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"The prince riffins, my lord duke He captured thes"

Courtiers glanced at Sabella to see if she would believe this outrageous tale

She uivre to counter this threat A guivre will allow us to strike first, before Sanglant expects battle"

"We are already striking first, by allying with one he trusts"

"Perhaps But a guivre will guarantee victory" She smiled bitterly as she shifted her attention "Do you not think so, Lord Alain? Would this not be a wise strategy?"

Alain nodded A sense of peace settled over hi here He sahat he had to do "Yes," he said, "a guivre will grant victory"

3

ONCE the necessary foran to unload the cargo of Alban goods, Stronghand climbed the slope of the valley He walked into the shadow cast by the heights and across the skin of soft green grass that surrounded OldMother’s hall Late-bloohters eyed him from where they stood by the lamour, and he paused by the threshold, distracted by their beauty Wind treust, and he shook hiulf of darkness too large to be confined in any finite space, much less the eaves and timbers visible as the outside diround He heard as at a great distance a breathy piping like a wheezing breath No stars shone; blackness veiled the heavens It was as still as if wind had never been known in the world, utterly silent and cold as the skin of stone in the dark of winter

She said, "Stronghand"

"I am here"

She said, "Go to the fjall The WiseMothers await you"

The air twisted around hiered backward and found hiht The SwiftDaughters had vanished Below, the ships rode high, or had been pulled up onto the strand, lightened of their load

How had tie, seen through a fence of pine and spruce, folk were busy sorting and accounting Most had gone back to work now that the exciteotten hi thehest reaches of the valley, and as he bent his path in that direction he found hi to ask what venture he’d set hiside like a pack of overgrown puppies, all in a tangle that sorts itself out into pairs and triads before s he had sired They jostled each other like littermates, and the softer, weaker hus with stout sticks to keep their sharp teeth at bay when the nipping and tussling got out of hand The sight of this extended pack caused a stab of foreboding What strengthened the human children would surely weaken the children of rock, who did not leap to the kill as they would have done in the old days in such a crowd They ran as one great many-limbed beast, so that he could scarcely tell one liiggled around hiht as he strode on tireless legs, as he inhaled the sweet scent of ho charcoal, pine sap, and the cold bite of northern air The old days, by the reckoning of his kind with their short lives, were easily sed by the longer span of years in which humankind revel and which they did not fully appreciate To live seventy years, as some of them did! Even Deacon Ursuline, who claimed to have survived forty or fifty seasons, could boast of a life span unknown even to the sorcerers of the Eika tribes, the ones who scheics in order to extend their lives

No h its wick is short

Rikin Fjord prospered because it was now a razed where h he noted fein laer of a hard year ahead Goats scra the steep slopes of the valley Pens held pampered cattle, who needed a cozy byre to outlast the winter It inter still, with frost crackling under each step and snow heaped where shadows lingered longest A late sowing ht prove too short for a decent crop

Still, the Eika could rely on raiding to fill their larders Long had they honed their skills as the wolves of the sea Now, it seee they would There was no going back