I have only a vague memory of the days that followed, engulfed that I was in a throbbing cocoon, woven of a thousand sufferings. Each new torture disputed my attentions to the previous ones, with the same ardor as if a zealous coterie of personal inquisitors had been dedicated to me. A thin but persistent rain fell on us as soon as we left the next day. The water seeped everywhere, soaked even my cloak, and I bitterly regretted my chaig pants, which must have rotted at the bottom of the chest of my old room at Castle-Horn. The weight of the wet clothes weighed even more on the mail that Ulrick had made me wear again the next day. My whole body was screaming at every miserable step and, if we had indeed reduced our pace as the Val had promised me, I was only half aware of it. With the rubbing of the wet boots, I soon got blisters, small unbearable burns that I had to endure, because the effort of limping was too tiring. Among the flood of morbid thoughts that came to inhabit me during the long hours of this dreary walk, the question of limits, the limits of this abyss of exhaustion in which I seemed destined to disappear entirely, came up again and again. Could one die from it? Was this Ulrick's plan all along? To get rid of me and the promise he had made to me, without having to go back on his word?

During the day, the rain dripped from the twisted shapes of the trees to soak the thick moss, making the dying leaves cry like tiny withered spectres. We walked up and down winding game trails that all looked the same and that the flow of water made slippery and treacherous. When evening came, we lit small, spitting fires that did almost nothing to counteract the cold, which got into my bones, and my clothes only half dried. The increasingly important care that I had to bring to Pike was robbing me of strength that I didn't have, and when Ulrick got up, shortly before nightfall, to demand that I fight with him, my heart sank to the bottom of my wet boots. I was trying, of course, but he was sweeping away my feeble efforts with all the ease one would expect. I already had a yellowing shiner covering half my face and a split lip when I had fallen against a stump, but even worse were the bruises on my stomach and legs, which added their bite to my other ailments, when walking resumed. I quickly lost my appetite in anticipation of these blows, but with a sinister firmness the Val forced me to eat. On the fourth day, I vomited with anguish. Ulrick made me swallow what I had regurgitated from the dripping ground. I did not vomit again after that.

The val-warrior also walked now, wrapped in his oiled leather cloak, leading the drenched horses by the bridle. In front of me his fickle silhouette was undulating, and I could sometimes make out the shock of the horn on the stone, when one of the horses pierced the humus to the basalt. I feared it now, even if this fear was organized, a rise in power with the cycle of the veiled sun, which culminated after the evening meal in a few moments of terrified pain. Yes, I feared him, I feared his incomprehensible madness, his ability to be encouraging and then devious, patient and professorial and brutal. The indifference with which he hit me, then the warmth we shared when I slept close to him, all that made my head spin. Living on this imposed rift, I would come to slide on the edge of reality. Weak and contradictory instincts, of escaping and fighting, arose in me, but I no longer had the strength for one, and I failed pitifully for the other. I could hardly feed the cold embers of my despair with the dark fuel of mixed recognition and hatred. Little by little, I was lost in this turmoil, and yet my faltering steps, the very ones that gave life to this evil, were inexorably sinking into his. Each new day, I followed him, like a beaten dog begging after its master, held on a leash by hope and submission, and the pernicious justifications that come from suffering.

Then, around the sixth day, there was a brief ray of sunshine and the rain stopped.

Under our feet, the ground was starting to rise for good, and I remember a rainbow that surrounded the cracked rock of Culon heights on the horizon. It was an unreal moment and the light was transforming the dark, shiny woods into a vision of tranquil beauty. We stopped earlier that day, in the early afternoon, in a sunny clearing to dry off our clothes and finally eat a real hot meal. The horses raised their heads for the first time since the rain, and Ulrick let them freely enjoy the thick fescue growing there to supplement their diet of forest peat moss. As for me, I sat heavily in the still wet grass and removed my boots with delight, enjoying the simple happiness of my two free feet and the sun on my bruised flesh. The Val soon joined me, with a pot of ointment in his hand. With the tip of his knife, Ulrick pierced my blisters, those that had resisted the journey, then he cleaned and rubbed them with his dye that smelled of garlic and black nettle alcohol. Then I slept and dreamed of Sesh and the Seïd.

I was only awake in the evening. Ulrick had wrapped me in my blanket, and our clothes hung not far away from the twisted branches of the lonely old oak tree that stood in the middle of the meadow. The warrior had set up camp without my help for once, and he patted me with his bare foot.

When I stood up on one elbow, he silently handed me a bowl of hot beans and bacon. I took the food out of his hands and, doing my best to ignore my desire to retch over what was about to follow, I quickly swallowed it all. The nights were getting cooler and cooler as the Sowing moon approached, and I shivered as the day around me waned. Of all my wet clothes, I had only kept my underwear. The clearing was bathed in a golden glow, and the voice of Vaw, which had been muffled by the incessant crackling of the rain on the autumn foliage, could be heard again.

Ulrick was waiting for me to finish eating, motionless and perfectly naked, his muscles protruding like hairy roots. I swallowed, before getting up painfully, leaving the warm wool with a heavy heart, to come, trembling, to place myself in front of him. I did not look at him, I only waited, resigned, for him to give me the order so much feared, but the Val only contemplated me, without saying anything. I focused on the unbearable delay that separated me from my next hematoma. "Do you understand that there is a meaning to all this, Sletling?" Ulrick finally asked me. It was the first time he had talked to me all day. I shook my head and clenched my fists, "You'll understand, soon," he said. "When we've found a good wintering place, I'll start teaching you how the vaïdogans fight. But it won't do you any good until you've completed this lesson. And you're still a long way from it." He took an inspiration that seemed to me weary. "Come on, Sletling," he said. "Try to hit me."

I approached, like a fearful beast, my forehead wrinkled in anticipation of the beating, but impatient to finish it. Ulrick knocked me down with a blow on the stomach. I spat on all fours in the grass, tense over the pain as much as over the grudge.

Under the impassive gaze of the Val, I then limped to my abandoned blanket and dragged it under the tarpaulin. By the fire, I rolled up and closed my eyes. I heard Ulrick going here and there, tending the horses, then bringing back wood, without being able to fall asleep again. The night birds were ululating when he finally joined me, and the Val groaned as he sat down.

The thought that his knee might still be hurting him gave me little comfort, whose bitter taste I silently savored. "You should watch this, Sletling," he finally said. "It's probably the last time this year." I opened a swollen eye and slowly straightened up.

The dark clearing had been invaded by fireflies. They swirled silently, thousands of tiny glows spinning around the central oak tree like a procession of fairy candles.

Sometimes there would be a furtive rustle, a winged hunter would fly into the clearing, a firefly would suddenly extinguish, and around it would be like a wave of light, like the ripples on the water when it rains. Fascinated by the phosphorescent spectacle, I forgot for a while the bruises and exhaustion. "I've always liked the Vaw woods for that," Ulrick said softly. "Each time, it's when you start not being able to stand it anymore that this forest redeems itself for the coming moon. As if it needs to be loved." I nodded, my mouth ajar, spellbound by the luminous dance. "They look like fairies," I said. "It looks like it's the night that... that undulates." Ulrick glanced at me strangely over the fire. "It's true," he said. "It seems like the night is undulating."

The next day, I got up at dawn, sore but rested. The Val was still asleep, peacefully wrapped in his cape, and I did not wake him up.

My clothes were still wet, but the day was looking good, albeit chilly, and I found them much drier than they had been for the previous week. I wandered for a while on the grass in the clearing, bare feet soaked with dew, before freeing the horses to graze. Berda accepted my presence from now on, and even if our relationship was quite different from the one I had with the gelding, she let me approach her and touch her with bad grace. I flattered Pike briefly, then I took care to rekindle the embers of the dying fire. With breakfast in mind, I rummaged through the piled up package, before noticing that the large wineskin was empty. As we had been following the course of a stream for several days, I decided to venture a little further into the woods in search of fresh water.

The chirping of the morning birds accompanied me and the sun filtered golden rays between the branches of the trees that lined the clearing. I saw a large hare scurrying in front of me, and my short walk quickly led me to the stony banks of the brook, swollen by the rain of the previous days.

The watercourse was arcing and on the other side, a few spans away from the small pebble beach where I was standing, the current had dug deep under the roots. The sight of the trouts that scattered when I arrived made my stomach grumble and I regretted not having a line to fish with.

Kneeling on the beach, I filled the wineskin, before dipping my feet in the freezing water. The dye that Ulrick had applied to my wounds had done its job, and the blisters had dried so much during the night that I even managed to find pleasure in contact with the water. When I got used to the cold, I undressed completely and began to wash myself, rubbing my skin with the sand from the riverbed, as Dera had already shown me. I took a deep breath, knee-deep in the stream, my thoughts swirling between the beating I was going to get from Ulrick once evening came, and the smell of Brindy's hair when she had visited me last time in the dungeon.

I blinked and shivered, rolling a round pebble between my fingers. There was a play of shadows in the water in front of me, near the roots that tangled across the opposite bank. Beneath the shimmering surface I could make out an immobile shape, a submerged trunk, trembling in the current made murky by my washing. Intrigued not to have noticed it earlier, I bent over, motionless and attentive. The contours seemed to take shape before my eyes, as if the riverbed was cautiously coming towards me. I smiled, curious, before taking a step forward, and my feet sank delightfully into the warm mud.

Suddenly, something heavy fell into the stream with a big splash, and I was grabbed by the throat and dragged back to the bank, too surprised to scream. Ulrick slipped on the wet pebbles and fell on his back, pestering, and I half collapsed on top of him. The cold scales of his armor were rough and uncomfortable under my bare back. "Fekk, you're stupid, Sletling," he whispered in my ear. I uttered some incoherent babbling while the great Val put me back on my feet. A large rounded head had just appeared in the current, black and studded with gray, shiny as wet leather. Two tiny yellow eyes were staring at me, almost with regret, from the water. The shiny jaw was as wide as my shoulders.

Ulrick reached out his finger to the creature, which was again submerged under the roots. "The salamander would have eaten you whole, you little idiot," he said in a scornful voice. "I just wanted to get some water," I protested, without taking my eyes off the thing. "I didn't know." Ulrick tapped me on the head with his fingertips. "Use your head a little, Sletling," he lectured me.

"When you don't know, you don't come close." I frowned. "But I thought it was just a branch underwater..." The Val cut me off. "A big branch then," he ironically said. "He would have shit you in the stream, and I would not even have found your bones. These woods can be dangerous, Sletling, for those who don't know them. There are bears, wolves, vesh-cats too, meatworms that crawl up your ass when you sleep and white ticks that give you narcosis as surely as any whore. Don't ever walk away from me again without telling me. I can't teach salamander's shit."

I scanned the stream with my heart beating. A toothy grin adorned Ulrick's lips. "You're lucky my Berda is so greedy," he said. "It was her who woke me up, trying to find the oats." He rubbed my hair, which was full of sand, and seemed not to notice anything when I startled. "But that's good," he continued calmly. "It's good that a warrior is lucky." The Val sniffed and picked up the full wineskin, then went to retrieve the bow and quiver he had left on the bank. I hurried to get dressed, without turning my back to the stream, and I saw the black shape of the salamander sliding lazily to the pebbles, where the water was shallower. It was even longer than Ulrick. I shivered again. "You're not going to kill it?" I asked aloud. "I don't see why I should," said the Val dryly, who was also watching the giant amphibian. "We're not going to stay here, and as long as you don't go back for a swim, you're safe."

We returned to the camp while I bitterly meditated on Ulrick's words, and then I helped him prepare breakfast. We had just finished our bean soup when the Val coughed. "I want you to stay here today, Sletling," he said as he wiped his mouth. I'm going to give you some rind for the weapons I'm not taking with me. Rub them well, your mail too, but be careful not to cut yourself. I want them clean and ready for my return." He stood up and I looked at him without understanding.

"Stay close to the horses, away from the stream, and you won't get into trouble," he said. "Make sure they don't go too far from here. Berda likes to follow me, and Pike will follow Berda." I stood up too, while the Val girdled his curved sword. "But where are you going?" I asked in a more worried tone than I would have liked. Ulrick spat into the fire, scratching his beard, then his gaze pierced me. His eyes had become as cold as two frosted wells. "I'm going to go wait for that man who's tracking us," he said darkly. "Then I will kill him."