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their feet." I replied. Yet I thought that I could not claim unusual courage in this. Perhaps I had turned my back on a lesser trouble to embrace a greater. Still I would not admit that now, even to myself.
     
    "A good philosophy." Kildas commented, but there was more a note or raillery than approval in that. "May it continue to guide and preserve you, sister-bride. Ah, it appears that we shall be granted a rest within after all-"
     
    For at word from Lord Imgry the men of the escort came forward to help us dismount and lead us into the post. In the guardroom we crowded to the fire, holding out our hands, moving about to drive the stiffness from our legs and backs. As always I kept as far from our leader as I might. Perhaps he would believe that my avoidance of him was only natural, that Marimme's fear and hatred would keep her from the man solely responsible for her being here. If he believed so, he meant to leave well enough alone, for he did not approach me where I stood with Kildas and Solfinna, sipping now at the mugs of hot stew-soup dipped out of a common kettle.
     
    We were not yet finished with this meal, if meal it might be named, when Lord Imgry spoke out, addressing us as a company:
     
    "The snow has stopped in the heights. Though it is uncomfortable, yet we must press on to the Croffkeep before night. Time grows short and we must be at the Throat of the Hawk in another day's time."
     
    There was some under-the-berth complaining at his words, but none of them spoke out loud. He was not a man to be fronted on a matter of comfort alone. Throat of the Hawk-the name meant nothing to me. Perhaps it was our ordained meeting place.
     
    My luck still held. When we reached the Croffkeep, a mountain fort now only a quarter manned, we were given a long room to ourselves, with pallets laid on the floor, reducing us to the "comforts" of those who had fought from this rocky perch in years past
     
    Fatigue pushed me into sleep, deep and dreamless. But I awoke from that suddenly, alert of mind, as if I had been summoned. Almost I could hear the echo of some well known voice-Dame Alousan's?-calling me to a necessary task. And so strong was that feeling that I blinked at the dim lamp at the far end of the room, found it hard for the moment to recognize the sounds of heavy breathing from the pallets around mine and realize where I lay and for what purpose.
     
    My weariness was gone. Instead I was filled with a restlessness, the kind of anticipatory unease which haunts one before some momentous and life changing event. And also my old talent, which had been stirring in me since I first thought of this, was as awake as I.
     
    There was that reaching out in me which I did not exactly fear, which some inner part below the level of my day-mind knew and welcomed, as one drinking a cordial for the first time might know the refreshment of a herb the body craved but which hitherto had been denied it. It was a brave excitement and it worked in me so that I found it impossible to lie still.
     
    With what stealth I could summon, I put on my outer clothing. The divided skirt of my riding robe was still damp and the chill unpleasant but that did not matter to the thing forcing me into the night and the open, as if I must have freedom in which to breathe.
     
    Kildas stirred in her sleep as I rounded the end of her pallet, next to mine, and murmured-a name perhaps. But she did not wake, and then I laid hand on the door latch. I could hear the tread of a sentry in the corridor. Yet my need for the open drove me on at the end of his beat. I had taken but a step or two.
     
    When I edged open the door he was back towards me without when he began to turn. And in that moment I was possessed by that which I had known only dimly-a will which was as much of the body as it was of the mind. I looked upon that man who in a moment would see me, and I willed, fiercely and with all the force in me, that he would not do so-not for the seconds which