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were did seem out of the ordinary. Even so, his voice came warm and familiar when he spoke to us, as if we were his friends rather than friends of his son.
    “The pelt you have there, the feathers are sable. I’ve heard it said they can be that way, but n’er have I seen it.” He stroked the point of his chin with his left hand. “Could be it’s a fledgling, but the pelt is full-sized. Or, perhaps, they molt into a summer plumage, then again into their white for winter.”
    I nodded my head. “I suppose it could be, my lord.”
    Norrington threw his head back and laughed. “Very good, Hawkins, don’t offer an opinion if you don’t have one. Your father has taught you well. And you, Master Carver?”
    “Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt, my lord.”
    “Listen to me, boys …” Norrington paused and shook his head, then lowered his voice. “Here I call you boys when you are clearly men. Forgive me and hear me: what you have done here is rare, very rare. I know of perhaps a score of men who have been involved in a temeryx kill—your father among them, young Hawkins. I’ve killed a half-dozen myself, most with a bow. I got one with a lance from horseback—I wear its claws in this hunting mask. Another I took with a spear, on foot, but I will tell you now I only did it because my horse had broken its leg and I was reduced to walking against my will.”
    He watched us both carefully as the import of his words sank in. “There will be men who seek to devalue what you have done, to say you are mistaken, or that you have lied. ‘Exaggerated,’ they will call your exploit. These are petty men and ones to stay well away from. Others—true men like your father, like others in Valsina—they will know your hearts from this act. So, no matter what you hear, do not doubt yourselves. A day into your Moon Month you have displayed more about yourselves than others could in a century.”
    Nay cleared his throat with a low rumble. “Thank you much for your kindness, Lord Norrington, but making too much of this ain’t right. We did what we had to. No thinking on it. No knowing how much it might pain us. Now, Leigh, he knew his task. He took it on himself to save us.”
    “Again, I know what my son did.”
    “How is Leigh?”
    “You can see for yourselves.” Norrington smiled. He pointed off across a small valley to the logging road and the trio of wagons that had been brought up. “He’s in the first wagon. He insisted on bringing us back here. Go on, he’ll be glad to see you.”
    Nay and I took off running, passing a pair of magickers heading off in the other direction toward Rounce. We scrambled up the hill, then along the road to the rear of the wagon. It had a boxy bed with wooden sides two feet high and a canvas covering over a wooden framework that rose six feet above the bed. Reaching the endboard, we pulled back the flaps and found Leigh.
    He was seated on a half-dozen pillows that propped him up in a sitting position. He looked tired and had a red welt on his right cheek where it looked as if a thorny bush had raked his face. Similar welts crisscrossed his hands and his shins, which had long since been stripped of stockings. His feet had been swathed in white cloth, some of which had pink patches showing—mostly on the heel and along the sole.
    He smiled at us. “When I heard the horn, one blast, I knew they’d found you. And this close to the road, I knew you had to be alive. Rounce?”
    “Alive as well. Your father’s people are bringing him in. Magickers were going to him as we came along.”
    “Good. I told them what you’d done with themetholanth and they said that was probably as good as you could have done, given the circumstances.” Leigh shrugged. “They dabbed some tincture of it on my feet, too.”
    Nay smiled. “Told you them shoes weren’t right.”
    “Oh, and the shoes quite agreed with you, Nay. They came apart a mile or so east of here.” He barked a quick laugh. “I paid for them with moongold,