Rangers

sleep... forget... and be at peace...

The storm-voice seeps its hypnotic words into my ears. Beneath its snow-blanket I feel - nothing. My fingers and toes, feet, hands are lost to me. I am a disembodied dream, a flickering thought in a forgotten fleshy shell.

I wake just after dawn to a clear sky. The weather has held good since he left yesterday. I busy myself, using precious thread to mend a rent in my shirt. As I sew I glance up from time to time expecting to see Amlarad walking to the fire, some white-furred creature in his grasp, its paws and small ears already beginning to freeze as the warmth seeps from it.

As morning becomes afternoon, he does not come.

Oldgrove takes me west out o' the dead-fields. In the dark, I dursen't recognise much, but we goes further than I ever been. Past some stone lords at a cross-road, past the tombs of dead folk... and then.. and then... I sees...

Bawde is wrong. These northmen ain't like men at home. I still got both my hands an' all my fingers.

I bin runnin' scared fer weeks that iffen I get caught taking things these northern folk will have a knife out, slap me hand on an oak stump and... well I dursn't have ter say more. Bawde says they'm like men at home - an' I knows iffen a warrior or an eorl says you done summat, then a poor lass's word counts fer nothin'.

Writing for my lord Steward is a discipline instilled within me. I take the opportunity to do so with Amlarad out to hunt - 'and hunt what?' I asked him, 'I have seen little of beast or bird this far north'. But if any can find some trail, a hidden creature, it is him.

Steora Sweofthand ... you'm a straw headed fool an' no mistake. Iffen Bawde finds out, you'm goin' ter get it hot.

I dursen't seem ter be able ter help myself. See, this Oldgrove up at the brigand's camp, he says ter me 'Come with me m'lass and yer shall have a good dinner, a soft bed an' some warm clothes'.

And so, I did. He has a fine enough mare and so we both rides her, as quick as quick, through the dead fields and down ter the Bridge-town. Now I gets him ter promise that he'll bring me back ter Gyth and Bawde ... an' ...

Summat important must be in this fornost place. Now yer would expect that a dead city - full of bone-men, corpse-walkers and shadow-men wouldn't be full of live 'uns like me an' Gyth an' Bawde. But ...

I recall only one word. 'Folly'.

Did he speak other than that? I cannot remember. We stood on the crest of the pass, looking once more down towards the great rift in tthe ice, the weather finally clear enough for us to attempt the icewall. My heart heavy but determined as we looked out over that vast white field. His word a numbing truth, and a goad to action. What else is there? What does one do when one doubts one's lord? The oath itself must suffice, duty when love is breaking.