“Not a bit will he. Though it hurts our honor as his children that he won’t let us take better care of him.”

Edain closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and shook his head; Garbh looked up and whined slightly at his tone as he went on: “Aye, it’s bitter hard to see the old man fail. You don’t remember him as well as I from when he was in his prime, First Armsman of the Clan for all those years.”

Dick nodded. “And the new little ones, they probably won’t remember him at all.”

Edain’s breath hissed between his teeth; it was all too likely. Seventy years was old; three-score and ten were the years of a man, as the Christians said.

“It karks at his pride that he can’t go with the war-levy, of course. So he does too much else.”

Dick sighed again, in resignation this time.

“Well, at least the mother will have him to fuss at while we’re gone, and her babes and Tamar’s. It’s luck Tamar has one at the breast and can’t answer the levy-call herself, for she’ll be company for them both and keep an eye on him.”

The air of Dun Fairfax was warm and drowsy, heavy with the good cooking smells of baking and roasting and simmering. But the scents subtly differed from what she was used to; more spices and pungent herbs, a broader range than her folk had, and the cooking done more often with sunflower oil or canola and less with butter or lard. Despite her good intentions, Asgerd ducked into the Aylward house through what had once been its double-car garage.

That had been modified to make it a workshop, though rolled bedding was strapped to the walls as well right now; the outer side had a trellis trained with roses, a blaze of color and sweet heavy scent. She had expected it to be empty and give her a spell to nerve herself to plunge into a hardworking crowd who all knew each other from the inside out and she the white crow in the flock. Instead Sam Aylward was sitting at the workbench near the big double doors, before the clamps and spokeshaves, the vices and drawknives and drills.

Run from your fate and you run towards it, she thought to herself.

The old man was fingering the tools neatly racked there, below the bundles of yew staves and hardwood burls. He wore only a kilt, and you could see that he’d been a powerful man once, built much like Edain, but the flesh was gaunt and thinner on the heavy bones now. You could also see the marks of every weapon known to man; knife and sword, spear and arrow and ax, even the round puckered scars left by bullets before the Change—Erik the Strong, King Bjarni’s father, had had some of those that she had seen while her family was visiting at Eriksgarth over the festivals.

Asgerd felt a little awed; hers were a warrior folk who honored courage as the first of the Nine Virtues. And someone, sometime, had used red-hot iron to write in an odd curling script on Sam Aylward’s belly, but the letters trailed off. He looked up sharply when she cleared her throat, his gray eyes searching beneath the white tufted eyebrows.