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his pony. It could keep up its steady trot all day. The men’s horses drooped by nightfall, but the pony—he didn’t name it—drank at whatever stream Nolt chose to camp by, then fell to cropping grass. Another day done.
    Sometimes Jaumé drooped like the horses, but a meal revived him, and then his excitement in learning took over—a hidden excitement. Although Bennick taught him cheerfully, and sometimes with laughter, nothing was a game. First Jaumé had to be useful. He gathered stones for the firepit and branches for Bennick to chop. He fetched water to be boiled for the pungent brew of dried leaves the men drank each night. It was bitter to Jaumé; he kept to plain water—water that would soon carry the curse. Only when the meal was over and his jobs were done could he practice with his knife.
    It took him several nights to learn how to keep its edge sharp with a whetstone. Da had used a whetstone on the scythes he made and Jaumé knew the technique of drawing the coarse side down the blade and coming back lightly with the fine side. But this blade had to be sharper than a scythe, and each side equal to the other, and its point needle-like. Jaumé learned quickly. Bennick, taking the knife and testing it on his thumb—and not cutting himself—was satisfied.
    “Can I throw it now?” Jaumé asked.
    “An easy throw. You’ve earned that.” Bennick chose a tree with its near side illumined by the fire. He showed Jaumé how to stand, how to hold the knife. “By the handle when you’re this close to the target. When you’re further back you hold the blade and the knife flips over, but you’ll have to wait for that. I don’t want you cutting your fingers off.” He took the knife and flicked it at the tree. It happened so fast Jaumé scarcely saw it. The blade was buried so deep he struggled to pull it out.
    Bennick taught him patiently after that, how to hold the heavy little knife, how to know the distance to his target without thinking and make the throw with no pause or calculation getting in the way. Jaumé was aware of Nolt watching, and knew he had to satisfy Nolt as well as Bennick. Again, as with the sharpening, he learned quickly. By the second night, the knife hit and stayed every time he threw.
    “Can I make it flip now?”
    “No. You’re doing well, lad, but there are steps. I’ll teach you when you’re ready.”
    “So I can be a soldier like you?”
    Bennick laughed. “A soldier, eh? I guess you could call me that.”
    “Can you show me how you throw your big knife?”
    “This one?” Bennick patted the knife sheathed on his belt. Suddenly he turned and Jaumé heard a whirr like a quail leaping from the grass and a thud in the dark where a white shape stood.
    “Bennick,” Nolt said from his seat at the fire. It was a rebuke.
    Bennick made a little bow of apology. “Nolt.” He strode into the dark. Jaumé trotted anxiously at his side. The shape was a young tree with a white trunk no thicker than Bennick’s arm. The knife had struck it at the height of Bennick’s chest and sliced through. Half the blade showed on the other side.
    “I didn’t even know this tree was here.”
    “You’ve got to see everything, night as well as day.” Bennick pulled out the knife with a single jerk. He wiped it as though wiping off blood. “All right, lad. To sleep with you. There’s more riding tomorrow.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Where the road takes us.”
    Bennick’s tone said it was a question he shouldn’t have asked. But Jaumé already knew part of the answer. Bennick had told him in Cornas. They were going to Ankeny. To meet a prince. The rest, Jaumé could guess. Nolt and his men weren’t running away like the farmers with their carts. They were heading north to fight.
    Jaumé shivered in his blanket, in the cooling night. There was only one thing to fight and that was the curse. But how could you fight what you couldn’t see?

 
     

    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    K AREL STOOD AT