A set of sacks filled with wheat husks was tossed in to cover the layer of fighters in the bed of the wagon; unless they were examined closely they’d look just like full sacks of actual grain, but they were light enough that they could be pushed off instantly. She could smell the redcoats’ sweat, and it wasn’t just wearing a mail shirt and padding on a warm day. They weren’t simply going to a fight, they were going to a fight that was certain death unless everything went right, including actions by strangers they didn’t know beyond brief acquaintance.

Poor Ian is even worse off. He doesn’t know us, or Aunt Astrid and Uncle Alleyne or anyone but me . . . and we’ve only known each other a couple of months, though it’s been intense.

There was a special rankness to the sweat of fear.

She didn’t mind; courage wasn’t a matter of whether you were afraid, it was a matter of what you did. Nearly everyone was afraid before a fight if they had time to think about it, especially if they’d seen and felt and smelled the results and knew bone-deep how easily it could happen to them. Even if the surge of rage and effort burned it out during the actual face-to-face killing, the waiting was hard.

Which is why you want the waiting to be over. Sorta.

People who were never frightened were scary.

Aunt Astrid is scary, for example, Ritva thought, as the wagon creaked out of the big doors of the warehouse.

The day outside was much brighter, though there were plenty of clouds and it was well after dinnertime in the long summer evening. Her sandwich and cup of bean soup wasn’t lying too heavily on her stomach, and they’d all eaten several handfuls of dried fruit with honey for the quick energy, along with one small shot of brandy.

Aunt Astrid is scary because she doesn’t control the fear, she just doesn’t feel it. I think something must have happened to her after the Change that burned it out though she never talks about it. I don’t think she sees what the rest of us see. I love her as my kinswoman and liege, almost a second mother, but I’m afraid of her too.

This might not be the riskiest thing Ritva had ever done. Probably the flight from the Sword of the Prophet in the Sioux country last year was that, where they’d dodged behind a herd of stampeding buffalo to escape just a hair ahead of being trampled into mush, or the fight on the rooftops in Des Moines when the Seeker had made the assassins into puppets of meat with the same not-mind looking out from each pair of eyes—

Manwë! The things I do! And it always seems like a good idea at the time!