… and silvery tendrils looped around it, thinner than the finest wire. The beast gave one long squeal and then froze as they plunged beneath its skin. Then it seemed to blur, as if it were dissolving, until nothing was left but a damp patch on the ground. Involuntarily Rudi looked down at his own feet. The Mother's earth was beneath him, and he expected to feed it with his body and bones someday…
But not like that! he thought.
"Those were evil fates, lord Wanderer," he said. "And true ones, I'm thinking."
"Evil for more than men," came the reply. "Now, tell me, Son of the Bear. What would you do with a little child you saw running with a sharp knife?"
Rudi's mouth quirked. "Take it from her, lord Wanderer. Swat her backside so that she'd remember, if she were too young for words."
"And a child who took a lighter and burned down your mother's Hall and all its treasures, so that many were hurt?"
"The same, perhaps with a bit of a harder swat. And call in the heart-healers to find the source of her hurt, and I'd see that she was watched more carefully, and better taught."
Walker nodded. "You wouldn't kill her? Even if you thought she might do the same again, and all within would die?"
Rudi made a sign. "Lord and Lady bless, no!" he said in revulsion, and then wondered if he'd spoken too quickly. "What a thought! If it was necessary, we… I… would keep her guarded always."
"Some men… and some women… would have that thought. Some would act on it, and kill the child."
The single eye looked out into a world that was once again pines glimpsed through snow.
"And some would have joy in the thought; or inwardly thank the chance that gave them the argument that it was necessary."
"Lord Wanderer, I don't understand."
"You don't need to. Just remember this: the world"-somehow Rudi knew he meant more than merely Earth-"is shaped by mind. And the world in turn shapes the stuff of mind. And now a question for you: what is the symbol of Time itself?"
"An arrow?" Rudi asked.
The tall figure laughed. "A hero's answer, if I ever heard one! And I'm something of a connoisseur of heroes. That's natural enough. You're at the age for it, for war and wild faring. So… watch."
He turned and took up the great spear, its head graven with the same symbols that glowed on the brooch of his blue-lined gray cloak. Then his arm went back, paused, whipped forward with the unstoppable certainty of a catapult. The spear disappeared into the snow in a blurred streak.
"Was that a straight cast?" Wanderer asked.
"Very straight, lord; and I wouldn't like to be in its way."
They paused, in a silence broken only by the whistle of the wind. The single gray eye watched him, a chill amusement in it. Something warned Rudi, perhaps a whistle of cloven air that wasn't part of the storm's music; he turned and jumped backwards with a yell, nearly stepping on the wolf's tail. The spear flashed past, smashing a sapling to splinters as it came, and then there was a deep hard smack as the Wanderer caught it. His long arm swayed back with the impact, and then he grounded the weapon and leaned on it, the head glinting above his head as the dark wind blew flecks of ice past into the night.
"That was a straight cast," Wanderer said. "But the line only seems straight because you can't see its full course. Draw it long enough and it meets itself, like Jormungandr."
"I don't understand!" Rudi said again, baffled.
"You don't need to… yet," the gray one said. "No man can harvest a field till it is ripe, but the seed must be planted. The heroes offer to me for luck and victory. But the Kings… they ask for wisdom, if they have any to begin with."
"I'd be glad of that," Rudi said; he felt like arguing, but… that wouldn't be wise at all.
"Would you? Then know this. Fact becomes history; history becomes legend; legend becomes myth. Myth turns again to the beginning and creates itself. The figure for time isn't an arrow; that is illusion, just as the straight line is. Time is a serpent."
Rudi blinked. He noticed the bracelet around one thick wrist, where the coat rode up; it was in the form of a snake, wrought of gold so finely that the scales were a manifold shiver that seemed to spin away in infinite sets.
Wanderer stepped closer. "Your friends are waiting for you, Artos, son of Bear and Raven," the tall gray-haired figure said. "Go!"
He clapped a hand to Rudi's back. The touch was white fire, and the Mackenzie stiffened as if existence shattered about him.
"I've got it!" he heard a voice say.
Gods and holy men, never a straight answer, he thought as he bit back a groan.
The white fire still ran in his veins; it narrowed down to a patch on his lower back, and he could hear the voice again. It was Father Ignatius.
"Holy Mary and every saint and God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit be thanked. That was why!"
Shuddering, Rudi felt the sting as something swabbed at the wound, and a hand dropped a pus-stained bandage into a bucket. He could smell the sweetish odor of it, oily and with a hint of something like vinegar. Then real fire bathed it.
"I'm sorry, Rudi, but it's necessary," the priest's voice soothed.
A hand took his; he knew it was Mathilda's, and tried to remember not to crush her fingers. Then he realized he couldn't, not even if he tried; her hand was carefully gentle on his. His whole body felt like the limp blood-and-matter soaked rag, hot and weak and stiff at the same time, with localized throbbing aches in his shoulder and back. He could speak, but he simply did not wish it. Even lifting his eyelids was too much effort.
"There was a fragment of the arrowhead still in the wound," Ignatius said as he worked. "But this time the probe found it as I was debriding the dead tissue. Praise to the Lord in His infinite mercy! And Praise Him that Rudi was delirious through it. It's far too close to the Great Sciatic."
"Will he heal now?" Mathilda said anxiously.
"That is with God. But there's a better chance."
Another voice: Odard's. "He needs proper food and warmth and a real bed," the Baron said. "So does Mary. My lady, let me take a little food and try to find a settlement. Ingolf, you said-"
"-that they're not all Cutters in this part of the country, south of Yellowstone, yes," the big Easterner said. "But the operative word is not all. And my information's a year out of date-a year ago, Deseret was holding out, too."
"I'm willing to chance it," Odard said.
"Are you willing to not talk, if they do take you?" Ingolf said.
"I… think so," Odard said.
"Thank you, my old friend," Mathilda said softly.
Then a complex whistle came from outside; Ignatius' hands finished fastening the band across Rudi's back, and he heard the soft wheep of a sword leaving a scabbard, and the little rustle of an arrow twitched out of a quiver.
"Gil sila erin lu e-govaded vin!" Ritva's voice, and then in English: "I've found friends!"
Then in a strong ranch-country twang: "Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha, y'all!"
"We've got to move you, Chief," Edain Aylward Mackenzie said gently.
The blue-green eyes opened, more like jewels than ever in the shockingly wasted face, and Rudi smiled at him.
"Good… glad to be… going somewhere," he said.
Edain swallowed. "It's going to hurt."
"Means I'm not dead yet!" Rudi said.
He looks different, Edain thought. Better. But still sort of… like glass.
"Glad to have you back with us, Chief," he said.
The strangers had a stretcher with long poles on the cave floor now, next to the injured man; it could be rigged as a horse litter, and it was padded with sheepskins. Together they eased him onto it; the thin face convulsed a little as they set him down.
"Sorry, Chief!" Edain said.
"Glad… to have you… there, boyo," Rudi said.