The small wounds hed suffered on the island ached now, but he kept walking, because if there was one thing the monastery had taught him, it was patient endurance. With every step, he could feel the movement of his sheathed sword at his back, long and slender, enclosed in a covering of black leather for now. It was an unfamiliar feeling after so long in the monastery, but at the same time the most familiar feeling of all. There had been a time when he hadnt felt alive without a sword in his hand, the thrill of battle running through his veins.

The abbot would not approve of that, if he was still alive. Odd suspected that he was not, when his whole plan had been to offer himself up to the soldiers as a kind of sacrifice. He suspected that any monk who had remained on the Isle of Leveros would be slaughtered now; King Ravins men were almost as bloodthirsty as…

…as he had been.

Images came to him, of villages sacked, people slaughtered. Many had been the armored forms of worthy foes, bandits and rebels, but many more had not been. The faces of women and children mingled with those of others he had killed, and the worst part was that Odd couldnt even make out specific ones. He hadnt been watching closely enough for that when hed been Sir Oderick the Mad, consumed by battle rage, consumed by the love of the fight.

I am not him, Odd told himself aloud, as if the certainty of that would make the words true. There had been a reason why he hadnt brought his nobles clothes, or his armor.

Yet who was he? Not a monk, not a knight, not… anything. At best, a messenger, whose sole purpose was to warn the kingdom of what was coming on the flank they didnt know about. That was a purpose, though, and Odd would fulfill it, whatever it took.

He kept walking.

How long he kept walking, Odd didnt know. At one point, he came to a crofters hut, pieced together from aged planks and turf squares for a roof. The crofters wife came to the door, offering him a bowl of soup, clearly seized from an already bubbling bowl.

You could stay for the night, she said. A monk in the house is said to be lucky.

I am anything but lucky, Odd assured her, and pressed a coin into her hand before he kept walking. Somewhere in his walking, day might have turned to night and back again, but it was hard to tell under the canopy of the trees. He lit a candle and kept going, until tiredness forced him to stop.