Madge called a brief halt at noon. Most of the caravan folk had recovered enough by then that they wished to eat. I drank from the water casks on Madge's wagon, then wet my kerchief and sopped some of the dust from my face. I was trying to rinse grit from my eyes when Starling came up beside me. I stepped aside, thinking she wanted water. Instead, she spoke softly.

"I'd keep my kerchief on, were I you."

I wrung it out and retied it about my head. "I do. It does nothing to keep the dust from my eyes, though."

Starling looked at me levelly. "It's not your eyes you should worry about. It's that white shock of hair. You should black it with grease and ash tonight, if you get a private moment. It might make it a bit less noticeable."

I looked questioningly at her, trying to keep my expression bland.

She smiled at me archly. "King Regal's guards had been through that water town just a few days before we arrived. They told the folk there that the King believed that the Pocked Man would be crossing Farrow. And you with him." She paused, expecting me to say something. When I just looked at her, her grin widened. "Or perhaps it's some other fellow with a broken nose, scar down his face, white streak in his hair, and…" She gestured toward my arm. "…a fresh sword-slash up his forearm."

I found my tongue and a measure of my wits. I pushed back my sleeve, offered my arm for her inspection. "A sword-slash? This is just a scratch I got off a nail head in a tavern door. On my way out, a bit unwillingly. Take a look for yourself. It's almost healed now, anyway."

She leaned over and looked at my arm obligingly. "Oh. I see. Well. My mistake. Still," and she met my eyes again, "I'd keep your kerchief on anyway. To prevent anyone else from making the same mistake." She paused, then canted her head at me. "I'm a minstrel, you see. I'd rather witness history than make it. Or change it. But I doubt all the others in this caravan feel that way."

I watched mutely as she strolled away, whistling. Then I drank again, being careful not to take too much, and went back to my sheep.

Creece was on his feet and helping, somewhat, for the rest of the afternoon. Even so, it seemed a longer, wearier day than I'd had in a time. There was nothing complicated about my task to make it so. The problem, I decided, was that I'd begun thinking again. I let my despair over Molly and our child drag me down. I'd let my guard down, I hadn't been fearful enough on my own behalf. Now it occurred to me that if Regal's Guard managed to find me, they'd kill me. Then I'd never see Molly or our daughter. Somehow that seemed worse than the threat to my life.

At the evening meal that night, I sat back farther from the fire than usual, even though it meant wrapping myself in my cloak against the cold. My silence was taken as normal. The rest of them talked, much more than usual, about the last evening in town. I gathered the beer had been good, the wine poor, while the resident minstrel had had small goodwill toward Starling for performing for his captive audience. The members of our caravan seemed to take it as a personal victory that Starling's songs had been well received by the villagers. "You sang well, even if all you knew was those Buck ballads," Creece even conceded magnanimously. Starling nodded to that dubious praise.

As she did every evening, Starling unwrapped her harp after the meal. Master Dell was giving his troupe a rare night off from their constant rehearsing, by which I gathered he had been pleased with his performers save Tassin. Tassin had not even a glance for me that evening, but instead perched by one of the teamsters, smiling up at his every word. I noticed that her injury was little more than a scratch on her face with some bruising around it. It would heal well.

Creece went off to stand night watch over our flock. I stretched out on my cloak just beyond reach of the firelight, thinking to drowse off immediately. I expected the others would soon be off to bed as well. The hum of their conversation was lulling, as was the lazy strumming of Starling's fingers on her harp strings. Gradually the strumming changed to a rhythmic plucking, and her voice lifted in song.

I was floating at the edge of sleep when the words "Antler Island Tower" jolted me awake. My eyes flew open as I realized she was singing about the battle there last summer, the Rurisk's first real engagement with the Red-Ship Raiders. I recalled both too much and very little about that battle. As Verity had observed more than once, despite all Hod's weapons instruction, I tended to revert to brawling in any sort of a fight. So I'd carried an axe into that battle and used it with a savagery I'd never expected of myself. Afterward, it had been said that I'd killed the chief of the raiding party we'd cornered. I'd never known if that was true or not.

In Starling's song, it certainly was. My heart nearly stood still when I heard her sing of "Chivalry's son, with eyes of flame, who carried his blood if not his name." The song went on with a dozen improbable embellishments of blows I'd dealt and warriors I'd felled. It was strangely humiliating to hear those deeds sung of as noble and now almost legendary. I knew there were many fighters who dreamed of having songs sung of their exploits. I found the experience uncomfortable. I didn't recall the sun striking flames from my axehead or that I fought as bravely as the buck on my crest. Instead I recalled the clinging smell of blood and treading on a man's entrails, a man who squirmed and moaned still. All the ale in Buckkeep that night had not been enough to bring me any sort of peace.

When the song was finally done, one of the teamsters snorted. "So, that's the one ye daren't sing in the tavern last night, eh, Starling?"

Starling gave a deprecating laugh. "Somehow I doubted it would be enjoyed. Songs about Chivalry's Bastard would not have been popular enough to earn me a penny there."

"It's an odd song," observed Dell. "Here's the King offering gold for his head, and the Guard telling all, beware, the Bastard has the Wit and used it to trick death. But your song makes him out to be some sort of hero."

"Well, it's a Buck song, and he was well thought of in Buck, at least for a time," Starling explained.

"But not anymore, I'd wager. Save that any man would think well of a hundred gold coins if one could turn him over to the King's Guard," one of the teamsters observed.

"Like as not," Starling agreed easily. "Though there's still some in Buck who would tell you that not all his tale has been told, and the Bastard was not so black as he's been tarred of late."

"I still don't understand it. I thought he was executed for using the Wit to kill King Shrewd," complained Madge.

"So some say," Starling replied. "Truth of it was, he died in his cell before he could be executed and was buried instead of burned. And the tale goes," and here Starling's voice dropped to a near whisper, "that when spring came, not a leaf of greenery would grow on his grave. And an old wise woman, hearing this, knew that meant his Wit magic still slept in his bones and might be claimed by any bold enough to pull a tooth from his mouth. And so she went, by full moonlight, and took a manservant with a spade with her. She put him to digging up the grave. But he hadn't turned but a shovelful of earth before he found splintered wood from the Bastard's coffin."

Starling paused theatrically. There wasn't a sound save the crackling of the fire.

"The box was empty, of course. And those who saw it said that the coffin had been splintered out from inside, not stove in. And one man told it to me that caught in the splintered edge of the coffin lid were the coarse gray hairs of a wolf's coat."

A moment longer the silence held. Then, "Not truly?" Madge asked Starling.

Her fingers ran lightly over her harp strings. "So I heard it told in Buck. But I also heard the Lady Patience, she that buried him, say it was all nonsense, that his body had been cold and stiff when she washed it and wrapped it in a grave cloth. And of the Pocked Man, that King Regal so fears, she declared he is no more than an old adviser of King Shrewd's, some old recluse with a scarred face, come out of his hermitage to keep alive a belief that Verity still lives and lend heart to those who must go on battling the Red-Ships. So. I suppose you can choose to believe whichever you wish."