Fires of Winter Read Free Page A

having the knife in my belt and knowing—as I thought, being very ignorant—how to use it, I felt much bolder and went from shed to shed, gathering what I could carry.
    For many days—recently, thinking back, I decided it must have been nearly a month—I kept Audris and myself hidden. I stole wood for our fire and food for our bellies and emptied the vessels of soil, mostly going out in the late evening, just before dark when the shadows were deepest and most plentiful. Near the end of the time, I went out in the early morning also, into the garden where the fruits were ripened. For drink, I stole milk, if any remained in the shed by evening, and I fetched water from a small spring in the garden in one of my mother’s pots because I could not lift the pail that went down into the well in the lowest floor of the keep. I was afraid to go down into the dark too, but I did not admit that. By then, I was very bold and proud. I think I must have believed, for a time anyway, that we would always live that way.
    I was well content that it should be so, for Audris was very good and minded me. I kept her as clean as I could and took her with me for an airing when I went to the garden, teaching her to hide and be still on those few occasions when someone came in. I wonder now whether it was those lessons, for I was frightened and she may have felt my fear, that made her so shy of strangers all the rest of her life. But at that time she was happy, playing only with me. I was happy too, but as the weeks passed, I began to miss my pony and the practice with my sword. Soon I was trying to devise a way to steal a ride and at the same time keep Audris safe. Usually I left her sleeping, tied by a cord to the leg of the bed so that if she woke she could not burn herself in the fire or fall down the stairs, but I knew that a ride would take longer than my short forays for food and that it would be dangerous to leave her tied too long.
    Still, thinking about the pony made me wonder if he would remember me, and I could not resist a short visit to the stable. I had been there once, perhaps two weeks earlier to take some straw to add to the rushes on the floor; these were becoming thin and matted, and it was growing cooler as the summer waned. Then, although feed had been thrown into the troughs, the stable was filthy. This time it was different. Plainly, someone had been at work. I remember how my heart sank at the sight—I suppose I knew then that life would revert to its normal pattern and I would sink into nothing again instead of being provider and protector, a person of the first importance. I could not even stay to see the pony but turned and ran, and because I was already running, escaped the outstretched hand of a groom. I heard him calling after me, but I had become most adept at concealment and escaped him easily.
    That did not lift my spirits, though, and it was a long time before I fell asleep that night. Nor was I wrong in my feeling that my life was about to change again. On the very next day, not long after Audris had wakened me and I had given her some fruit and cheese and sour milk with which to break her fast, a tumult of sound rose from the hall below us. That place, dead and silent for so long, was suddenly full of people, all talking, shouting orders, wielding rakes and brooms to rid the place of the rotten old rushes, starting a roaring fire to burn cleansing herbs, and suchlike. The noise startled Audris, used as she was for so long to no noise except that which we made ourselves, and she began to weep. I hushed her fiercely, thrusting her into the corner of the room farthest from the door, and ran back, struggling to close it. This I could not do, for the locking bar was down and it was above my head and too heavy for me to lift, so it caught against the seat into which it normally dropped.
    Had the door closed, Audris and I could have spent the day much as usual, since, young as I was, I knew no sound