Watcher had two rules. Only bring down what he could eat and stay away from the Sull. They were good rules. They simplified his actions and made it possible to live a peaceful life.

He hunted for small game: wild turkey, opossum, ground squirrel, hare. When he needed fat he fished for salmon in one of the streams that forked from the big river. He wasn’t a good fisherman and could spend half a day catching nothing, but he was learning. He had time.

He built and tested fish traps, whittling wood and knotting strips of hide to form lattices. While he waited to see if the traps would work he gathered plants, tender new leaves of dock, fiddlehead and chicory. Most of the time he ate them raw, folding them into his mouth and letting the sweet greenness rest on his tongue before he chewed them. Food tasted good. On the rare occasions he lit a fire and roasted his game, he relished the tender juices and crispy skin.

Most nights he slept out in the open. He made beds of spruce, balsam and cedar and fell asleep drawing their rich and soothing fragrances into his lungs. When it rained he raised the simplest shelters, lean-tos and bivouacs. The nights were cool but not cold. Even this far north, the snows had passed.

He seldom camped in the same place more than two nights. He did not question whether it was restlessness or caution. It felt right to be moving. The forest was large and contained many things; some were worth seeing, some worth avoiding. He left it at that.

He knew he was in Sull territory but saw no reason to leave. He had earned a right to be here. They had made him who he was.

They had created what they feared.

Most days Watcher put effort into avoiding them—their fires, their horse tracks, the stone circles where they erected their tents, their heavily used trails—but he would not be gentle if they tried to take him.

He no longer feared them. It was not possible to fear a people after watching so many of them die.

Reaching a fork in the trail, Watcher turned north. He was heading along a deer path through a section of forest that looked as if it had been thinned. Elderberries and bearberries were in bloom and bumble-bees buzzed from plant to plant. Sun touched Watcher’s face. His pack was heavy with the remains of the turkey he had killed and smoked last night, and that meant he would not have to hunt for two days. This pleased him. Later, when he’d settled on a place to camp, he might work on another fish trap. He had some ideas about modifying the design. He was pretty sure his last one had caught, and then released, a trout. Scales left on one of the interior posts had been his clue.

He grinned at his own stupidity, and words from another life sounded in his head.

Us Sevrances were never made to fish.

Watcher’s heart leapt.

He continued walking, and after a while holding himself separate from the familiar voice, the memory faded. It was for the best.

No good would come from remembering his dead.

He spent the rest of the morning moving north, more or less following the course of a swift-running creek. Boulders on the creekbed made the water froth. He didn’t think it would be a good place to test traps. He had an idea he might might whittle a pole, fix the head from one of the queen’s arrows to the tip, see if he could he could spear some frogs. When he arrived at a small spill pond fed by the stream he thought he might as well stop and do a few things. There was a strip of dry bank on its north shore that seemed as good a place as any to spend the night.

It was his habit to prepare the camp early and then spend the rest of the day doing as he pleased. Before he left the Sull camp he had stripped the queen and her den mates of some belongings, and he now possessed a fine Sull hand knife. He used it to cut-and-strip spruce and cedar needles from nearby trees to form a bed. The trick was to use only the soft tips of the branches. He had woken up the first few nights with sticks in his back. Now he knew what he was doing, he worked quickly, raising a mound of soft needles above the bank.

Afterward he cleaned the sticky resin from the knife with a scrap of hareskin and some fat he’d pressed from the liver of the last salmon he’d caught. He would have preferred to use tung oil but it would do.

Later he sat on the edge of the water and whittled hardwood. It was almost warm so he took off his cloak—also Sull—and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Scars from his many fights made his arms look like maps. They were healing, the skin dry, the edges paling to white. Looking at them, he knew he would never speak of the fight circle to anyone. He hoped it would pass into the area of his mind where memories floated away.

Finished with shaping the oak sucker into a spear shaft, he went to find some twine. Earlier he’d spotted a basswood by the oak. Now he retraced his steps downstream. The inner bark of basswood made good cordage and he needed something to bind the arrowhead to the pole.

He would never understand how the girl slipped into the camp while he was away. He had thought himself vigilant. He was wrong. He had thought himself prepared to deal with anything that happened to him.

He was wrong about that too.

The work of removing the outer bark was hard but not unpleasant. Some bit of a song came to him and he hummed as he cut and stripped the tree. Deciding it was a good policy to have extra cordage on hand, he took more than was needed to bind the spear. Arms full of basswood bark, he returned to the camp.

The girl was standing waist-deep in the water, washing her hair and face. She turned her head at his approach, acknowledging him with a single look, then returned to her task. Her long dark hair glinted with oil in the sunlight. The fine linen shift she was wearing was soaked and pressed against her skin.

As Watcher walked through the camp he noted the sturdy little pony pulling dandelions from the shore. He saw the boots, dress and wool stockings the girl had discarded to enter the water. He spied two saddlebags in a nearby sumac bush and decided that they, and he, shared something in common. All three had been inexpertly hidden.

Because there was nothing else to do, Watcher set down the load of bark. Although he had not planned on a fire, he set about building one from unusable pieces of bark, stripped cedar branches and discarded oak suckers. He tried, unsuccessfully, not to watch the girl as he worked.

She seemed in no hurry to leave the water. Arms stretched out, she walked deeper into the pond. Her hair floated behind her, fanning out on the surface. Watcher was dimly aware of the calm, strong beats of her heart.

He shredded inner bark for kindling. Using the Sull queen’s shortbow and one of her arrows with the head removed, he drilled into a piece of oak. The oak was damp and he had to work the bow hard to generate heat. He raised some smoke, but when he threw kindling on the hot spot it didn’t catch. As he repositioned the bow and arrow for a second attempt at firelighting, the girl spoke up from the water.

“There’s a flint and striker in one of my packs. They’re in the bushes.”

He looked at her and could not think.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked, wading toward him.

He did and did not. It was no kind of answer so he remained silent.

“Mallia Argola,” she said, emerging from the water. “I’ve come a long way to find you.”

She was the most lovely thing he had ever seen. Her skin was the color of raw honey and her eyes were deeply, greenly brown. The wet linen shift revealed her round high breasts and the dark down between between her legs. Watcher set down the bow and went to her. She waited for him, sure of her own worth.

She smelled of spicy ferns. Her lips were soft; they opened quickly when he kissed them. The pond water drying on her skin was a shocking coolness that had to be penetrated to reach her warmth. Her breasts and buttocks filled his hands. When she pulled off her shift and showed herself to him he wept.

She was that alive and that beautiful.

They lay down on the bank. She bit his shoulder as he entered her and called out a name he had left behind.

Afterward they dozed under a fading sun as dragonflies skimmed the water. She woke him by taking his hand. “Come on,” she said, smiling as she pulled him up. “Let’s swim.”

They ran into the water. It made him catch his breath. Diving, he went under. She didn’t follow him down but swam to him when he surfaced. Wrapping her legs around his waist, she kissed him and laughed. “I’m so happy,” she said.

He pressed her hard against his chest, feeling her softness and vitality and half her weight. When they returned to the shore they made love again.

He cooked for her later and she ate with appetite and appreciation, grinning and asking for more. He was delighted. To sit opposite her across the fire and watch light from the flames shimmer across her skin seemed like a gift. When she shivered, he brought her his cloak to keep her warm.

“This is beautiful,” she said, running her fingers across the soft midnight-blue hide. “Is it Sull?”

“Yes.” It might have been the first word he spoke to her.

“And the knife and bow? They’re Sull too?”

He did not understand why this mattered.

Perhaps something in his face warned her off, for she said, “It’s not important. We’re here. We found each other.”

Watcher knew he had not found her so said nothing.

Rising, she went to tend the pony. He used the time to feed the fire and reshape the cedar bed so it was wide enough for two. The stars were out and there was no moon. Far, far in the distance he was aware of a moon snake winding north. He didn’t pay it any heed. It had sensed him. It would keep away.

The girl returned to the fire and brushed out tangles from her hair. “It took a long time to get here. I lost track of the days.”

Watcher remembered marks scraped on a cage and then a stone wall. Her words could have been his own.

“Do you know how I found you?”

He shook his head.

Smiling softly she looked him in the eye. “It was khodo, the magic of my homeland.” She raised her fist to her mouth and mimed biting it. “Tooth and hand. Do you remember?”

He did not.

“I bit you. I struck a claim.” She was watching him carefully. He had nothing to say in response but this did not appear to worry her. “In Hanatta when a woman wants a man she bites his left hand. If there is no prior claim, khodo may occur. And then when the man and woman are parted for the first time the woman will know where he is.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t work the other way. It’s women’s magic. Very strong.”

He stood and took her to the cedar bed. He understood from her words that she wanted him and that was enough. She kissed his face in the starlight, covering every part of it with tiny little brushes of her lips. They fell asleep.

He awakened before she did, and he was happy to lie on the cedars with her warm, fragrant body next to his. When she stirred they made love. He wanted to crush her and keep them both in this moment.

Already he knew she had come to bring him back.

Still, he could not help himself. As he washed in the pond, he made plans. He would need to hunt more. He could live on small, lean game but it would not do for the girl. He would bring her deer, fat with spring grasses. And he would use their hides to make a tent. The pony meant they could carry more, and he wondered if he should chop some logs. It occurred to him the girl might have a hand ax in her pack. He turned to call her.

She was standing by the small pile of his possessions. She had drawn Loss. When she realized he was looking at her, she hesitated, froze and then raised her chin defiantly. The sword was so heavy, she had to rest its tip on the ground. “I wanted to look.”

“Put it back,” he told her.

He watched as she struggled to return the blade to a sheath that had not been made for it. Leaving the water, he went to help her.

“I’m not sorry,” she said when he took the sword from her grip. “Anyone would be curious. It’s the one, isn’t it? The sword from Red Ice?”

He sheathed the sword and closed his eyes. He wished there was a way to stop hearing what she said.

“What happened to Addie Gunn?”

Her heart was four feet away and there was nothing but clear space around it. He could destroy it in less than an instant, make it stop. Aware that his hand muscles were twitching and afraid he would do her harm, he laid the sword on the grass and walked away. Did she not understand that the words that hurt most in the world were all names?

As he passed the campfire he picked up the bow and arrow case. He could not recall the last time he had wanted to hunt large game.

He moved east, crossing the creek upstream and heading deep into the woods. It was spring and the days were growing longer. Animals were on the move. A lynx was padding through the trees on the scent of a newborn fawn. Pack wolves to the north were idly tagging a moose, and a fox was returning to her set with something still alive in her jaw for her kits. Watcher kept moving. He had perceived a powerful deer heart to the north and hoped it might be a stag.

It was. Watcher stalked it for hours through pine and hardwoods. The Sull bow did not have great range so he had to get close. For the final six hundred paces he was belly-down in the pine needles, bow parallel to the ground, drawn and ready. The stag was a tawny red color and its antlers formed an eight-foot spread. Its heart pumped blood around its body at a swift and elevated rate. It suspected the danger. Its head came up as Watcher angled the bow. It leapt into motion, but Watcher had anticipated the movement. He claimed the heart.

He ate part of the liver while it was still warm. While the carcass was draining he made a travois from spruce saplings, cutting and weaving the wood. It was good, hard work but he did not enjoy it. When the stag carcass was loaded and secure, he dragged it back to the camp.

It weighed twenty stone and took half a day.

Sweating and weary he approached the camp. The girl came tearing toward him, her face streaked with tears.

Dropping the poles of the travois, he waited for her to come. She was shaking as she fell into his arms, breathlessly murmuring his old name. “I was so frightened. I thought you’d gone.”

He wondered what had happened to her magic. Had she said it worked only once?

She kissed his neck and he felt her tears against his skin. “I’m sorry I unsheathed the sword. Forgive me.”

Taking her by both shoulders, he set her a foot away from him so he could look at her. Her eyes were red and her skin had the blotchy look of someone who had been crying for some time. A little hiccup made her entire body jerk.

“I love you,” she told him.

He did not understand why. Because it was the only thing that was important, he said, “Why have you come?”

She was beautiful and clever and he was not sure he expected the truth from her.

“We need you. You can’t just live in the woods and forget about us. You have to come back and help us fight.” Watcher let her go and she stood, breathing hard in front of him. “You promised. You spoke an oath.”

Watcher knew that oaths did not matter. They were words; they could not bind a life. He did not tell her because she was young and almost sincere, and the hard truths you learned for yourself.

He looked over her shoulder at the little camp. The bed, the fire, the trail already worn between the camp and the water. This was a life worth living, a quiet, self-reliant life. He wanted to see the woods in summer. He wanted to lie in long grass and bake in the sun. He did not want to use the sword, didn’t want even to look at it.

Why didn’t you drop it in the big river, then, let the current sweep it to sea?

Watcher had no answer to that beyond, It’s mine.

He returned his attention to the girl and decided it did not matter if she came of her own free will or had been sent. He wished she had come sooner and said nothing, or later when he was… ready.

He smiled hard at that. Who would ever be ready to wield that sword for the purpose it was intended? Ready did not exist in such a world.

He did.

Do not forget who you are. Addie’s final message, the one that had not been spoken, claimed space in Watcher’s head. He heard love for himself and love for clan in it.

Watcher stood in the forest and listened to the cardinals call and forced himself not to wish for another life.

This one would do. He would reclaim it.

At dawn the next day they were on the move.