They zigzagged up a long slope. The horses blew like bellows even though just walking: getting balky, stumbling over roots and rocks. They came to a halt at the bottom of a little hollow. Both horses and people drank from the murky stream. Esterhazy loosened girths again. He scratched under the horses' headbands, and they butted against him, nuzzling his empty pockets for tidbits. He murmured apologies and little encouragements to them. "It's all right, Rosie, you can rest at the end of the day. Just a few more hours." It was more briefing than anybody had bothered to give Cordelia.

Esterhazy left the horses to Bothari and accompanied Piotr into the woods, scrabbling up the slope. Gregor busied himself in an attempt to gather vegetation and hand-feed it to the animals. They lipped at the native Barrayaran plants and let them fall messily from their mouths, unpalatable. Gregor kept picking the wads up and offering them again, trying to shove them in around the horses' bits.

"What's the Count up to, do you know?" Cordelia asked Bothari.

He shrugged. "Gone to make contact with somebody. This won't do." A jerk of his head in no particular direction indicated their night of beating around in the brush.

Cordelia could only agree. She lay back and listened for lightflyers, but heard only the babble of water in the little stream, echoed by the gurgles of her empty stomach. She was galvanized into motion once, to keep the hungry Gregor from sampling some of the possibly-toxic plants himself.

"But the horses ate these ones," he protested.

"No!" Cordelia shuddered, detailed visions of unfavorable biochemical and histamine reactions dancing in a molecular crack-the-whip through her head. "It's one of the first habits you have to learn for Betan Astronomical Survey, you know. Never put strange things in your mouth till they've been cleared by the lab. In fact, avoid touching your eyes, mouth, and mucous membranes."

Gregor, unconsciously compelled, promptly rubbed his nose and eyes. Cordelia sighed, and sat back down. She sucked on her tongue, thinking about that stream water and hoping Gregor wouldn't point out her inconsistency. Gregor threw pebbles into the pools.

Fully an hour later, Esterhazy returned. "Come on." They merely led the horses this time, sure sign of a steep climb to come. Cordelia scrambled, and scraped her hands. The horses' haunches heaved. Over the crest, down, up again, and they came out on a muddy double trail carved through the forest.

"Where are we?" asked Cordelia.

"Aime Pass Road, Milady," supplied Esterhazy.

"This is a road?" Cordelia muttered in dismay, staring up and down it. Piotr stood a little way off, with another old man holding the reins of a sturdy little black-and-white horse.