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“I hadn’t expected….”
    Aslyn ground her teeth but cut him off before he could voice doubts regarding her skill due to her tender years.  “Neither had I expected anyone to arrive so soon.  I am not even settled in, having arrived in Krackensled less than an hour ago.  Is your need urgent?  If not, perhaps you could return at a later time, when I’ve had a chance to settle in?”
    “Alas, dear lady, I am afraid it cannot wait.  If it were for myself I would gladly wait upon your convenience.  My man, I fear, cannot.”
    Aslyn’s shoulders slumped.  She glanced around the tiny cottage, but it did not magically appear clean, and, save for the dirt floor, there was no place for his man to lie so that she could attend him.  On the other hand, if she attended him outside, like as not, he would be lying upon the snow.  “You can bring him in here.  I’ll need some light.  I’ve not a candle to my name, nor lantern, nor even torch.”
    He nodded and stepped outside again.  In a few moments, the door was blocked once more, this time by three shadows, two men carrying a third.  It took some maneuvering to negotiate the narrow doorway, but finally they laid the injured man upon the floor and departed.  The knight entered as they left, carrying a torch.  After looking around the room and discovering there were no brackets to receive it, he shrugged and held it so that it fell upon his man’s chalk white features.
    Aslyn knelt beside the injured man.  He was unconscious and bloody from head to foot.  It was impossible to even tell where the blood was coming from.  “What happened?”
    The knight shrugged.  “We found him thus at first light.  He’d been left on watch.”
    “This morn?”  Aslyn demanded, aghast.  “And he has not been attended … at all?”
    Again, the knight shrugged.  “There were none among us with knowledge of healing.  We brought him here because it was the closest town.”
    The man was dead.  At a guess, he had been for some time.  “There was none among you who knew how to plug a hole?” Aslyn asked tightly.
    To her chagrin, the knight grinned suggestively.  “Indeed, every man of us will avow to a good deal of skill in … uh … plugging holes, but it makes the task easier when it’s surrounded by a thatch of hair.”
    Aslyn blushed fierily, but only a little of it was due to his frankly sexual remark.  Primarily, she was furious, both at his cavalier attitude toward ‘his man’ and because not one among them had taken the time to bind the man’s wounds.  He might well have died anyway, but he had not even had the chance to live.  She got to her feet.  “I’ve no skill in resurrecting the dead.  I’m afraid I can do nothing for him.”
    He looked down at the man dispassionately.  “A pity.”
    She stared at the knight.  It was a pity as far as she was concerned that the poor man had had the misfortune to be left to the knight’s tender mercies.  The knight was an attractive man, dark as the devil, but still somewhat above the ordinary in looks, and obviously of high birth.  Perhaps that accounted for his callous disregard for the life of a low born soldier, but she found she could not credit that as being entirely the case.  Plainly, he had no care for his fellow man, whatever their rank.  He exuded a sense of superiority in every look, word, and gesture that made it impossible to appreciate his good looks.
    She shivered and looked away as the knight transferred his gaze from the dead man to her, unwilling to encourage the man’s obviously overwhelming conceit by allowing him to interpret her gaze as an interest in him.
    Stepping to the door, he summoned the men who’d brought the man in and told them to ‘remove the carcass and find a place to plant it before it began to offend all and sundry by its stench.’
    Aslyn’s lips curled in distaste at the crass comment.  She turned away, dismissing him as she returned to the task of setting