Filis rode on through the afternoon, wondering about that boy. The sheep—ordinary sheep for this region. The dogs—sheepdogs for certain. The boy, though … all the past year he’d seen no sheep on those hills. People might be moving back into the old vills, but … easy for brigands to buy some sheep and set them and a boy out to watch for travelers.

For himself in particular? Unlikely. But not many travelers went from Andressat to Cortes Cilwan by this route, not since Siniava’s War. There’d been talk at home about the brigands the year before, in Vonja outlands. Burek had fought them, his father told him, with what was now Fox Company. Brigands who might be in the pay of the Duke of Immer.

As the storm moved up the Immer lowlands to the west, blocking the sun, the afternoon stayed gloomy. At first he saw no hoofprints on the muddy track he rode. The track forked at a well; there had been a vill here once, but only tumbled stone walls remained. Filis watered his horse and pressed on. Here he found tracks: someone else had ridden, driving cattle. A small flock of sheep or goats had crossed the tracks of cattle and horse. He passed farmsteads, men and women at work in the fields, a child perched on a rock watching geese. A familiar vill, women on wooden pattens taking water from the well, their skirts splashed with mud. Bare-legged children, mud to the knees, chased one holding a leafy twig: some game. They all watched him pass; he smiled and nodded, and so did they. All the same as usual.

As he came to another fork, he paused. A faint trail led right, to the hump of ground where he usually camped in an old stone shelter. If someone had set a watch on him, it would be wise to avoid his usual campsite. He could reach a vill he knew, not until well after dark, but a place he was sure would be safe. He’d stayed there before, and even when he passed through, he gifted the headman with a coin. He turned his horse left to the wider track.

It was full dark indeed, the muddy track having slowed him more than he expected, when he reached the vill. If not for the mud, he’d have ridden on to the outskirts of Cortes Cilwan—on a dry track only a half-day or -night’s ride—but he and the horse were both tired.

The village headman opened to his knock and lit the way to the barn with a clay lamp that he set on a ledge inside. He helped Filis untack and rub down his horse. “My lord, I’m sorry, but my two youngest are down with fever. You should not stay in the house.”

“The barn’s fine,” Filis said. “I’m sorry to come so late, but the storm—”