When she left the boathouse the sun had set and a cold wind had begun to rise off of the river. She didn’t turn to see if he followed. She walked around to the north side of the thinboarded structure, the candlelight wavering out the knotholes, her footfalls crunching in the gathering frost. There were few other sounds: the water rippling, the slosh of trout striking, the rasping of the reeds shivering together. Below it all the frantic wheeze of the sow's breath.

  She was lying down in a wallowing of the riverbank. Mym could see where she had crawled out to the very edge of the water and back. Now she lay on her half unrolled bearskin, uncovered against the falling chill except for the shaggy motley of yellow and red and brown and black human hair that fringed her harness. Once she had carried all manner of weapons and a bootful of arrows but now she had only a knife and this she gripped in her rigid fist as though she might slay what was coming, as if it was something that could be repelled with fang and claw and raw violence, as if it was something could be killed.

  Mym heard Orc's sudden drawn breath.

  "Who did it?" he said.

  "Kingsmen."

  "The baron."

  "Aye."

  He went to her. He walked around her and her eyes tracked him. Watching the knife he knelt at her shoulder and said some things too quiet for Mym to hear but she could see the tears welling in the sow's eyes. The sow said nothing. Still watching the knife he reached across her body and unrolled the rest of the bearskin and then blanketed it back over her. He covered her legs and her torso up to her neck and he left the fist and the knife free of the covering. He bent forward again and pressed his lips against her forehead and the tears were now leaking in two streams and falling into the wash of sand. He cupped the side of her face. She snarled away from it.

  He rose and came back to where Mym pretended to study the northern horizon. “There’s nothing you can do for her?” he said.

  She shook her head. "It's got in her lungs. Like te be gettin inte her heart now."

  "Do something with that rock of yours."

  "It doesn't work like that."

  "Did you try?"

  “I offered. She about put that gutsticker in me.”

  “You should’ve tried.”

  “It's her body, Orc. It's her life. Whatever she wants te do with em is her choice.”

  He looked at the sow and then back to her. "Give me the rock."

  "Ye can't very well cut out her heart te scrape off the sick and then stick it back in."

  "Give me the rock."

  She threw up her hands and left him there to retrieve her pack. As she went around the boathouse she nearly ran into the longhorn going the other way.

  "Care there wedwarf," he said.

  "The sow's dyin."

  The longhorn nodded as if he already knew, as if he had known all along. "It was good of her to wait."

  She looked at him. He sidestepped her and walked on and said no more.

  In the boathouse she got into her pack. At the end of the dock Uhquah had a second string cast into the current and Khaz was returning thence. Daraway sat on the overturned canoe with her cloak gathered about her. She cleared her throat. "You've gotten close," she said.

  "What's that now?"

  "You and Orc."

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  "Aye, I suppose we have."

  She found the malachite. Held it up in the failing light as if examining it.

  "I hoped you'd be happy to see us," said the woman.

  She pocketed the stone and turned to her. "There's not much of either up here."

  Daraway met her eyes. "Don't shut us out, love."

  "I don't mean te. I just," she began. She didn't know what to say.

  The woman smiled a little and a part of Mym that had frozen these last few months began to thaw.

  At that moment Khaz arrived. He looked at Daraway and then at Mym. He jutted his chin at the doorway and all of them went outside.

  "We can't let that blue out of our sight," he said. "His company's all te shambles and he's like te bolt on that razorback of his."

  "He won't go anywhere," said Mym.

  "I'd rather not chance it."

  "It's yer ore te haul."

  "Aye and I'm happy te. Ye ask him why his kind were faffin about in the wynds of time?"

  "Aye."

  "He tell ye?"

  "No."

  "Well I aim te find out." He nodded at Daraway. "Ye see him anywhere near that mule ye come find me."

  "It's like te be their affliction," said Mym. "They're sick. Like us. "

  "That so?"

  "Aye. They were drinkin off the same poison as us datin from the first dwarves te when they left the vale. It's not square but it's close. Parts of em seem te harden and parts of em don't. So when they go they go like a waterbagged human."

  Khaz looked horrified.

  "Aye and they're feelin just like that too. Uhquah'd not admit it but he's lookin te undo what's been done te them the same way we're lookin te undo it."

  "He knows about us?" said Khaz.

  "Aye. Knew before I found him. He knows we've found the dwarfstone and he's up te somethin with the brigadier."

  "We've heard she's up here," said Daraway.

  "Do ye think they're after the manstone?" said Khaz.

  "Aye it's a likelihood."

  Daraway looked furtively at Khaz.

  Mym frowned. “I got te get back te Orc,” she said.

  She saw them exchange looks again.

  "Did you tell him what caused the illness," said Daraway.

  "He's not given me much chance te. He's a nak headed mold bearded tosser and if ye haven't figured that out yet ye will fore this time tomorrow. I've got te get."

  She turned and began to walk away. She paused and came back and wrapped them both in a warm embrace. "I'm glad yer here," she said.

  Before they could say anything she left around the corner of the boathouse and down to the water's edge where Orc squatted by the sow with wet sand stuck to his knees. The longhorn leaned against the side of the house with a wad of cottongrass in his cheek. She handed Orc the malachite.

  The longhorn turned his head and spat some cud. "It ain't no use."

  "Shut up," said Mym.

  Orc ignored them. He held the stone in his hand and the sow's forehead in his other. "You've been dead longhorn," he said.

  "As you see me."

  "How was it for you before the queen brought you back?"

  "You've been there grayback. There's nothing to it."

  Mym saw Orc's mouth screw up. "Ye know humans don't think that way," she said. "For them there're whole realms of livin after dyin."

  "It doesn't matter what humans think of death," said the longhorn. "Death is oblivion. You might as well ask their speculations on the dark. Death is always. Before humans came to be death was and awaited them. The unceasing ceasing awaiting every beginning. Life, not death, is the exception. That was the way the world was made and that is the way it will be. Now and forever."

  Mym saw Orc look down at Tulula. "I don't know what she believed," he said.

  The longhorn spat again. "What she believed," he began, "was there ain't no beliefs divorced from action. This is the legacy stolen from you by your beloved unmother, grayback. This scaler sow and her kin were complete the day they were made. She a god born of the earth and long apostated of other obligations. Sparked off the iron void of creation she devoured it would that she might encompass its every experience. Dominate every orgasmic delight, every spiteful meanness. And though her extinguishment lay all around her on her foreshortened path from the toolshed to the riverbed she proclaimed her sovereignty by following a woman, following a dwarf, bedding a redblooded infidel. To be the last of her kind. All fuel for her consumption, now departing heartful of all the sun's rage and bitterness and leaving none for your license."

  As the longhorn had been delivering this eulogy Orc began to loosen and pry boards off of the boathouse and split them with his bare hands and snap them over his knee and pile the timber beside the bearskin. Mym offered him her flint. He struck it off of his blade and with the wind and the bonedry wood a little fire jumped up and sawed back and forth and the sparks lept and fell and lept and fell like the breath of some elemental that lay dying upon the wash of sand and she watched the pale flame which itself had something of the first dwarves within it inasmuch as all of their triumphs were rendered from it and within its pulsing embers she might understand her origins.