The horse began to be restless.

The old man finished the bacon. Then he raised his head and looked into the darkness as if he could see into it.

After a while, he went to the bags that the patient mule had carried all day, opened one, and took out a bottle of red wine. It was an incongruous thing in such a rough camp—the old man had no tent, no bed, and no cups.

After a moment he produced a pair of horn cups.

He went back to his fire and built it up. He produced a folding brass candlestick—cunningly wrought—put a beeswax candle into it and lit it with a snap of his fingers.

A puff of wind blew it out.

He relit it. When he turned his back, it went out again.

He growled. Walking carefully in the darkness, he went over to the downed birch tree—the reason he’d chosen this site to camp—and stripped a long curl of bark.

He went back to his candle stick and made a wind shade from the bark, and then relit the candle with another snap of his fingers.

Then he sat on his rolled cloak and ate his bacon.

When he was done, he looked around carefully—again—and then took his small iron skillet down to the brook and washed it with sand and small pebbles. The horse snorted.

The old man went back to his fire, threw on a pair of small birch logs, and settled comfortably into a tree’s roots to rest. He looked at the stars, and at the moon high above him.

He couldn’t help but smile.

Carefully, he took a small pipe out of his purse, took tobacco from his hunting bag, and packed his pipe.

“A new vice,” he said, the first words he’d said in days. “Well, well.”

He was a handsome man, and not so very old, at that. He had heavy dark brows and salt and pepper hair tied back in a rough queue with deer hide thong. He wore a fine red caftan of wool lined in silk, and under that a good linen shirt, and he had Alban-style braes and hose and wore leather boots that would have reached his thighs if he had not rolled them down to his knees.

A long sword rested against the tree by his head.

He packed the pipe carefully, and then lit it from a coal at the outer edge of the fire. Sucked the smoke into his lungs and coughed.

Blew a tentative smoke ring.

“Come and have a cup of wine,” he called suddenly.

Or maybe I’m just going mad, he thought.

There was a rustle by the stream. The babble of the brook covered many sounds but didn’t cover them all.

His new body had wonderful hearing compared to his old body. And was particularly good at waking up without stiffness.

“Isss it good wine, I wonder?” asked a voice from beyond the fire.