Any decision he made, Brrr realized, would affect his friend’s future one way or the other.

His heart burned with affection when, in a fever, the man called out, “Lion. Friend Lion! Have you forsaken me?”

It’s good that I am in your heart to give you hope, thought the Lion, hope unto death. He lay as close to the soldier as he dared, to keep the man warm at night until there was nothing left of him to warm. Even when Jemmsy died, and the smell grew worse, the Lion hated to leave the body.

“Now I’ll go for help,” he said to the carcass. “You’ve been very patient.”

Jemmsy didn’t reply.

“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” said Brrr, but his tone sounded off and he closed his mouth.

My first conversation, he thought, and his bound had a new spring to it. He was nearly giddy. Of course, the finish had been awkward-death is a real stifler of repartee-but on the whole he thought it had gone rather well.

A conversation and a friend. Jemmsy had called out “Friend Lion!” So the friendship had been short-lived but real; now that it was dead, it couldn’t be revoked. It was preserved inviolable in his heart. And the medal shone like a portable compliment. The medal advertised Brrr’s own courage as he headed to Tenniken to keep his promise. He would deliver the news of the fallen Jemmsy to those grieving companions-at-arms. And through them the news could go on to Jemmsy’s father, that puzzle of a creature, for being capable of abandoning his son to the care of the army.

“THE HEART OF a Lion,” murmured Yackle, almost purring herself. Brrr resisted the temptation to imagine she was being snide, but he couldn’t resist the domino-patter of memories, one after another, that had concluded his childhood. The momentum of the mind can be vexingly, involuntarily capricious.

3

S O THE next memory toppled forward, a tremor following upon a tremor. Jemmsy. His body seeping into the ground like a pudding at room temperature. How long had it been since Brrr had thought of Jemmsy? The scab torn off, after all this time; a smell of earth leaching from that opened wound. The smell of those childhood woods from as far back as his mind could pick its way.

When was his unspoken pledge to Jemmsy hijacked by ambition? How soon was his hope to deliver the news of Jemmsy’s death superseded by his hunger for the reward of gratitude? Or had it not happened as baldly as all that?

He couldn’t now remember. Only the terror and giddy release at having a destination at all. Tenniken. Tenniken, a garrison town, and nearby, a soldier’s grieving father. A brick hearthside where Brrr might curl up like a house cat, like a surrogate son, purring, domesticated, basking in the warmth of approval.

He felt perverse and new, flayed by raw luck. For the first time, he felt naked. He felt he could outrun his timidity just by doing the job right.