"Nice to be able to concentrate on my work without worry," Rod muttered. "With luck, the wound won't have begun to, with thanks, Fess-ter."

"Pray not!" Elise said with a shudder.

Only my duty, Rod, the horse assured him.

Rod laid aside the padding and the blood-soaked linen shirt beneath. The rip was long and ugly. Rod frowned. "It was no sword that made this wound, Dame Elise, unless it had a serrated edge. Who did this knight come to confront?"

"He … he said he merely wished to patrol the park, Sir Rodney, for he thought there might have been poachers about."

"And he went against them without his game wardens?" Rod shook his head as he pulled out a cloth and a small bottle that looked as though it contained brandy but really held iodine. He poured some on the cloth and pressed it into the wound as he said, "A knight wouldn't wear armor to brace a few poachers."

"So I thought, but he said he must not become too accustomed to riding without the weight of steel plate." Elise's voice quavered. The hound growled at her anxiety, but she stroked it to calmness.

"If he meant to exercise, he would have gone to the tilt-yard." Rod placed over the wound a cloth that had been impregnated with antiseptic and clotting agent, then began to wind a bandage around it. "We'll take him home, and when I'm sure the flow has slackened, I'll stitch him up."

"Stitch?" Elise asked, wide-eyed.

Rod nodded. "Just as you would a torn garment." He realized that the young woman had been watching him carefully not just out of fear that he might harm her husband, but also to study how he cured the wound. He began to unbuckle the rest of the armor. "However, it won't help him to be carried back with this weight on him."

"Ahhh! He shells the sweetmeat for us!" cawed a voice high in a tree.

Rod cawed back, projecting thoughts with the sound. "Yes, but then I'm stealing him from you, greedy ones. Go seek a dead polecat for dinner!"

"Faugh! How unmannerly of you, to insult us so!"

"Oh, all right," Rod said, relenting. "I passed a dead boar half a mile back. Go stuff yourselves with pork." Even as he said it, he wondered if the same blade that had killed the boar had also wounded this knight.

"Ah! Many thanks for this kind information, human!" The ravens raised their wings.

"Wait!" Rod called. "A favor for a favor, information for information! Do you know the road to Tir Nan Og?"

"Tir Nan Og?" The third raven turned a blank stare to his mates.

"I have heard of it," the second said. " 'Tis the Land of Youth, the place the Wingless Ones think they go when they die."

"Fools! They come only to us." The first clacked his beak in contempt.

"Aren't ravens supposed to know everything that moves in Middle Earth?" Rod called.

"Belike, for there are ravens in every county," the third replied, "but how are we to know what a raven a thousand miles distant has seen?"

"He speaks of fable," the first said, and turned to Rod. " 'Tis not ravens you seek, bare-skin, but crows."

"Aye, two crows!" the second agreed. "Their names are Hugi and Munin, and they sit on the shoulders of the All-Father Odin."

"No, those aren't quite the feathered wizards I had in mind," Rod said with a smile. "Well, let me know if you do learn of that road from one of your friends."

"We shall, but we see them rarely," the first raven told him. "Where shall we find you, soft one?"

"Prithee let him be," said the second, "for with nonsense like his, he shall come to us soon enough."

"Or we to him," the third agreed. "Go your way, human, and be assured we shall find you when the time has come."

Rod managed to keep the smile in place. "Better make sure no one beats you to that boar, hadn't you?"

"Indeed!" All three ravens leaped into the air, beating their wings to rise above the treetops, then coasting down the wind toward the dead boar.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Rod turned back to the knight and his wife to find her staring at him in amazement. "I could almost have thought, sir, that you spoke to those birds!"

"I'm good at bird-calls," Rod told her, "and it worked— I got them to go away."

The lady shuddered. "I am right glad you did, for they are truly birds of ill omen!"

"Just creatures trying to make a living, like the rest of us." Rod inspected the bandage around the knight's shoulder. "His wound has clotted enough to make it safe to move him. Let's finish taking his armor off."

"A wise thought." The lady turned to husking her husband so efficiently that Rod knew she had done it many times before. He only wondered if it was her husband's armor she had removed, or her own.

He managed to push the knight up onto Fess's back, then leaned him against the horse's neck and tied him into place. "Walk by him, lady, on one side, and I'll walk on the other." Rod gave her a glance of concern. "Though you shouldn't be walking far just now."

"I've a cart at the edge of the wood," she told him with a grateful smile. "Be sure I have no wish to lose Sir Reginald's son!"

Or daughter, Rod thought, but only nodded. "Not too long a walk, then—and the cart will be a better place for him than horseback. Let's go."

Fortunately, the route the lady showed him didn't go past the dead boar.

THE MOCKER STRODE through the house, snapping, "Meeting! Now! News!"

Each agent stopped what he or she was doing, stopped to stare at the retreating back of their new and former chief. They had each wondered what news the dusty messenger had brought; now they were about to find out. They rose from their desks and hurried to the keeping room.

They found the Mocker already seated at the head of the table, drumming his fingers in impatience. As the last agent came into the room, he snapped, "Right! News has come! Gallowglass has left his home!"

"Left!"

"Gone off?'

"Where?"

"Why?"

"As to 'gone off'—yes," the Mocker said. "As to 'where,' he seems to be wandering through a forest with no particular purpose in mind. As to why, I assume it's his way of dealing with grief."

The agents were silent a moment, staring at their chief. Then one said, "What happens now?"

"I don't know," the Mocker said with a certain degree of relish. "This isn't the way things happened in the timeline I just left."

"You mean he's changing the future?"

"Right. In history as I know it, that gawky eldest son of theirs left the planet again as soon as his mother was buried—some sort of argument with his siblings. The Gallowglass stayed with them—for comfort, we've thought; at least, that was the historians' verdict."

"Now it seems that the comfort was theirs, not his," a woman said.

"Perhaps, although I scarcely think that hulk of a boy could have given much reassurance in his place."

The room fell silent for a moment, agents glancing at one another, then glancing away.

"What?" The Mocker glared around at them. "What information are you withholding?"

"Not really information," another woman said. "Just a guess … from the reports our agents inside Castle Gallowglass have been sending, we'd wondered if… well…"

"Spit it out!"

"That woman that's with the eldest," a man said. "She seems to be horrendously insecure, but maybe that's a comfort to the Gallowglass heirs in itself. Certainly, by intention or accident, she seems to be able to prevent friction."

"An empath?" The Mocker frowned.

"Maybe a projective empath," the first woman said. "The accounts make it clear she visits with each of them, and they feel more confident afterward."

"That's simply the effect any weakling has on people who are unsure of their own importance!"

"The reports don't paint her as a weakling," the second woman snapped.

The Mocker glared at her until she lowered her gaze.