“We think he got beat up in town and then came home here in a carriage and passed out. He’s drunk.” All of this was volunteered by Cadet Ordo. I expected to hear the others confirm it, but when I looked around, they were gone.

“Out of the way, boy!” Dr Amicas commanded me. I moved to one side, and he set his lantern on the ground beside Tiber. “This is bad,” he said at first sight of Tiber’s face. The doctor was still puffing from his trot here. I turned aside, thinking I might be sick. A blow from something had split his scalp and it was sagging open over his ear. “Did he speak to you?”

“He was unconscious when we found him,” Ordo volunteered quickly.

The doctor was not a dull-witted man. “I thought you said he came here in a carriage. Surely the driver didn’t carry an unconscious cadet over here and dump him before they left?” Hard cold scepticism was in his voice. It made me brave enough to speak.

“He talked to me a little bit, when I first got here. When we were taking Gord back to Carneston House, Caulder ran past us. He said someone was hurt. So I came here, thinking I might be able to help. Tiber was conscious when I got here. He said he wasn’t drunk. And that four men had attacked him. And he asked me to be sure his papers were safe.”

The doctor lowered his face, sniffed at Tiber suspiciously, and then drew back. “Well, he certainly doesn’t smell sober. But drinking doesn’t lay a man’s scalp open either. And he didn’t get this sort of mud on himself in town. He’s damn lucky not to be dead after a blow to the head like that. Load him up on the stretcher and let’s get him back to the infirmary.”

The doctor stood and held the lantern for the two orderlies who carefully edged Tiber onto the stretcher. In the lantern’s feeble light, the doctor looked older than he had in the infirmary. The lines in his face seemed deeper and his eyes were flat.

“He might have got muddy here after he fell trying to walk back to his dormitory,” Ordo suddenly volunteered. We all turned to look at him. The reasoning sounded laborious to me, and the doctor must have agreed, for he suddenly snapped at him, “You’ll come with us. I want you to write down everything you saw and sign it. Burvelle, you go back to your dormitory. And Caulder! Get yourself home this instant. I don’t want to see you again tonight.”

Caulder had been holding back at the edge of the circle of light, staring at Tiber with an expression of both fascination and horror. At the doctor’s words, he startled, and then scampered off into the night. I stooped and picked up Tiber’s satchel and papers.

“Give those to me,” the doctor commanded me brusquely, and I passed them over to him.

Dr Amicas’s path led in the same direction as mine, so I walked on the other side of the stretcher from him. The swaying light of the lantern made the shadows travel over Tiber’s face, distorting his features. He was very pale.

I left the miserable cavalcade at the walkway to Carneston House. The windows in the upper floors were all dark, but a lantern still burned by the door. When I went inside, I took the last of my courage and reported to Sergeant Rufet. He stared at me as I stammered out my excuse for coming in after lights-out. I thought he would take me to task over it, but he only nodded and said, “Your friend said you’d run off to see about someone who was hurt. Next time, come here first and report it to me. I could have sent some of the older cadets with you.”

“Yes, sir,” I said wearily. I turned to go.

“It was Cadet Lieutenant Tiber, you said. ”

I turned back. “Yes, sir. He’d been beaten up pretty badly. He was drunk. So I don’t think he put up much of a fight.”

Sergeant Rufet knit his brows at me. “Drunk? Not Tiber. That boy doesn’t drink. Somebody’s lying.” And then, as if he suddenly realized what he had said, the sergeant snapped his jaws shut. “Go to bed, Cadet. Quietly,” he told me an instant later. I went.

I found Spink waiting for me by the hearth in his nightshirt. He followed me into our room, and as I undressed in dark, I quietly told him everything. He was silent. I shook out my damp uniform but knew that it would still be wet when I donned it again tomorrow. It was not a pleasant thought to take to bed with me. I tried, instead, to focus my mind on Carsina, but she suddenly seemed far away in both time and distance; girls, perhaps, did not matter as much as deciding how I would make it through the rest of my first year. I was in my bed before Spink asked his question.

“Was the liquor on his breath?”

“He reeked of it.” We both knew what that meant. As soon as he recovered, Tiber would be suspended and face discipline. If he recovered.

“No. I mean, was he breathing the smell at you? Or was it just on his clothes?”

I thought about it for a minute. “I don’t know. I didn’t think to check anything like that. I just smelled spirits, very strong, when I got close to him.”

Another silence followed my words. Then, “Dr Amicas seems very sharp. He’ll know if Tiber was really drunk or not.”

“Probably,” I agreed, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. There wasn’t much I had faith in any more.

I fell asleep, and dreamed deep. The old fat tree woman sat with her back against her tree and I stood before her. Rain was falling on both of us. Although it drenched me, it did not wet her. As soon as it touched her, it was absorbed as if her flesh were thirsty earth. I didn’t mind the rain. It was gentle and soft, and its chill touch was almost pleasant. The forest glen felt very familiar, as if I had been there often. I was not dressed against the weather, but sat bare-limbed in the rain, enjoying it. “Come,” she said. “Walk and talk with me. I need to be sure I understand what I have seen through your eyes.”

We left her tree, and I led the way, walking on a winding path through a forest of giants. In some places, the overhead canopy of leaves sheltered us completely from the falling rain. In others, the water plashed down, from leaf to twig to branch to leaf and then down, to soak into the forest floor. It did not bother either of us. I noticed in passing that although she seemed to walk freely with me whenever I glanced at her she appeared to be in some way part of the trees. Her hand would touch the bark of one, her hair would tangle against another. Always, always, she was in contact with them. Despite the swaying bulk of her body, her heavy walk had an odd grace. She was strength and opulence in my dream. The pillows of flesh that softened her silhouette to curves were no more repulsive to me than the immense girth of a great tree or the vast umbrella of its branches and foliage. Her largeness was wealth, a mark of skill and success for a people who lived by hunting and gathering. And this, too, seemed familiar.

The deeper I went into her forest, the more I recalled of this world. I knew the path I followed, knew that it would lead to the rocky place where a stream ran down from a stony cleft to suddenly launch itself in a glittering silver arc into the forest below. It was a dangerous place. The rocks close to the edge were always green and slick, but nowhere else was the water so cool and so fresh, even when the rain was falling. It was a place I cherished. She knew that. Letting me go there in the dream was one of my rewards.

Rewards for what?

“What would happen, then,” she asked me. “If many of the soldier sons who are to be the leaders were slain, and never ventured east to bring their people against the forest? Would this stop the road? Would it turn these people back?”

I had been thinking of something else. I came back to her question from my distraction. “It might slow them for a time. But it would not stop them. In truth, nothing will stop the road. You can only delay it. My people believe that the road will bring riches to them. Lumber from the forest, meat and furs. And eventually, a way to the sea beyond the mountain, and trade with the people there.” I shook my head in resignation. “As long as wealth beckons, my people will find a way to it.”