I spent the next few days looking after my patient. The wound had to be washed regularly, and the fever, which had already consumed Ulrick when he had passed through the gates of Brown-Horn, burst through his veins like a raging inferno.

To put out the fire, I would make him swallow entire lakes of herbal tea, willow bark, elderberry and other berries. It was terrifying to see how easily the fever could make this robust man powerless, and for the first week I lived in constant fear that the fever would take him. He was sweating so much that I had to change his bedding daily and was shaking convulsively, eyes bulging, white lips cracked with dry chapped skin. As I could not cut back on my chores at Lemis estate, I had to leave instructions to Ereck, and I admit that I did not leave the Vals with peace of mind. On one hand I was not sure that Ereck had understood what I expected from him, on the other hand, even if he applied my instructions to the letter, I knew that the wounded man could die anyway.

Ruminating all this, I piled the manure monotonously under the gibes of Holen. The stable master couldn't get rid of his nasty cough, which made him even more red and irritable than usual. Several times I contemplated the idea of offering my help, if only to have peace. As I was certain that there was a greater chance that he would suspect me of trying to poison him, I quickly gave up and had to accept to bow my head under his blows. My only meager consolation was to see him swallow twice a day this filthy potion made from piglet puke that a local healer concocted for him. It appeared to me that perhaps, the said healer liked Holen even less than I did. Nevertheless, I slept badly on my pile of fresh hay, sore from work and bruises, hoping that someone would come and get me if Ulrick weakened any further. On the weekend, I hurried back to Castle-Horn, worried about what I would find there.

To my great relief, after a meticulous inspection of the patient, the worst seemed to be over. The wound seemed to have taken, somehow, the bumpy road to healing. However, I decided, out of a clear conscience, not to go see Dera that day, breaking for the first time the tradition we had established since she had returned from the Highlands. As no courier from the castle had the time or the desire to carry a few words to the Basin, especially if they were mine, Ereck offered to pay me a messenger. This unexpected generosity touched me greatly. Appeased at the idea that Dera was not going to worry about my absence, I set about flooding Ulrick with antiseptic decoctions and calming herbal teas, which finished smothering the last embers. The days passed by, long, rainy and melancholics, reading with a lantern, watching over the wounded man and wiping his forehead, trying not to think about everything that Narsilap couldn't teach me.

It was only the following week, with the ides of the Gleaning moon, that I was finally certain that the amazing constitution of the Val would triumph over the infection. From then on, things went back to normal. Ereck announced to me in his wobbly brownian that he had to leave as soon as possible to join his comrades-in-arms and their arduous campaign against the outlaws of the forest of Vaw. Ulrick's convalescence should therefore take place without him.

In fact, as the latter almost didn't need me anymore and I couldn't stand the warrior's acidic remarks any more, I went back to the tower more often. Braving my fear, I even slept there a few times, under the empty gaze of Sesh and the mocking grin of Landros Grifal's skeleton. When I wasn't reading, I watched distractedly the hubbub of the city. Through the breathtaking view offered by the canopy, I could see the woodcutters, who had to leave the mountains in autumn, and, further on, the last seasonal sails on the Brown.

Bard returned from Franlake, too, where bad harvests had only made the discussions worse. The situation between Wadd and Hill had worsened since a violent border incident had broken out between patrols: the two factions, despite the calls for peace from some, were raising troops, courting potential allies and recruiting mercenaries. In desperation, Serven Daff the primate of Cover-Pass, had proposed the ratification of a new treaty of non-aggression, which had been rejected by most of the other lords. Armed conflict, which for a year had threatened to erupt in the very heart of Brown's primacies, now seemed inevitable. Narsilap had been right. When the Vals arrived, war was coming.

At the castle, I noticed - with growing apathy but without any real surprise - that my status had hardly changed, despite the success of the operation on the Val. I remained an outcast, in spite of everything. Perhaps it would have been different if the wounded man had been brownian, a good local guy, the husband of a friend or the baker. Unfortunately, this was not the case, I had only patched up a mercenary, I had only pulled an arrow from a stranger's kneecap and I quickly realized that, in the end, my surgical prowess had gone largely unnoticed. It was not the glory I had hoped for, nor the praise, only an acknowledgement of what Narsi had undertaken to make of me, not a sorcerer but a doctor, and thus the right to mourn with more dignity, without rumor splashing over my grief.

Of course, I would be lying if I said that nothing happened at all. I was entitled to Bard's written gratitude, a concise and impersonal little note, Morton spoke to me again when we were alone and most of the guards were less hostile. I was nonetheless a pending being, a prisoner of a frustrating in-between. This is why I welcomed with bittersweet joy the calend that began the passage between the Gleaning moon and the Ploughing moon, which gave me the opportunity to take a breather. It was finally sunny after weeks of rain and fog and I decided to trade the cold slabs of Castle-Horn for the clay of the Basin.

Dera was waiting for me on the ridge as usual, perched on the fractured granite like a little mutinous hawk, her red locks flapping in the warm gusts of wind. We spent the morning strolling around the camp, while I told her about the state of health of my val patient, and I started to vent about the unworthy treatment I was undergoing at the castle. For her part, Dera told me about her first hunts (she had accompanied her father on several occasions during the previous winter, but did not mention the fact that she was not yet allowed to shoot) and the rules of a new game of logs that her father had learned from a trafficker who had just returned from Three-Islands. We both knew that this was probably the last time we would see each other all year, but neither she nor I mentioned it, determined to make the most of the day.

We ate under the yurt, with Rue and Mesh. The place seemed strangely empty and silent to me since Vaug no longer lived there.

This feeling was further accentuated by the absence of the grandmother, whose piercing glances, which she casted from her bed, had as much inhabited the place as the whimsical stories of her grandson. When we had finished our bread, we went towards the moor. The sun was warm on my skin, perfectly compensating for the cool breeze that blew from the Horned mountains, whose distant white peaks we could see for the first time in almost a moon. It was a beautiful day. The air smelled of pine resin and the sweet scent of yarrow, which bloomed in rough tufts between the rocks of the meadow. Dera led the way to our stone-boat at the edge of the woods, where we slumped down like one man to enjoy the thinning while chatting.

"No! It' s there, I tell you," I said, tapping her vigorously on the chest, without taking into account her protests. "The largest one is attached to the heart, I've seen it drawn before." Dera made a pout, and moved my finger with a gesture of her hand. "You're hurting and besides, that's not what they say, the warriors." She smiled mischievously, and then surprised me by giving me a solid blow in the trachea. "They say it's in the throat," she said, examining me with interest as I contorted in pain.

Then, as if my rales proved her right, she stood up and took a decisive step towards the bow of the rock, and in doing so her voice became stronger. "And I saw that it was true when the warriors killed the man who had cut Granny." There was a silence as she gazed at the horizon, and then she turned to me again, squinting her eyes. "I remember it like it was yesterday." I stood up, trying to shield myself from the sun with the back of my hand. "They caught him in the middle of the camp. They pierced him with spears." Dera's gaze scrutinized me before sparkling dangerously. "And then... bam!" she shouted as she threw herself at me.

Dera was much better than me at fighting. She had a ruthless older brother who had taught her the basics the hard way and now her father and half of the chaig trappers in the Basin were working to turn her into a huntress. I may have been a little stronger, especially in the shoulders, but I had neither her reflexes nor her technique. She finally caught me with an armlock and made me tip over from the rock while uttering a victorious scream. I roared a challenge from the large tuft of nard I had just landed in and Dera, without leaving her rock, leaned over me. "They cut his neck open like a sheep," she said ferociously." And while he was bleeding I spat on him for what he had done to grandma." Then she spat in my eye, bursted out laughing, and hurried off towards the forest. I roared again and jumped after her.

We spun between the trees like two laughing arrows. Again, physically, Dera had an advantage over me. The forest was her home for half the year, while for me, the child of Brown-Horn, it was an unknown and wild place that I avoided as much as possible. Dera would frolic with the agility of a small doe, over lying trunks that I was not able to see. I had to take the time to go around and between the thickest vines, without ever slowing down. However, this wasn't our first race in the forest, and I wasn't as far behind as I used to be.

I could hear Dera's laughter in front of me between two breaths, I could sometimes see the brightness of her pectoral or her locks and that was enough. We were heading southwest, parallel to the Brown, where the game-rich forest gave the illusion of the savagery that could be found beyond, where the Stone forest really started.

Then suddenly, I no longer saw Dera. She had been there, leaping in front of me, laughing, and suddenly it was as if she had disappeared. Accustomed to her playing such tricks on me, I cautiously progressed towards the place where I thought I had last seen her, at the edge of a large clearing surrounded by rocks, while casting suspicious glances around me, in case she tried to take me by surprise. Then there was a small noise, just on my left, as I reached the edge. I saw an old hard-pine trunk, lying along the trail we were following, covered almost entirely by pale veils of green lichen. Between these curtains of vegetation, Dera's face appeared, her eyes large and round, a finger resting on her lips, the other hand beckoning me to join her. I crouched down immediately, to slip up to her. At first I thought it was a joke before I realized that the fear I could see on her face was real and that she was not trying to hide it from me with her usual bravado:

"Fyss," she whispered. "Listen." I did my best to contain my breath, which was made noisy by the running, and listened. After a moment, I shook my head. "I can't hear anything," I said. She nodded.

"The birds don't chirp anymore." We waited a little longer. Then there was a furtive sound a few dozen spans away, a rough rubbing, as if two dead leaves were being brushed against each other. Dera grabbed my shoulder with tears in her eyes. Her whisper had half turned into a complaint. "Something is chasing us, Fyss," she squealed, and a cold spurt of terror took me by the gut. "We have to run," I whispered. "We have to get out of the woods." Dera nodded, made a desperate little noise, and took me by the hand. Then, as one body, we rushed towards the clearing.

At the same moment, as if our thoughts had been intercepted by the invisible predator, the undergrowth behind us exploded. The hope that it was all just another game suddenly left me and we accelerated again.

Our footsteps made clouds of pine needles behind us. Dera screamed, I screamed too and we crossed the edge of the woods. At about a hundred spans, straight ahead of us in the middle of the clearing stood the rotting skeletons of a few primitive huts, an abandoned lumber camp. By mutual agreement, we rushed forward. We would be too slow, I knew it, but it was worth a try.

Something huge, dark and shiny emerged from the bushes that surrounded the clearing. "Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no," Dera cried while running. I turned my head, and stepped into a stump that had been cut down to the ground, which caused us both to roll through the weeds. Dera was on her feet faster than I was, with a rotting branch in her hand, and she screamed again, a fierce, plaintive wail, as I stood up, half slipping, half running. I had seen it.

It was a scal. A giant centipede in a region where it was thought to have been exterminated for over a century. Four spans of black and blue chitin, as wide and as high as the large sow of the widow Ronna. The scal bypassed us from the left, its shiny segments working together like a silent oiled machine. Dera screamed, interrupted our run and bent down crying, then picked up a stone that went bouncing against the lustrous carapace. The monster stopped, almost between us and the huts beyond, and then straightened itself up by clicking its mandibles. Dera took my hand. We ran in the other direction, towards the woods, and the whistling thing, much more agile than we were, came in between us and, as it hissed, stood up a good span, while twisting dangerously. Dera waved her ridiculous stick with a trembling hand, and we went back to the abandoned camp, breathless. The scal followed us this time, undulating gracefully between the stumps, its antennas, as long as my arm, straight towards us. I too picked up a stick, a solid branch of beech.

United in terror, we protected our retreat with futile gestures and frightened screams.

I stumbled several times, Dera did the same, but finally, as the thing was not getting any closer, we managed to reach the camp. I didn't really understand why it didn't throw itself at us, didn't move forward to kill us both with the ease that transpired from all its movements compared to ours. Feeling that we were close to the goal, I threw my stick at the scal, then Dera grabbed me and pulled me through an opening between four walls of rotting cob. We rolled on the floor of one of the less damaged huts, there was a mouldy roof and a door with its hinges still intact, which Dera immediately closed behind us. Panting and moaning, we began to barricade ourselves by piling up at the entrance the few wormy logs that were lying loose at the back of the hut. Then we slumped down with our backs against the door, as if our little bodies could keep the creature out. "It's playing," sobbed Dera, panting. "It's playing with us." She took my hand as I turned my head to try seeing the centipede between the cracks in the wood.

"It's not moving" I said, groping around in my cloak's pockets looking for my knife. I could not find it. Outside, the gigantic invertebrate had come to a standstill in the middle of the camp, its two antennas, erected towards the hut, spinning erratically.

Dera finally joined me, braced against the door, her reddened face glued to the split wood. "It knows we're here, Fyss," she said between two hoarse breaths. "Yeah," I replied. "Why isn't it doing anything?" Given the size of the thing and the power it had, it was obvious to me that it could sweep the hut with ease if it wanted to, or just go through the rotten thatch. But no. The monster had coiled around itself, rattling and hissing softly, while studying our hut with interest.

As I stood guard, Dera set out to search the hut for a makeshift weapon with which we could defend ourselves.

Except from the broken shaft of a hand axe, her search was unsuccessful, and she immediately began to cry again slowly. I couldn't take my eyes off the creature, as if bewitched. A morbid fascination for its graceful strength, the strange beauty of its reflections, and its curious whistling song.

I had time to catch my breath gradually, but, except for its antennas, the scal did not move, coiled up in front of the hut like a monstrous sculpture of obsidian. Then something else appeared.

Something that walked with a human body, and yet was not a man.

It moved nonchalantly, completely naked, the body covered with marks that I could not distinguish if they were tattoos or paintings. It was not very large and the interlacing of its stigmata prevented me from seeing its face clearly. Its body looked just as strange, adorned with short symmetrical, darkly colored, symmetrical growths, whose knotty material reminded me of bark. This was coming out of the joints, out of the backs of its hands, and it had more massive plates on its trunk, which overlapped like armor, or a second skin. The thing held a thick spear of blackened wood distractedly, and a long iron dagger hung from it, tied by a fiber cord to its braided belt. It quickly approached, displaying the same supernatural agility that animated the scal. I frantically tapped Dera to get her to watch the scene as well. The thing that wasn't a man entered the camp grounds, walked around an abandoned coal heap and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, came to camp in front of the hut, crouched down, and gently put its hand on the flat head of the scal. Dera hiccupped and confirmed my thoughts at the same time. "Seïd," she whispered in a trembling voice, and she began to cry again. Two completely black eyes met mine through the boards. I took a step backwards, breathless.

What I felt was not supernatural in itself, I didn't have the impression that my soul was being probed as those who have dealt with spirits or deities can sometimes tell. It was something completely different. I saw my own reflection in those black eyes. I saw something horribly familiar, without being able to remember, really. It was like being watched by a cat, a big cat that was smarter and stronger than me, who saw me so completely that it could know in advance everything I was going to do. I understood in one look that trying to run away would be completely useless. The demon then spoke in a strange guttural voice, said something I didn't understand, and then walked straight to our refuge. We cowered in a corner on the clay at the back of the hut.

Dera took me in her arms. We were both sobbing. There was a slight tremor that shook our refuge, and I guessed that the door had just opened a hand's width. I closed my eyes.

Then we suddenly heard the sound of the horn, and the distant chorus of the dogs.

Dera held me tighter. Her breathing quickened and the revolution of the world seemed to suspend its course in the darkness behind our eyelids. The pack was getting closer, and with it a slim hope. We could now distinguish the sound of the horses. It was the last day, and Bard was hunting in the forest from the southern road. Outside there was a high-pitched trill, a whistle of frustration, then nothing. I finally found the courage to open my eyes again. The Seïd had gone and the camp seemed deserted again. We stood up trembling, crying unashamedly warm tears of relief. The hunters passed to the west with a rumble of hooves, and the song of the great danes accompanied them. Eventually we emerged from the hut as a trumpeting rider galloped across the clearing with a spear in his hand.

Other horns echoed back through the woods and when the silence finally returned, I was still hugging Dera like a rock in the storm.