Dag blinked, and blinked again, and let his groundsense, shielded from the shock of this death, come up again. She blazed in his perceptions. “Little Spark! What are you doing so far from your farm?”

3

The tall patroller was staring at Fawn as though he recognized her. She wrinkled her nose in confusion, not following his words. From this angle and distance, she could at last see the color of his eyes, which were an unexpected metallic gold. They seemed very bright in his bony face, against weathered skin tanned to a dark coppery sheen on his face and hand. Several sets of scratches scored his cheeks and forehead and jaw, most just red but some bleeding. I did that, oh dear.

Beyond, the body of her would-be ravisher lay on the smoothed stones of the creek bank. Some of his still-wet blood trickled into the creek, to swirl away in the clear water in faint red threads, dissipating to pink and then gone. He had been so hotly, heavily, frighteningly alive just minutes ago, when she had wished him dead. Now she had her wish, she was not so sure.

“I…it…’’ she began, waving an uncertain hand at, well, everything, then blurted, “I’m sorry I scratched you up. I didn’t understand what was coming at me.” Then added, “You scared me.” I think I’ve lost my wits.

A hesitant smile turned the patroller’s lips, making him look for a moment like someone altogether else. Not so…looming. “I was trying to scare the other fellow.”

“It worked,” she allowed, and the smile firmed briefly before fleeing again.

He felt his face, glanced at the red smears on his fingertips as if surprised, then shrugged and looked back at her. The weight of his attention was startling to her, as though no one in her life had ever looked at her before, really looked; in her present shaky state, it was not a comfortable sensation.

“Are you all right otherwise?” he asked gravely. His right hand made an inquiring jerk. The other he still held down by his side, the short, powerful-looking bow cocked at an angle out of the way by his leg. “Aside from your face.”

“My face?” Her quivering fingertips probed where the simpleton had struck her. Still a little numb, but starting to ache. “Does it show?”

He nodded.

“Oh.”

“Those gouges don’t look so good. I have some things in my saddlebags to clean them up. Come away, here, come sit down, um…away.”

From that. She eyed the corpse and swallowed. “All right.” And added, “I’m all right. I’ll stop shaking in a minute, sure. Stupid of me.”