I thought of myself, apprenticed to a peat merchant. Not a particularly pretty thought. It just didn’t seem me. But I need food and a roof—I need a warm place to sleep in. I have given up hope of nullifying the prophecy and more than already done. So I have nullified it in effect by trying to do so and going away. I can never go back, never go back, so I shall never be near enough to hurt my mother’s land.

A particularly raucous burst of sound heralded the approach round the corner of more evening travellers—but these were on foot. Three men in blue slant-cut tunics with groin-high boots and rough, hessian-hooded cloaks were lurching along, each roaring a separate drinking-song. It was so long since I had seen one that at first I didn’t recognize the uniform of the Blues, Northern Army. One man seized the nearsider’s bridle and the others, babbling at us and each other, gripped the side of the wagon and tried to get in. “We wanna ride,” was all I could make out, from the biggest, and that was sifted through a stiff wet moustache. It was a lovely moustache. One of those really long ones, bristly and red and ferocious and picturesque. But they were very drunk. The man at the horse’s head was useless; we didn’t have to do a thing to get him out the way, the horse simply shook its head and didn’t stop. I hit at the hands gripping on the cart-sides, and they dropped away. It warmed me up a little. As we careered around the next comer, I looked back and there were the three ruffians, one in the gutter and two sprawled on the snow in the middle of the road, shaking wavering fists and calling querulous curses at us.

“By the Belly of the First Woman, for which we must all be thankful, but them Northerners should be shut up if they’re to be quartered in our city at all, allies or no,” cried the wagoner, himself roused to swearing.

I kept quiet.

How could I tell him that my heart had been warmed a hundred times more than my body by the meeting with those Blues?

In a minute cul-de-sac, so roughly cobbled that the wagon jolted wildly even over all that snow, we caracoled (rather awkwardly and unbeautifully) to a stop before a house.