The birds alerted her to dawn before anything else. She could barely remember getting in bed, let alone falling asleep. She opened her eyes to a dark hall, the eastern light not yet breaching the only doorway in or out. Listening from her bunk, she could tell no one in the camp yet stirred.
The Elder had another errand for her, and she had not yet fully recovered from the previous one. Kerr’s body, face-down, bloated by swamp water, entered her mind only to be swiftly pushed back out. She turned to her side and let the soreness in her muscles distract her. Her gaze grew dizzy as she tried to read shapes in the dark bunkroom.
What was so important an errand that Frideric must send her at once and not someone else? In the end it didn’t matter. She didn’t question his orders or his reasons. As her mind threatened summersaults over unanswered questions, she pulled herself out of bed and left them in the dark of her bunk.
She found Frideric at his breakfast fire already. Of course he moved as stealthily about the camp as a field-mouse. He was always about his own business, and yet restlessly available to any who needed his company and his advice.
“So?” she asked, settling in to add wood to the fire so it may be hot enough for more than one man’s breakfast. “What is this errand to Bree?”
Frideric smiled. “I half expected you to refuse the mission altogether. But, as you ask…” he heaped a plate of boiled oats and handed it to Redstart, then unfolded the wrapping of uncooked bacon he had prepared for when the others woke up. “There is someone who passed through Ost Guruth not long ago. Perhaps you met them on the road or at Anlaf’s. I think they head to Bree, and I would like you to follow them there.”
Redstart sprinkled some salt over the oats and mashed them up with her spoon before she raised a brow. “If their destination is Bree, then they are surely no longer our trouble.”
“Maybe,” he mused, pouring her a coffee from a carafe that sat heating in the coals. “Maybe not. I want you to go alone, to go quickly, and to not come back until you have news.”
“And what news are you looking for?” she asked, balancing her bowl on a knee as she took the coffee and blew on it.
He paused. His knuckles cracked from dryness even in summer, but he still kept them warmed by the fire. “I think you will know it when you hear it.” He smiled kindly at Redstart’s look of skepticism. “This is not a straightforward mission, but it is not your first of this kind. I have chosen you for a reason for this, and I know you will accomplish it.”
Redstart still looked confused, full of questions, but any she had that could be answered she knew Frideric would explain to her before she rode for Bree. Still, something uneasy churned in the lower third of her gut, something a plate of oats wouldn’t settle.
