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"Kan?" said Hweilan.
Lendri closed his mouth and looked down at the brand again.
"What?" said Hweilan. "What does it mean?"
"Death…" he said, though his eyes were distant, and he seemed to be talking to himself. "She carries death in her right hand."
"What are you talking about? Lendri?"
He shook his head, almost as if waking from a dream. His haunted eyes focused on her, and he said, "That word… it means 'death' in our people's language."
Hweilan studied the scar. "Maybe it is a good sign?" she said. "I swore to bring vengeance to those who killed my family. Now I have 'death' branded on my right hand. A sign?"
"Perhaps." Lendri's looked away. "Rub some clean snow on it. I will put on some salve and a clean bandage. Then we must leave. Quickly."
"Wait," said Hweilan. "Go? Go where?"
Lendri pointed at the fire, and his upper lip curled over his teeth in a very wolflike snarl. "That smoke will draw any Nar within ten miles. You want to be here when they come for a look?"
Hweilan looked away. The pounding in her skull was getting worse. She knelt and rubbed snow on her hand. "What makes you think I'm going anywhere with you? You come out of nowhere claiming-"
A shrill sound cut the air, bringing a sharp pain to her ears. She looked up. Lendri was holding a kishkoman to his lips, much like her own, but brown with age.
He dropped it back into his shirt and walked over to her. He loomed over her and said, "I am Vil Adanrath. I am blood to you, by oaths and birth." He crouched and leaned in close, his nose only inches from hers. "But if that is not enough, I am the only hope you have."
They were getting close.
Soran, riding out front, had set an unrelenting pace. Almost dangerously so, since the ground was not only uneven and rocky, but covered with snow and ice.
Argalath had been forced to ensorcel all their horses before they would tolerate the Soran-thing's presence. But it had worked, and their "hound" never hesitated in his chosen path. He led, and they followed-Kadrigul and eight Nar behind him. He thought all were Creel, but it didn't matter to him. Nar were all alike.
They crossed a slight rise-a thickly forested saddle between two hills-and Soran disappeared between the trees. Kadrigul reached for the amulet Argalath had given him and whispered the words to activate it. Through the cured leather of his glove, he felt the metal tingle.
He followed the tracks through the snow and soon found Soran sitting on his horse, glaring at him. The Nar stopped their own horses well behind Kadrigul.
Soran drew in a deep breath to speak. "She is close."
They set off again, and when they next left the trees, Kadrigul could see a thick column of smoke in the near distance. A mile away or less.
Soran spurred his horse, and Kadrigul followed.
Lendri finished bandaging Hweilan's hand, then helped fit her glove back over it. The salve helped. The pain in her hand was already fading to a throbbing ache, but the pounding in her head was so bad that she thought she could feel her skull rattling.
Scith's pyre still burned, but the flames had lessened considerably, and the smoke had gone from thick white plumes to wisps of gray. With almost no breeze, the pyre had filled the little valley with an eye-burning haze.
"The pain is very bad?" said Lendri. He was studying her intently.
"My head worse than my hand. Where will we go?" Hweilan asked.
"North for now."
"The people who killed my family are sitting in my home right now, at Highwatch. To the south."
Lendri looked at her with that unnerving gaze of his. The ice blue right eye reminded her of the strange Sossrim who occasionally came to Highwatch to trade. But the green left eye… there was something unnatural about it. "Our oaths bind us, yes, but we need help."
"What kind of help? Where?"
"To answer that to your satisfaction will be a long tale. For now, we must run."
"Why won't you tell me?"
"I will tell you!" Lendri's lip curled over his teeth and she heard the beginning of a growl in his voice. She stepped back.
Seeing her fear, Lendri's expression softened. "I'm sorry. I will tell you. I promise. I have… so much to tell you. But to explain everything will take time. Time we don't have now. We are still too close to Highwatch. Now, let's move."
Hweilan turned and went the other way.
"Where are you going?"
She stopped and glared at him. "I left my father's bow up the hill. I'm not leaving without it."
Lendri thought a moment, then nodded. "Be quick."
She pushed through the brush and made her way up the hill, finding the bow with little problem. She retrieved it, stood, and looked down into the camp. Lendri was rummaging through the supplies of the dead Nar, discarding most of what he found, but pocketing an item here or there.
I could go…
The thought hit her. She could turn, keep going up the hill. Lendri wasn't looking her way. She could be over the rise and be long gone before he suspected anything. Hweilan gripped her father's bow in a tight fist and turned uphill To come face to face with a wolf, standing on a ledge no more than a few paces away. Hechin. The huge gray wolf's yellow eyes, unblinking, fixed on her. He didn't snarl, didn't growl, did nothing whatsoever to threaten her. But his very stillness spoke volumes.
"Hweilan?" Lendri called from below.
"Coming."
By the time Hweilan walked back into camp, Lendri had his supplies-two thick bundles, bound with leather cords-secured on his back. Ravens sat thick in the trees, and more were circling overhead, their cries a raucous counterpoint to the crackle of the pyre's dying flames. Only a shell remained of the log. Everything within was gray ash and red coals. Nothing left of Scith but what the gods had taken.
Lendri walked over to Hweilan and held out a thick bundle. "Here. You'll need this in the coming days."
It was a thick Creel cloak, make of swiftstag hide and rimmed with fur. Her head fit through the middle of it, and it flared in the front, covering her when needed but easily thrown back in case she needed to free her hands. It even had deep pockets along the inside.
"Did you… did you find this in their packs or take it off…" Off a dead man? She couldn't speak the words. "Does it matter?" said Lendri.
She shook her head and settled into the cloak. Hweilan looked at the Nar corpses. "What about them?"
"A feast for the crows," said Lendri. "Let's leave them to it. Come."
He set off, setting a brisk pace through the woods, following frost-covered deer trails along the bottom of a steep escarpment.
But they made it no more than a quarter mile out of the camp before Hechin barked from behind them.
Lendri stopped and raised a hand to signal quiet.
The wolf bounded out of the thick brush. Even Hweilan, who had studied wolves only from a distance, could see that he was agitated. His ears lay flat against his head, and his tail pointed straight out.
"What's wrong?" said Hweilan.
"We're being followed," said Lendri. "Keep moving." Lendri shrugged out of his pack and handed it to her. "Here."
"What? What do you mean?"
"You keep going. I'm going back to see who it is."
She set the bow on the ground so she could settle the packs on her back. "Probably other Nar, coming to investigate the smoke. Why not keep moving?"
"You will."
He fitted an arrow to his bowstring and headed back the way they'd come, Hechin at his heels. Hweilan watched them go, then watched a while longer. Finally, she turned her back and headed north, fast as she could. If the elf never came back… well, at least she had the supplies.
Her trail led her away from the escarpment. The hills reared up into a wall before her, blocking the north, while the trail bent eastward. Hweilan knew of a pass several miles farther that way. With Lendri not there to tell her otherwise, she headed east.