She showed little care for it, having tied it crudely with a braided string behind her neck.
Her black hair was bobbed just past her shoulders. Smoke admired her youthful face, tanned brown from a summer in the sun, flushed now, and glistening with exertion. They dressed like boys as often as not, in breeches and tunic with a shapeless wool poncho to keep warm, and so it was with this woman-though she was a pretty thing, despite it. Binthy women were well known for their poor taste. Using the staff to balance, she edged carefully around the puddle, brushing up against the leafy screen where Smoke was hidden.īy her ugly clothes he knew she was Binthy-a tribe of sheep herders and farmers who lived in the plains north of the Wild Wood. The gush of her breath was the loudest sound in the forest. She hesitated, staring at the mire with a distressed gaze. She walked south with great haste, until she was stopped at the curve by a puddle of rainwater and ox dung that stretched clear across the road. She carried a sack over one shoulder and held a staff in her hand.
Peering past a veil of late summer leaves, he watched the woman approach. Smoke crept to a vantage along a curve in the road. Smoke doesn't keep count of the dead, but I do. It's likely there are slayings I haven't discovered yet. Though he's just eighteen, at least 172 lives have ended against the edge of his sword. They are nothing against the fear that follows behind her-and my brother's presence she suspects not at all. A gauntlet of imagined fears lies before her-roots to bruise her toes, windfalls to block the way, wolves within the shadows-but none of these slow her pace. She is alone, hurrying south toward Nefión. He is a shadow, lost amid the mottled shadows of the trees.
Visualize my brother, Smoke, as he stalks the forest road.
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