He tells me. She raised her chin minutely, staring hard at him and letting more of her anger show. “Do you give me that title only out of courtesy, Madog? I am like to think it holds no meaning for you.”

Madog lowered his eyes and nodded stiffly. He lost the challenge as he often did, though she could not say if it was the warning in her stare or the dagger in her hand that won the battle for her. “Forgive me, Pennaeth Du.” He had the grace to sound truly repentant, appalled at himself. “I meant no offense.”

She wanted to go to him, place a hand on his shoulder and make some jest that would replace his servile demeanor with their more usual camaraderie. But she knew fighting men, and how they thought, knew that obedience and discipline were not served by her more human inclination toward friendship at any cost. It was a lesson learned early, engraved now on her bones.

“Help me gather the leaves, and all offense is forgotten,” she responded mildly. He reached to obey, stooping to the ground to search.

The bandages would need changing soon. She turned her mind to the injured man, what other ailments he might have, and remembered how he winced against the dim light. His head ached, undoubtedly from the fall he had taken when her men had overwhelmed him. Lucky that the boulder hadn’t cracked his skull. She scanned the forest floor for anything that might ease the pain in his head, wishing the violets were in flower. Then she remembered the dried herbs in her saddlebag, put there to keep her robe fresh. They would work well enough.

She stepped around a moss-laden tree. “We travel tomorrow,” she told Madog. “I will not delay longer. The men are rested?”

“Aye.” Madog was less delicate than she, ripping leaves off plants with rough impatience.

She carefully pinched a single leaf off the stem before her, then another, and another. A lark’s song drifted down from the trees overhead. “They will follow me?” She rubbed the soft down of a leaf across her fingers.

His answer came swiftly, quiet reassurance that she had not lost what she’d worked at so long. “They would follow you unto death, Gwenllian.”

She let out a breath. He called her by her given name; he calmly agreed with her directives. It was as it had always been between them, long before Ranulf of Morency came to upset the balance. She relaxed her commanding tone and walked ahead, searching for more leaves.

“His fever is broken.” She willed herself to speak casually, but still it felt like a confession.

Madog paused but a moment in his search. “He’ll sit a horse well enough, now his raving is done.”