tightness in my chest, wondering how he regarded the revelation of how far my dishonor extended. His gaze remained fixed on his flask, untouched for some time, and then rose to meet mine. "I was thinking about Fenton," he said. "He was a good man; he didn't deserve to die that way."

"Well, yes . . ." I stopped, bewildered. Something deeper than sympathy for a stranger's death was etched into the lines of Carle's face.

He started to raise the flask to his lips, then abandoned it, saying softly, "Fenton was my father's slave. I'm the boy that Fenton told you about, the one who helped him escape." He took hold of the flask again, but did not raise it. "The lieutenant is Quentin, the other boy Fenton mentioned . . . though I don't advise you to call the lieutenant by his name. He comes from a long line of patrol guards named Quentin, and I don't think he likes to be reminded of his heritage."

"But . . ." My bewilderment had reached its peak; I had forgotten, now, the fire burning my back. "But Fenton said that his master's son lost his opportunity to join the patrol."

Carle shrugged. "The patrol is more forgiving than its reputation suggests; you've witnessed that for yourself. Of course, it helped that Quentin was willing to speak on my behalf."

I stared at Carle. His body was being licked by the flicker of the fire, turning his skin golden and highlighting the copper in his hair. There was a watchfulness to his eyes I had not noticed before, a patience that I guessed had been hard learned. I felt a shiver join the pain along my back as I remembered where I had seen that watchfulness last. I ought to have noticed before his resemblance to Fenton.

"But—" My voice staggered to a halt.

"Yes?" Carle turned his gaze toward the men around us. One of them murmured in his sleep, while another snored softly. At the front of the hut, the door was open a crack, and the smoke was edging through it.

"It seems so odd, you helping Fenton to escape to Koretia, then Fenton helping me escape to Emor, and us meeting this way . . ."

Carle shrugged, picking up his flask and running his fingers along the leather. "It's not so strange if you think about it. The patrol is the key in both cases. I was able to help Fenton escape because I wished to join the patrol, so I'd memorized the patrol whistles. You were nearly able to pass the patrol because of the patrol whistles I'd taught Fenton. It's just a coincidence." His gaze returned home to me. "I hope you're not going to say that it was the will of the gods that we met."

His brows were drawn low now; I wondered whether this was what lay behind his watchfulness. "I'm not a servant of the gods any more," I said quickly, as though that answered his question.

Carle nodded. His gaze fell to his flask, and he began tracing its outline once more. After a while, he said, "So . . . you've refused to murder an old friend, which means that your family believes that you've been cursed by the gods. If your family finds you, they'll murder you in order to please their gods. That's what it comes down to in the end?"

It was odd, hearing him describe my dilemma that way. Having witnessed for myself how the Chara's law worked, I could see now how the workings of the gods' law would appear to an Emorian, yet dimly I felt that Carle wasn't being entirely fair to the Koretian perspective on what I had done.

My hesitation must have seemed like unwillingness to speak of the shadow of my fate, for Carle didn't await an answer, but instead added, "So you're emigrating to Emor, both to escape your family and to live in a land where blood feuds are forbidden."

"Yes," I said, relieved that Carle understood. "I want to live under the Chara's law. The lieutenant . . . Quentin . . . he hasn't changed his mind about letting me enter Emor, has he?"

Carle shook his head, his gaze still carefully fixed on the flask. "Have you decided what you'll do there?"

"Find out more about the law," I said promptly.

The side of Carle's mouth twitched slightly. "I meant, have you decided what sort of work you'll take up? Are you trained for a trade?"

"No," I said, "not really." This was a matter that had begun to worry me in the day before I met the patrol. Absorbed as I had been by Fenton's tutoring, and confident that my family would continue to support me once I came of age, I had thought that there was no great rush in deciding upon my life's work. Then, with Hamar's death, it had seemed that the matter was decided for me. Now I was beginning to realize, with a chill, that I was in a position frightening for a young man of my age: I had no special skills, nor any money by which to apprentice myself. Could I perhaps work the fields, doing some lowly manual labor? And if so, would that leave me enough time to learn about the law? For my experiences at my trial had only whetted my appetite to learn more, and I was rapidly realizing that my need for food to feed my body was less than my need for the law to fill my spirit.

"We've been talking about you while you were asleep."

I looked up, startled out of my silence, to find that Carle's gaze was now speared upon me. He must have read the confusion in my expression, for he added patiently, "The patrol. We've been discussing you. Disagreeing about you."

"Oh?" I said faintly, unsure what this disagreement signified. Could it be that Lieutenant Quentin did not have the power alone to allow me to enter Koretia? Did the whole patrol have to vote on the matter?

"Yes." Carle's gaze rose up toward the rafters, where the smoke was rising. "We can't agree, you see, on your character. The majority of the guards are most impressed by your skill with a dagger, and by the way in which you almost managed to fool us. They say that your character is shown by your boldness and your determination. Quentin, though, disagrees; he thinks that your character is best shown by your behavior during your trial. He says that he has never before placed on trial a prisoner who showed so much honesty and so much thirst for knowledge of the law. As for myself— Well, you can guess what impressed me most."

He paused, and I wondered whether I was coming down with a fever; my skin had turned as hot as an oven. With his eyes still tilted up toward the dark ceiling, Carle concluded, "Though we can't agree on whether you're most distinguished in honor by your resolve or your love of the law or your courage, we're all agreed about one thing: that you should be offered the opportunity to join the patrol."

"The patrol?" My voice, which was still in the process of taking on manly tones, squeaked as I spoke, causing the guard nearest me to sigh and turn over. I lowered my voice and said, "But how could I—? I mean, I attacked a patrol guard— Surely it can't be that easy to join the patrol."

"Oh, it's not." My reaction had evidently reassured Carle, for he looked back down at me and sipped from his flask. I could see a spark of amusement in his eyes. "The Chara's border mountain patrol receives more applications for entrance than any other unit in the Emorian army; even though nine out of ten of the applications are rejected immediately, we still make it hard for qualified candidates to be accepted. For one thing, youthful vigor is needed for this sort of work, so all applicants must be between their sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays. You're qualified that way, aren't you?"

Something in his expression told me that he was hoping I would lie if I wasn't. "I am," I assured him. "The day Hamar was killed – that was my coming-of-age day, my sixteenth birthday."

Carle nodded. "You need to be skilled with your blade. Well, Fowler can give witness that you are qualified in that respect. You need to speak Common Koretian and be familiar with Koretian customs; that eliminates most of our candidates, but of course that isn't a problem for you. You even know the Border Koretian dialect, which few Emorians do. You need to be the sort of man who would show supreme loyalty to the Chara—" He stopped, reading something in my face, and said in a softer voice, "That's not something any of us can judge for ourselves. Quentin says you're qualified in that respect, and he's the best judge of men I know. . . . There are several dozen more qualifications, but I'll save time by saying that you qualify in all of the ways that matter. The question is . . ." He placed his flask on the floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "The question is whether you would want to join the patrol."

I suppose that my face must have been expressive, for Carle chuckled lightly. "I don't want to leave you with the impression that the border mountain patrol is like a light game of Hunter and Hunted."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but feared showing my ignorance, so I simply said, "I realize that the consequences for dealing poorly with a border-breacher can be deadly."

"Well, yes." For a moment, there was a twist to Carle's mouth that made my breath catch within my throat; then Carle turned, threw back onto the fire a branch that had slid off – we were that close to the flames – and said, "But the danger doesn't just come from the breachers. Adrian, the border mountain patrol is the oldest army unit in the world. Our origins go right back to the earliest days of Emor. So we have traditions, and we have a reputation to uphold. As a result, you're not going to find it easy to accept the strictness of the patrol's discipline. Quite frankly, even I find it a trial sometimes, and I'm as pure-blooded an Emorian as any man can be."

I was so stung by this implication that I lacked the necessary blood to be a patrol soldier that I said, without thinking, "There are no pure-blooded people in the Great Peninsula, other than in Emor's dominions. All of us share blood, right back to ancient times."

Carle lay down on the floor then and laughed. His laughter was quiet, and breathy, and a little sad. "Oh, my," he said finally, sitting up and brushing dust out of his hair. "It has been eleven years since I heard Fenton speak those words. How that brings back memories. . . . He was right, of course. I hear tale that some of the men in the Dominion of Marcadia set great store by the pureness of their family's blood, but there's less of that nonsense down in Southern Emor. Oh, I won't say that you'll be entirely free of taunts about your skin color or your accent or any number of other things. But it's not as bad as it would be in the dominions, where whether your hair is white or merely light blond really does make a difference in your standings among other people."

"I expect," I said, comforted by Carle's words, "that the dominion dwellers don't have a borderland to remind them of the old days."

Still brushing dust out of his hair, Carle said, "I meandered from the subject. What was I speaking of again?"

"Discipline," I replied. And then I added on impulse: "The patrol's law."

From the flash of the smile that Carle gave me, I knew that I had provided the right response. He began to talk then about the Law of the Border Mountain Patrol – of how, being isolated from the rest of Southern Emor, the patrol has the high honor of serving, not only as a unit of capture and discipline, but also as a court. The lieutenant holds the same role in the patrol as the Chara does in the empire, and the lieutenant's men serve like the Chara's council. Indeed, the lieutenant is required by law to formally consult with his men on matters of severe discipline of a patrol guard, before passing sentence.

"But the lieutenant tries to keep matters from reaching the point where he must place high discipline upon a soldier." Carle fiddled with his wine flask; he hadn't drunk from it since our conversation grew more serious. "I'll give you an example. There's a certain soldier in the unit; I won't give his name—" He stopped, smiled, and said, "No, I will. If you're joining us, you need to know such matters. Chatwin just became a member of the unit this summer – he's our newest member – and on his first hunt, he balked at an order that the lieutenant gave him that would have placed him in danger. Sheer nerves; all of us undergo this at some time or another. But that left the lieutenant with a difficult choice: he could beat Chatwin for his disobedience, or he could rebuke him."

So absorbed had I become in Carle's tales that I had nearly forgotten the bodily pain that weighed me down, like a heavy blanket. Now it came upon me again, and it was a moment before I could find the strength to say, "A rebuke doesn't sound like much of a punishment."

Carle emitted his soft chuckle. "You've never been rebuked by the lieutenant. But yes, it was the lesser punishment . . . in a way. In a way, Not. For the army laws say that, if a soldier is rebuked and then commits the same crime again – in this case, blatant disobedience to orders – he must receive the highest possible punishment for his crime. Otherwise, you see, the lieutenant has more flexibility in choosing how high a sentence to give to a prisoner he is trying."

He was trying to avoid my eye now, which made me smile. "That's all forgotten. You've had your rebuke from the lieutenant; I'm not going to give you another one."

My voice must have sounded firm, for the look Carle gave me then was a mixture of amusement and respect. "I was wondering when that diffidence of yours would begin to peel away."

"Oh. Well." I scraped at the dirt floor with my fingernail, suddenly shy again. "It's proper for me to be diffident, isn't it? If I'm to join the patrol, I'll be the lowest-ranked member of the unit."

Carle shrugged. "Maybe."

I began to rise up to see his face better, then immediately regretted it as pain clawed its way down my spine. "Only maybe?" I said breathlessly as I lowered my body.

"In the patrol, rank is based on merit rather than seniority. Quentin's partner Devin is third in rank here, even though he only joined us last spring."

I understood what he was saying: that it was unlikely I would ever rise above the lowest-ranking position in the guard, having had the disadvantage of not being raised as an Emorian. But that didn't matter to me; just to join the patrol was privilege enough. So I couldn't resist saying, "You're second-ranked. How long have you been in the patrol, in relation to the others?"

He glared at me then, as though I had just pulled a slave-mask from his face. "I'm nineteen," he said gruffly. "That's all you need to know."

That meant he had been in the patrol for three years, which was, I was quite sure, less than some of the other patrol guards I'd seen, if they all joined the patrol when they were sixteen. I kept my mouth shut, since it was clear that Carle's own distinguished service as a soldier was the one topic he was not prepared to discuss.

After a moment more of pulling out the stopper in his wine flask, pushing it in, and examining the leather, Carle said, "You'll need a partner."

"Does the lieutenant assign me one?" I asked.

"No. That's one of the patrol traditions. The new patrol guard must find a guard who's willing to take him as his partner. It's a serious choice. Even though the lieutenant juggles around the partnerships whenever needed . . . Well, it's like being married at a time when warfare is taking place. That's the only way I can describe it. Your back is bare to a border-breacher's blade unless your partner is willing to protect you. The trust needs to be high between two guards who partner together, or else they're all too likely to fall into the most common patrol tradition."

"Which is?"

Carle's mouth quirked. "Death. Most patrol guards die within two or three years. Are you sure that you want to join a unit where the odds are against you surviving?"

The firewood settled in its bed. One of the patrol guards was snoring lightly. Through the door, I could hear faint whistles in the wind. And very far off, I thought I could hear the howl of a jackal.

It's odd how death has become so close a companion to me since my birthday. I never expected it to be that way. I grew up on tales of feuds and duels, yet I had always thought of myself as immune from the Jackal's reach. Others might need to pass through that fire, but not me.

I've heard that the presence of death exhilarates some men. Presumably, such men haven't angered the Jackal. The thought of meeting his claws in just a short time, of feeling his fire – or, since I would reject the cleansing of his fire, to be sent to eternal coldness. . . .

"Being a man means seeing death on the horizon and not flinching," I said softly, more to myself than to Carle. "Fenton met his death without flinching. And I . . . I think I could bear anything except seeing the execution dagger in my father's hand." I looked up at Carle, who was sitting very still and silent through this recital. "Carle," I said, as though we were old friends sitting around a fire reminiscing, "I know that I'm the last person who should ask for this honor . . . but would you be willing to be my patrol partner?"

Carle was silent for a minute longer, long enough for me to realize my audacity in asking such a favor from a soldier whose partner I had nearly killed. Then slowly, ceremonially, he held out his flask of wine.

I had no idea what type of ceremony he was alluding to. But the basic message behind his gesture was clear. I reached out my hand and took the wine and drank from it.

And that is how I joined an army unit where my life is not likely to be long. But it was a clean decision, pure and joyful, unlike my decision to become a blood-feud hunter.
 

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