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pain, his fingers shook, and his arm wouldn’t remain lifted, but fell back to the ground. Weakness, he realized. His blood loss must have been great to account for it, and he began to worry that he was in serioustrouble. He could be close to death, for all he knew, and he still had no idea of what kind of wound he had sustained.
    He waited a while before he tried once more to find the wound, and this time he succeeded. He felt over his face first, for the pain seemed to be everywhere, yet all he found was a slight stubble of beard there. That assured him he hadn’t been unconscious for long, mayhap a day, but then, he had no way of knowing that a tender hand had been shaving him for the past ten. He found the lump on the back of his head at last, bringing a gasp from him as he pressed the tender spot. It was nowhere near as swollen as it had been, of a size now to relieve his mind that it wasn’t so serious as he had feared. But there was no stickiness of blood either, so what, then, accounted for the weakness of his limbs?
    He suspected first that he must be wounded elsewhere as well, just had yet to feel it. So he took stock of the rest of his body, shaking each limb slightly to see if pain would accompany the movement. None did, other than a general discomfort and stiffness all over, a hollow ache in his belly, which didn’t surprise him if he had gone a day without food, and a strange soreness on the soles of his feet, as if someone had taken a stick to them. And since that made no sense to him, any more than his weakness did, he didn’t dwell on it, for thinking only increased the pain in his head.
    He did wonder, however, how he was going to return to Wyndhurst, which was no morethan a day away, possibly two on foot, when just the thought of sitting up filled him with dread. He lay there for another hour, loath to try it, but finally he did, lifting himself to his elbows first, then pushing upward until he was sitting straight. He had been right to dread it, for immediately he was assailed by dizziness, but worse was the nausea that quickly followed. He bent to the side, ready to spill his guts, but nothing came out. That didn’t stop the gagging, however, which he did again and again, each time jerking his whole body and sending extra knives into his skull, until the pain was once more too much for him to bear.
    It was still daylight the next time he awoke, but he couldn’t say if it was the same day. The pain was still there, too, still just as bad, and memory of his attempt to rise kept him from trying again for a long while. It was the ache in his belly, and the strange weakness that would not go away, that finally prompted him to move. He needed food—Odin help him, he felt as if he were starving—and a soft bed, and his sister to fuss over him, none of which he would get remaining where he was. So he finally gritted his teeth, determined to make it to his feet this time and be on his way, but he did so in very slow degrees.
    The dizziness came again when he was sitting upright, but he fought it with what strength he had, and managed to keep the accompanying nausea at bay. Only now he noticed a blurriness of vision, which, fortunately, was not constant, but came and went.

    However, sitting there, in no hurry to make the final plunge to his feet, he had time to note his surroundings as well as the clothes he was wearing, which were not his own. The mud-colored braies fit him so tightly they didn’t need to be cross-gartered, and they stopped just short of his knees. The gray tunic was wide but short, no doubt made for a man who liked his food overmuch. It was so loose he didn’t note his weight loss, which would have explained the weakness, but not the why of it. The cloth shoes had holes on their soles, which might account for his sore feet if he had done some walking—which was possible, he supposed.
    He was reminded of the time he had wandered the south coast of Wessex when he searched for his sister