The caravan had reached the crossroads, and turned west for the pass through the Copper Hills into the Eastmarches of Aarenis. Paks began to look at her map again, hoping she could find the trail that led to the eastern pass of the Dwarfwatch. The other guards kept suggesting that she find a companion, but she was reluctant to ask anyone; she didn't want everyone on the caravan to know where she was going. Finally they took it on themselves to look.

* * *

"If you want a traveling companion, there's another that's leaving us at the Silver Pass." Jori, some years older than Paks, had been one of the most insistent that she find a companion.

"Oh?" Paks kept working at the crossbow mechanism. "Who is it?"

"That elf." She looked up, startled. She hadn't known there was an elf with the caravan. Jori grinned wickedly. "Proud as elves are, you won't have to worry about 'im bothering you."

Paks ignored that. "What's he leaving for?"

Jori's smile faded. "Oh—says he's going to the Ladysforest. You know, the elf kingdom. But he'd be going part of the way with you."

"Huh." Paks set the crossbow down and stood up, stretching. "Where is he?"

"Over there." Jori cocked his chin at the group around the big fire. "I'll introduce you, eh?"

"Not yet. I want to see him first."

"In the gray cloak, then," said Jori.

He looked to be a fingersbreadth shorter than she was, Paks thought, and he didn't look like the elves she had seen, but for something a little alien in the set of his green-gray eyes, and his graceful way of moving. His voice held some of the elven timbre and music.

"No, I have business in my own kingdom," he was saying to a merchant of spice.

"But don't you fear the high trails alone?" asked another.

"Fear?" His voice mocked them and his hand dropped lightly to the golden hilt of a slender sword. The merchants nodded and murmured. Paks looked closely at the sword. Very slender—a dueller's blade, she thought. If he had not been elvish, she would have suspected bravado rather than confidence in that word. He was slender and moved lightly. She could not tell, for the strange billowing style of his tunic, whether his shoulders were broad enough for a practiced warrior. His hands were sinewy, but she saw no training scars or calluses. Was it the firelight, or did elves not callus? One of the merchants looked up then and noticed her.

"Ho, a guard! It's that tall wench—come to the fire, girl, and be warm." He waved an expansive arm. Paks grinned and stayed where she was.

"'Tis warm enough here, by your leave. But I heard talk of the high trails, and came near to listen."

"What do you want with that? Are you planning to skip the caravan and go north?"