One of us will take over here. Meanwhile, the Women Old wish to speak with all the thains.”
Morlock began to sit up. “Except you,” the woman in brown said hastily. Morlock was perversely tempted to insist. But he was very tired, and equally reluctant to identify with these renegades.
“Go with them, Rhume,” he said. “Trua Old won’t let you be hurt. Remember me to her. . . .”
He must have slept then; he remembered nothing else. The next morning the townwoman in charge of the storerooms willingly issued him a change of clothes and a water bottle. She was more reluctant to surrender a thain’s cloak, but Morlock pressed the point and she gave in.
Later that morning Trua met Morlock at the tower door. She was wearing the senior thain’s golden triangle.
“Spoils of the hunt,” she said curtly, when she noticed Morlock glancing at it. “So you’re going to Thrymhaiam really?”
Morlock nodded.
“As walks go, a longish,” she remarked.
It was, perhaps, a full day’s walk. Morlock suspected, however, that she was referring to the fact that every step of the way was over open ground. Or did she simply mean it would take the rest of his life to complete it? He grunted.
“Stop that. Talk to me, you convert to dwarfhood.”
Morlock laughed. “I’ll tell those who wait in Thrymhaiam about you, Old.”
“You’ll live so long; likely it’s not. I think we should send the Watchmaster of yours instead still.”
“Watchmaster of mine he’s not.”
“Mock me, then. Who taught you to talk like a souther?”
“Yesterday you said I talk like a dwarf.”
“You do so. A dwarf souther.”
Morlock shrugged, half smiling. His smile faded rapidly, and he said, “I’m going now, Old.”
She stepped forward and embraced him quickly. “Bye, Morlock Thain. I guess we’ll be dead soon both. But it’s better to die like this—giving in, not ever.”
“Good-bye, Old,” he said into her thin gray hair. “Take to the woods. We’ll come for you from Thrymhaiam.”
“Fool. Go, now, or are you waiting for dark?”
Morlock turned and walked out the open doorway. It was a radiant forenoon; he could not believe the sky held anything but clean light and white clouds. Yet it did, of course. He circled around the tower and, as soon as he reached the stubbly fields on the west side, began to run.
It would have been wiser to wait until nightfall. But it would not have been much wiser, since dragons could see well enough at night. And any waiting was dangerous; the longer he waited the harder it would be to leave. Soon he would be calling himself by a new title and organizing a response to a crisis of this magnitude. . . .
The high fields were golden still in the noonday sun. But the ground had a hardness to it. Fall was ending in the Northhold. There were storm clouds building on the southern horizon; Morlock knew winter was in them.
On the western horizon, gemlike and clear in the distance, he saw the High Gates of Thrymhaiam. They stood above the Coriam Lakes, source of the stream that ran through Helgrind chasm. There was a footpath from the cliff-edge of these high fields down to the cold blue lakes of Coriam. Morlock rarely had occasion to take that path, but he knew it well enough by sight. He’d stood many a watch at the High Gate. Visitors never came that way, so the watch often made their way down to the lakes to swim or to catch the occasional surreptitious fish. (Very surreptitious Morlock had always found them, anyway, but he wasn’t much of an angler.)
A rumbling sound, like slow-building thunder, reached him from the south. He threw himself down in the golden stubble, watching and listening breathlessly. The ground was cold, giving the lie to the dreamlike warmth of the golden fields. Likewise the innocent blue-white sky could be pierced at any moment by the red fire of dragons. They must be watching this way, to make certain their captives in the Northtower did not escape to Thrymhaiam. Still, as Morlock lay on the ground he realized they had not seen him yet. Slowly he got to his feet and continued his run westward.
He reached the border of the fields that the thains of Northtower kept under cultivation. He ran on into the narrow mountain meadows. The going seemed slow, and Morlock soon found himself out of breath. He continued walking when he could no longer run, then ran again when he had swallowed some water and