“We’ll go to the inn.”

“Yes,” Po said. “We’ll go to the inn.”

The forest road narrowed again and grew quieter once they left Murgon City behind. They stopped before night fell. They set up camp some distance from the road, in a small clearing with a mossy floor, a cover of thick branches, and a trickle of water that seemed to please the horses.

“This is all a man needs,” Po said. “I could live here, quite contented. What do you think, Katsa?”

“Are you hungry for meat? I’ll catch us something.”

“Even better,” he said. “But it’ll be dark in a few minutes. I wouldn’t want you to get lost, even in the pitch dark.”

Katsa smiled then and stepped across the stream. “It’ll only take me a few minutes. And I never get lost, even in the pitch dark.”

“You won’t even take your bow? Are you planning to throttle a moose with your bare hands, then?”

“I’ve a knife in my boot,” she said, and then wondered, for a moment, if she could throttle a moose with her bare hands. It seemed possible. But right now she only sought a rabbit or a bird, and her knife would serve as weapon. She slipped between the gnarled trees and into the damp silence of the forest. It was simply a matter of listening, remaining quiet, and making herself invisible.

When she came back minutes later with a great, fat, skinned rabbit, Po had built a fire. The flames cast orange light on the horses and on himself. “It was the least I could do,” Po said, drily, “and I see you’ve already skinned that hare. I’m beginning to think I won’t have much responsibility as we travel through the forest together.”

“Does it bother you? You’re welcome to do the hunting yourself. Perhaps I can stay by the fire and mend your socks, and scream if I hear any strange noises.”

He smiled then. “Do you treat Giddon like this, when the two of you travel? I imagine he finds it quite humiliating.”

“Poor Po. You may content yourself with reading my mind, if you wish to feel superior.”

He laughed. “I know you’re teasing me. And you should know I’m not easily humiliated. You may hunt for my food, and pound me every time we fight, and protect me when we’re attacked, if you like. I’ll thank you for it.”

“But I’d never need to protect you, if we were attacked. And I doubt you need me to do your hunting, either.”

“True. But you’re better than I am, Katsa. And it doesn’t humiliate me.” He fed a branch to the fire. “It humbles me. But it doesn’t humiliate me.”

She sat quietly as night closed in and watched the blood drip from the hunk of meat she held on a stick over the fire. She listened to it sizzle as it hit the flames. She tried to separate in her mind the idea of being humbled from the idea of being humiliated, and she understood what Po meant. She wouldn’t have thought to make the distinction. He was so clear with his thoughts, while hers were a constant storm that she could never make sense of and never control. She felt suddenly and sharply that Po was smarter than she, worlds smarter, and that she was a brute in comparison. An unthinking and unfeeling brute.