“You’re not in Rogaland now, Wolfskin,” growled the other. “Best be off with you before we decide to lock you up for the night. Go find food and shelter. Living wild so long has addled your wits, I think. Go on.” His eyes flicked nervously to the axe, and back to Eyvind’s face.

Food and shelter; somewhere in the back of his mind Eyvind knew he was hungry. He could not remember when he had eaten last. Somewhere inside him was a profound longing to lay his aching body down on a comfortable pallet and surrender to dreamless sleep until morning.

“I won’t stop,” he told them. “As you said, Somerled needs me. Best head off now.” Quickly, before they could change their minds about letting him go, before they could discover how little strength he really had, he strode away into the darkness. He managed to walk like a Wolfskin, straight, fast, confident, until the guards were well behind him and out of sight. After that, the pretense that he was himself again became too hard. Perhaps he should have stopped and rested first. But there was no time.

Eyvind staggered onward. After a while, the cool light of a half moon aided him, and he followed sheep tracks and stone dykes, trying to keep his course northwestward, back the way he had come. He tried to rehearse what he would say, but his mind was in a small circle of its own now, a pattern that said over and over, Let Nessa be safe. Let me be there in time.

He stumbled on, falling, picking himself up, falling again. Once, when he caught his foot on a rock and sprawled headlong, he simply lay there in the dark, face down on the hard earth, wondering how he could ever be strong enough to do what must be done. Nessa was strong, and she was only a slip of a thing, insubstantial as a lovely shadow. Brother Tadhg was strong, yet he was a small, weedy fellow plainly ill suited to tests and trials. That should mean something. Rona was strong, too; she was old and frail, yet she had made that decision to go away into danger and free him for this mission. She had sheltered him at great risk. He thought of them and felt the earth beneath him, holding him safe. There was something small and hard under his chest, pressing against him: Nessa’s gift, the mystery of being encompassed in the space of a cupped hand. Eyvind rose shakily to his feet. He looked across the moonlit folds of land and up into the great starry expanse of sky, and then he began to walk again.

The distance seemed endless. At some point there was a small stream-let fringed by grasses and ferns; he stopped to drink, and tried to judge how far he had come, and how much time had passed, but he was too weary to calculate either. The best he could do was keep moving forward, and hope.