“Well for you that he is hooded,” he said to the dog, who spared him a dubious glance. “You are close enough and so small that he may strike at you. Keep well away from them both. If aught should happen to you, I fear your mistress would skewer me.”

Reminded of the girl and her gift, he took another careful bite of the bread before stowing it in his bag and turning to the falcon. She came to him readily, as she always did. Her perch was a padded mound atop a stake driven into the ground, made for travel. Gryff pulled it up and tucked it into the crook of the arm that held her, then picked up the cage and headed back to the road. Away from this place. He would never have to think of Baudry or his men again.

He made sure to aim a little north so he could rejoin the road far from the place where the bodies were. Don’t see them, don’t think of them, just go on with life and one day he would find he had forgotten most of it, and struggle to remember the details. There was an art to letting go of memories. He had learned it well.

Now the dog walked jauntily alongside Gryff, casting worried glances up at the goshawk in the cage.

“This is Ned.” Gryff decided to make a practice of civil conversation, so that he might be more coherent when he met with people again. Besides, it distracted him from the intense longing for another bite of the bread he could not reach while his hands were otherwise occupied. “Ned the goshawk. Nor would I have you repeat it, but I will tell you I named him for Edward the king.”

The dog looked up as though to acknowledge it before veering off to nose quickly through the brush. Gryff tensed, the strange fear coming over him again – as though Baudry might rise from the dead and hide among the overgrowth, waiting to spring at him. But the vigilant little dog found nothing of interest and returned to Gryff’s side again.

He kept speaking, to ease himself away from the senseless fear.

“The custom is to give the bird a meek name. It makes for a fierce hunter. A grand name tempts fate, so to give a bird a warrior’s name is to risk having the laziest hawk you ever knew,” he explained. Now he lowered his voice as though the King of England might hear him. “It amused me to think I might have a timid Edward, a Ned that no one need fear. Alas ‘twas an ill plan. He is as much a killer as his namesake.”

This seemed not to disturb the dog at all. It only looked up expectantly, waiting for further introductions. Gryff turned a little as he walked to show the falcon to the dog.