“He kicks,” Otter said, warning Master Uwen as the horsemaster had warned him, but now a young man had come out of the cottage, the open door of which shed a momentary rectangle of light onto the snow. He shut it, walked out, and that young man received his orders from Master Uwen.
“A good rub and a careful feed,” Uwen said. “He’s been without, summat, hain’t he, lad, an’ ain’t ye, both?”
“There was grain yesterday,” Otter said, “but not much.”
“Good lad.” Uwen’s heavy arm landed about his shoulders and swept him on, irresistibly, into the light of the door and up the steps into the cottage.
Inside, the warmth was thick and all-enveloping, and a red-faced, gray-haired woman bent by the hearth, ladling up a bowl as Uwen shut the door. The latch dropped. The woman set the bowl on the table, with a spoon and a piece of bread.
“Sit,” the woman said, no more to be questioned than Gran, and Otter eased his numb feet past the bench and sat down.
“The silly lad let the horse wear ’is cloak,” Uwen said. “Which is a good lad, by me. Kick the boots off, boy. Warm those feet. Floor’s warmer ’n that frozen leather.”
He had a piece of bread in hand, dipped in the good thick soup, which was hot, and good, and the wonderful bread was fresh-baked. He obeyed, however, using one foot to shove off the other boot, and ate and struggled with the second boot at the same time.
“That’s a boy,” Uwen said, and bent down by the table and pulled the boot off himself, and rubbed his icy feet with large, warm hands. “Half-froze, is what. Best is warming from the inside. Where’s that tea, wife?”
“Here,” the woman said, and set a mug down by the bowl, which was just in time to wash down a bite. Otter did that, and felt his throat overheat all the way down. It made his eyes water, and Uwen tugged the hood back off his head and felt of his ears, which were cold and sore.
“Well, well,” Uwen said, “he’ll be well enough.” As if he were a sheep they were looking over; and mannerless as a sheep, he’d devoured the bread and sat with spoon in hand to get the substance of it, the best soup he’d ever had, even better than Gran’s.
“It’s so good.”
That pleased the woman.
“Welcome here,” Uwen said. Hoodless himself, he proved crowned with grizzled stubble, and had an old scar on his cheek that ran right back into his hair, a soldier’s kind of mark, and that fit with what he knew of Uwen Lewen’s-son. “My wife’s Mirien, but ye can call ’er Cook, which is what she likes to be. The boy, he’s her nephew, truth be told, but son he is to me, and good as, ain’t he?”
“A good boy, Cadun is,” Cook agreed. “A hard worker. Another bowl, young lad?”
“Otter. Otter is my name. And just the tea, please, good mistress.”
“Oh, courtly, ’e is,” Cook said, setting her hands on her hips. “And well-spoke, and wanderin’ in the woods in the dead o’ winter.”
“And callin’ on names we know,” Uwen said. “Gran an’ Paisi’s boy, he is. Ain’t that what ye said?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I am. I came to see Lord Tristen, if you please.”
“And that ye shall,” Uwen said, “when m’lord calls ye, when he calls ye, but meantime ye’re fed, an’ your horse is fed, and ye can sleep right by the warm fire if ye like. Belike ye could do with warm sleep.”
He wanted to see Lord Tristen. He had come all this way, at such hardship, and wanted what he had come for, immediately, if he possibly could. But when Uwen offered a hand to help him up, and with the warmth of the room and the weight of the food and drink in his stomach, he suddenly found it was all he could do to step over the bench end and totter to the fireside.
The boy had come in from tending the horse, meanwhile. Cook chided him to shut the door and bring the cloak over, and Uwen spread two thick blankets by the fireside. Otter sank down, and Uwen spread his cloak over him, horsey as it still was, and still chill from outside. In a moment more the fireward side of it was warm, and Otter shut his eyes.
Another blanket came atop him, heavy and pressing him down, down and down where it was safe and the storm could never reach.
iii
HE STIRRED FROM TIME TO TIME DURING THE NIGHT, CONFUSED MOMENTARILY not to be at home at Gran’s, in his own bed, or asleep under the carved-wood ceiling of the Guelesfort, or freezing under snowy branches. But there was the homey fire to tell him where he was, and from time to time Uwen, in his shirt, came and put another small log on, just to keep it going through the cold of the night.
After a time the wind stopped howling, like a dog that had given up bad behavior, and the beams of the house popped and creaked in the cold, but Otter rested snug where he was, and slept, and slept, until all the aches melted out of him.
He began to be aware in the morning that the house had begun to stir, that, in fact, Cook was up. She had her hair in a long gray braid. She cleaned the table and set out bowls, then swung the pothook out and poured in cracked grain and a small kettle of water right at Otter’s feet.
“Not so’s ye need stir out,” she said, swinging it back over the heat. “Water’s set to boil. Sleep a bit more.”
He did. And waked again when Uwen’s son lifted the pot off with a wooden hook and carried it to the table.
“Porridge is in the pot,” Cook announced. “Go get Uwen.”
The boy went outside, and Otter sat up and raked his hair into something like order, still in his clothes, and finding the air warm and his bones bruised slightly from the fireplace stones, which he knew intimately, down to the one that jutted up a little, right where his shoulder wanted to be. But oh, he had slept, and he had been warm.
It was a wonderful place to be, and still felt as if he had waked inside a dream. The porridge went into bowls, there was honey for it, and he scrambled up and folded up the cloak and the blankets, to clear space around the fire.
“Yesterday’s bread,” Cook said. “An’ today’s porridge. And blackberry honey, which goes right well.” Uwen came through the door, snowy-booted, with the boy coming after. “Sit down, sit down, all.”
“Horses is fed,” Uwen remarked, taking his place on the bench. Otter slipped onto the end of the bench, not to take up more than his share of room, and not knowing which side of the table he should use. “Ain’t heard from m’lord this mornin’. He don’t always stir out. He’ll send when he takes a notion. Or maybe he’ll drop in for breakfast, who knows?”
“Does he know I’m here, sir?”
“Likely. Likely he does.” Uwen held his bowl as Cook dropped honey in. “Thank ye, wife.”
Cook went about her business, feeding them all, and there was tea, and all the porridge they could possibly eat, and a great deal left over. Uwen said: “Never you mind about what’s left. The horses’ll be right happy to clean it up.”
The cottage was tidy, though pots and horse harness and farm tools hung from the rafters, along with herbs and dried flowers, though there was not a straight beam in the place, and there no few patches in the daub—it was a lot like Gran’s place, except the harness and except a rack that held a soldier’s armor. A sword and shield stood in the shadows on the other side, in the corner, and his heart thumped when he saw it—a black shield with the white Sihhë Star in the center, arms still hung as a banner in the hall at Henas’amef. But here it wasn’t a dusty banner. It was what Uwen Lewen’s-son had carried in war. It, as nothing else, seized Otter’s attention and held it, in little glances sideways, as if it, and all it stood for, would vanish from the mortal world at any moment. It couldn’t be part of the world any longer. It couldn’t go where ordinary people lived their lives. It was exactly as Paisi told him in stories, but the last trace of it in the world of Men was that banner in Lord Crissand’s hall, that no one ever carried in the festivals and processions.