The first hare he saw escaped him because he had foolishly not thought to gather stones for ammunition before he set out. He sought out a stream, and again I felt him pilfering my memories to select stones of the right size and heft for the sling. I resented that. He had his own secrets that he kept from me. Why should I share the skills I’d worked so hard to perfect? I clenched my mind shut to him.

He paused a few moments by the stream to drink, and then to make several practice shots with the sling. He was not very good at first. He selected a tree trunk as his target. The first stone went wide, the second grazed the bark, and the third did not leave the sling at all but fell at his feet. I felt his frustration, and felt, too, the hunger that gnawed at him. He needed what I knew.

I gave in, reasoning that if he did not eat, my body would suffer. When he reached again for my memories, I actively offered to him what he needed to know, not just how to stand and when to release the stone, but also the “feel” of the sling itself. The next two stones he launched each hit the tree trunk with a solid and satisfying “thwack!” He grinned, replenished his ammunition, and stalked on, suddenly a predator in these woods.

He killed the next hare he saw with a single stone and lifted the limp carcass with satisfaction. It was a big one, and fat for winter. Satisfied, he headed back toward the cabin. They would have fresh meat tonight. It wouldn’t be enough to sate him; he felt as if he could eat four more just like it. But it would calm the hunger enough to let him sleep. Tomorrow he would send the boy out to forage as well. Tomorrow, he promised his growling belly, would be a day of plenty. For tonight, the single fat rabbit would have to do. He hurried through the gathering gloom.

He smelled the smoke through the trees, and then saw flickering light through the cabin’s window. Winter, with short days and long nights, was venturing closer with every day. He felt a lurch of fear as he considered how poorly equipped he was to face the turn of the seasons, but then gritted his teeth. He had four days. Four days to fatten himself, to find trade goods and trade them. He needed winter clothing and a steady supply of food from a loyal kin-clan. But he wouldn’t get those things by going to the Trading Place looking like a skinny old beggar. “Power comes most easily to the man who appears powerful,” he said aloud. I felt a lurch of dismay. Another of my father’s teachings. Would all the harsh wisdom he had passed on to me in the hopes of making me a better officer now be turned against Gernia and my king? Traitor, I suddenly thought. Renegade.

I was suddenly glad I was dead to my world. I wished with deep passion that Epiny didn’t know I was still alive, that no one did. I had the sudden sick conviction that all I’d ever learned was going to be used against my own people. Coward that I was, I did not want anyone to know that I was the one responsible. If I had had my own heart any longer, it would have felt heavy. As things stood, I had to endure Soldier’s Boy’s satisfaction as he strode up to the house.

A croaker bird abruptly appeared, probably drawn by the smell of the dead hare. Cawing loudly, he swooped in to settle on the main roof beam of the little house. He perched there, looking down on the scene with bright and greedy eyes.

Likari was crouched in front of the cabin by the small fire he’d kindled earlier. He looked miserable and alone, and at the sound of Soldier’s Boy’s approach, he looked up fearfully, the whites showing all around his eyes.

“What are you doing out here?” Soldier’s Boy asked him severely.

Likari squirmed. “Waiting for you.”

“Then it has nothing to do with being afraid of bad luck? With doubting what I told you was true?”

The small boy looked down at his bare feet as he crouched by the fire. Did Soldier’s Boy feel pity for him? His tone was gentler as he asked, “Did you do all I asked? Is there water and firewood? Did you clean the hearth stones of moss and earth?”

“Yes, Great One. I did everything that you told me to do.”

“Well. We are in luck. My hunting went well, and I have a nice hare for us to eat tonight. Do you know how to skin a hare and make it ready for the pot?”

The boy hesitated. “I’ve seen Firada do it. I could try.”

“Another time, perhaps. I’ll show you how it’s done tonight.” Privately he thought that he didn’t want any of the meat wasted by a clumsy skinning job.

“We don’t have a pot to cook it in.”

“You’re right. Perhaps. Come inside with me. Let’s see what we do have.”

Lisana’s memories told him that she had had a stewing pot of fired clay. It had been a favorite of hers, glazed a creamy white on the inside and adorned with black frogs against a dark blue background on the outside. It had been just the right size for cooking. He went to the place where she had kept it. Beneath a rumpled carpet of thick moss, his seeking fingers found only fragments of fired pottery. He pulled one from beneath the moss and wiped it clean. Half of a leaping frog remained on the shard. Next to it, a greenish half-moon of badly corroded copper was all that remained of a once-gleaming pot.

It saddened him unreasonably. What had he expected? How many generations ago had Lisana lived here? It was irrational of him to hope that her possessions had endured. I was surprised to find that her cabin and its contents had survived at all. How could he be so disappointed that a fired pot had not lasted?

As he crouched outside alongside the boy and they gutted and skinned the hare for roasting, the answer came to me. He carried Lisana’s memories and the grief he felt now over the destroyed pot was as much her grief as his. It had been a cherished possession, and somehow it had been important to her that it still existed. As if, I slowly reasoned, the survival of her possessions was the continuation of her life.

As the thought came to me, I could suddenly experience Soldier’s Boy’s emotions as he felt them. As if I were a traced overlay of a sketch, I came into synchronization with him. For a fractional moment, I was Soldier’s Boy. If I had relaxed, I would have merged with him, would have dissolved like salt stirred in water. For one paralyzed moment, I felt lured by that. In the next instant, I leapt like a hooked fish and tore myself free of him. I retreated from him, heedless of fleeing into darkness. I sank myself deep, beyond his reach, beyond Lisana’s memories. Or so I tried. I could not quite escape the sound of his voice.

He smiled slowly and spoke softly. “Eventually I will win.”

“Win what?” Likari asked him.

“Everything,” Soldier’s Boy replied. “Everything.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

TRADE GOODS

Unwillingly, I was drawn back to watch them. The boy ate one hindquarter of the hare and Soldier’s Boy devoured the rest. He gnawed even the gristle off the ends of the bones, and the smaller bones he ground between his teeth and swallowed.

I felt almost like myself as he scraped the small hide and pegged it out to dry. He’d hunted, fed himself, and now had the simple chores of a man responsible for himself. Scraping the hide put me in mind of how I had done such tasks for Amzil, and how that simple life had once beckoned me. I suddenly missed them just as much as Soldier’s Boy missed Lisana. I wondered if he could feel my emotions as I did his, if he could understand that I loved Amzil as he loved his tree woman.

Beside me, Likari watched me work on the hide in awe.

“I never saw a Great One do work before,” he said innocently. “Jodoli does nothing for himself. He does not even pick a berry or wash his own body. Firada does it all. But you hunt and cook and scrape the skin.”

Soldier’s Boy smiled at the lad’s amazement. “There are many things I can do. It is good for a man to know how to do things for himself.”