A/N: Once again, I feel like this chapter hasn't been sufficiently polished, but my increasing tinkering didn't seem to be helping, so I've decided to post it anyway and see what everybody thinks. I reiterate that I am no longer basing the geography on personal experience (except that I have seen Ptarmigan Lake, and many other similar lakes in the Rockies), so no doubt the narrative is riddled with errors of fact that (at the moment) I have no means of correcting. I've tried to make it work regardless ...

About "Scotland the Brave" in the last chapter: yes, it's a huge cliché. My rationale for using it is as follows: (a) It's a good marching/walking song. (b) Daine is not a musician; she learns stuff like this from Alanna's children, who are army brats. (c) Both Numair and Daine are so grateful for the second chances they've had in Edinburgh that they've become rather fervently patriotic Scots, and this is one manifestation of that. :)

Disclaimer: my own twisted, time-shifted take on Tamora Pierce's characters. Also, if the tone shifts a little toward the end, that's probably the influence of the redoubtable Connie Willis, whose short stories in the Bringing Up Baby vein I've been re-reading over the last couple of days...

Chapter 10: Back Country, 28–31 July

Daine stopped short, with a breathless squeak, and froze, her hand clutching Numair's so tightly that her fingers ached. Damn, damn, damn, she thought. How could I be so stupid?

Numair took a casual-looking step toward the newcomers, putting his height and bulk between her and their curious eyes. Something sharp briefly scored her shoulder; her rucksack shifted, and there was a soft, unidentifiable noise behind her head. Only now did Daine realize that her curled left arm was no longer full of feline. Too panicked to be cautious, she stepped out from behind Numair and looked round for Kitten.

The young cougar was nowhere to be seen.

"Hi there," called the foremost rider, from the saddle of his large bay gelding. "Everything okay? You folks look a little spooked."

Realizing belatedly that the first words out of his mouth had not been What the hell were you doing with that animal, Daine struggled to speak; her throat, suddenly, was so dry that instead she began to cough. Numair passed her his canteen, and she sipped gratefully. He was the picture of calm; had she not been inches away from him, even she might not have guessed how terrified he was.

"Yes, thank you, everything's fine," he was saying now. "You startled us. We were making rather a lot of noise, you see, and we failed to hear your party approaching."

The man on horseback looked nonplussed – as well he might, Daine thought. And where on God's green earth is that beastie? I hope she's run far enough. And not too far. And not into any trouble. "Well, okay," he said. "Listen, would you mind just stepping to one side, there, so I can lead these folks on by? It's usually easier that way, and—"

He broke off, frowning, and tugged gently at his mount's reins. "I'm sorry, ma'am. Rusty's usually a nice, polite horse, but he seems to have taken a real liking to you…"

"That's quite all right," Daine said, smiling, as the gelding whuffled into her ear and lipped her shoulder. She talked softly to him, praising his patience and gentle nature, not immediately noticing the consternation that was overtaking the rest of the mounted humans as their horses crowded in behind Rusty to see what was going on. Really, she thought, the beasts in this country were the friendliest she'd ever met.

When Numair touched her arm gently, she looked up to find both of them surrounded, ringed by equine faces wearing expressions of interest and affection and by human ones expressing impatience, confusion, irritation, and fear. A little brown mare sniffed curiously at her rucksack, then snorted sharply and pulled her head back; her rider, a sunburnt blonde woman of about Numair's age, gave a little shriek. Daine had a disturbing thought.

"Go along, now," she told the horses. "Safe journey."

When the last of them had gone, she unclipped the chest and hip belts of the rucksack and eased her arms out of the straps, depositing the whole apparatus in the middle of the trail. "You may as well come out, now," she said to it.

Numair shot her a quizzical look.

"You'll see," she said; and, to the rucksack, "Come along now. It's all right, the big scary herbivores have gone."

A tuft of golden fur, patched with dark brown, emerged tentatively from the large zippered pocket on the top of Daine's pack, then withdrew. A moment later a pink-brown nose, large, liquid blue eyes and large ears bristling with white guard-hairs appeared; Kitten whistled interrogatively, then worked her shoulders free and at last leapt down to solid ground.

"That," said Numair to no one in particular, "was a very close call."

"Aye," Daine agreed fervently, crouching down to fondle Kitten's ears. "Thank goodness that zip happened to be open – I was sure I'd zipped everything up this morning. That was very clever of you, Kit, to think of hiding like that."

Kitten purred and rubbed her cheek against Daine's hand.

"How are the supplies holding out?" Numair inquired of Daine, who was foraging for their supper. He sat with his back against a tree, the topo map spread out over his bent knees, and was engaged in charting their progress and estimating how much longer they could expect to be en route.

"As well as could be expected, I suppose," she replied. "Milk powder: gone. Cheese: gone. Sardines: long gone. Apples: four. Gorp: lashings. Carrots: six. Quick rice: about … a cup left. Crackers: about a dozen, plus a few more that seem to've been sat on – maybe Kitten'll like those. Porridge oats: two cups, give or take – lots. Dried mushrooms: really a lot, 'cos I just now found them at the bottom of your pack. Peanut-butter …"

There was an odd sound, as of a zip being zipped. Daine, turning, saw that this was it exactly: Kitten, apparently tired of flattening herself to squirm in and out under the tent flap, had unzipped it vertically and now stepped daintily out of the tent, looking smug.

Numair frowned. "Did I know she could do that?" he asked.

"I certainly didn't!" Daine exclaimed. "I rather thought zippers needed fingers."

"Oh, no," he replied, perfectly serious. "Actually teeth work quite—"

At this point something seemed to occur to him; his face went crimson under his tan and he shut his lips firmly.

Daine chortled. "I'm not sure what you're getting at," she said, all bewildered innocence. "You'll have to show me what you mean sometime."

The rain began shortly after midnight. At three o'clock in the morning it was falling hard and fast; the noise woke Daine from a vague and disconnected dream in which she had fled the mountains with a company of drummers in full highland kit at her heels and taken refuge under the boardwalk at Skegness Pier. By dawn the exciting part of the storm was long over, giving place to a gentle, relentless drizzle that bid fair to continue all day.

"It can't possibly keep on all day," Numair said positively, when she spoke this thought aloud. Daine admired his optimism, but she couldn't share it.

In fact it did keep on nearly all day, but cleared – miraculously, it seemed to Daine – two hours or so before dusk, while they were setting up camp.

"We're wet to the skin," Numair said wearily, which was true enough, despite their rain gear, that she couldn't very well argue. "I think we ought to have a fire tonight. With all this rain the wildfire risk will be minimal."

Daine thought it likely that the odds of finding enough dry fuel even to start a fire were equally minimal, but she held her tongue; the prospect of warming her damp, chilled hands and feet before a campfire, even a small one, was very cheering. And I wouldn't say no to burning some rubbish to lighten our packs, either.

While Numair set about gathering stones for a fire ring, Daine poked about in the undergrowth, looking for kindling. It was a discouraging task; there was plenty of deadfall, but all of it was as wet as she was.

After some time she realized that she had acquired a helper: Kitten, unnoticed till now, had been hefting small deadfall branches in her jaws and laboriously ferrying them back to Numair's fire ring, where she deposited them in a heap. This was a bit unnerving, but Daine had seen much odder behaviour from animals in her life. "Try and find dry ones," she counselled, when the cub raced past her in search of more "prey."

"She's learning all sorts of new things, isn't she," Numair commented, sounding not entirely pleased, when Daine returned with an armful of only slightly damp branches. "Does this strike you as normal behaviour?"

Daine looked at Kitten's contribution and shrugged. "She hasn't been as clever as all that," she pointed out, once she was sure the cub was out of earshot. "Nearly all of it's soaking wet."

Monday dawned bright and clear, to everyone's relief. The rain had begun again while they were eating their mushroom-and-rice supper, quashing Daine's pleasant daydreams of spending the evening warming her chilled fingers and toes at a crackling fire; everything was as damp when they woke in the morning as it had been the night before. They had slept badly, feeling wet, cold and hard done by despite dry (if grubby) clothes and only slightly dampened bedrolls. Their small-animal visitors had largely abandoned them since Kitten had joined their party – wisely, Daine reflected, as Kitten was becoming a more and more proficient hunter, at least of very small game.

Although the mountain dawn, as always, was chilly, it was cheering to think that by midday the sun might again be strong enough to dry things out again.

Numair fetched a potful of water from the river and filtered it into their canteens and the spare bottles. Daine drank deeply from hers, gasping at its temperature; after nearly a fortnight the cold still made her teeth ache. "It is glacial, vetkin," Numair reminded her.

Kitten, who had been lapping water directly from the pot while they were distracted, raised her dripping muzzle and made the snuffling sound that, they had decided, meant she was amused. "It's all very well for you," Daine grumbled. "You're used to it."

They set out an hour after dawn, yawning and sipping tea from the thermos flask. Kitten ran circles round them for the first hour or so, then, exhausted, planted herself squarely on Daine's feet, chirruping plaintively to be picked up. With a sardonic glance at Numair, Daine obliged, settling the cub into the front of her anorak where she would be warm and, with luck, remain more or less unnoticed.

Every step, now, brought them closer to the more populated sections of the park, and they walked in near silence, alert for the noises that would signal the approach of other walkers, trail riders, or Parks patrols. For several hours they met no one at all, which, perversely, made Daine ever more nervous. When, at half ten, they stopped to have a rest, Numair, over her half-hearted protests, took her rucksack from and stood behind her, kneading the tense muscles of her shoulders and back. She had not realized, until she felt herself unwind under his hands, just how tightly wound she had become.

"Try to relax, love," he said. "You're strung tight as a bowstring – you can't keep on like this all day."

Kitten chose that moment to wriggle into a more comfortable position against Daine's chest while emitting a long, whistling snore, and both of them dissolved into laughter.

"I needed that," Daine said a few minutes later, wiping her eyes. "Let's mount up again, OK? I'll be all right now, I think."

Grinning, Numair helped her back into her rucksack straps, then swung his own pack onto his broad shoulders and set off down the trail.

It was only a few minutes after this that they met the German university students, who needed reassuring that they were on the correct trail and wanted to know if they were likely to see any "fierce animals" on this stretch of it. While Numair spoke with them, Daine beat a hasty retreat off-trail, mumbling something about "the facilities": Kitten, at the mention of "fiercer animals," had begun to growl and tried to thrust her head up out of Daine's anorak.

"Skoki Valley," Daine read. "What sort of name d'you reckon that is?"

"Autochthonous, I should think," Numair replied absently; then, seeing her reproachful expression, "Indigenous. Aboriginal. I'll look it up more specifically when we get home." He produced his notebook and a pencil from a capacious trouser pocket and made a note and then, for good measure, extracted the camera from another pocket and photographed the trail sign.

"It isn't fair, you know," Daine remarked, as they went on.

"Hmm?"

"Pockets. Men's clothes always have more of them, and bigger ones. And it's not as though men have more things to carry. It's terribly sexist."

"But," Numair objected mildly, "women's clothes are shaped differently – they need to be. Perhaps there isn't room for the same level of ... pocketage."

"Not as differently as all that," she retorted. This was a comfortably familiar topic, and it was for this reason as much as any genuine outrage about pockets that she had brought it up. "It was the same at school. Everyone had to wear the same poxy blazers, but ours had one pocket and the boys' had four. And they wore trousers and we had to wear skirts – skirts without—"

"Let me guess: without pockets."

"Not even to mention the P.E. kit," Daine went on, branching out. "Talking of sexist—"

"Why do they make girls play hockey in such minuscule skirts? I've never understood it. Enjoyed it, yes—"

Daine threw a convenient fir cone at him.

"—but not understood it," he finished, dodging to the left. The cone flew harmlessly over his right shoulder.

"It's tradition, I suppose. Perpetuated by randy middle-aged P.E. teachers who like to look at girls' knickers. Though in that case you'd think bike shorts would do just as well."

Numair blinked. "Has anyone ever told you, vetkin, that you've got—"

"A dirty mind? Aye, they have." Daine grinned mischievously. "But you're the only one to live to tell about it."

On Monday evening – by which time they had planned to be back in Calgary, sightseeing and sleeping somewhere with clean sheets and hot and cold laid on – Numair spread out the maps again with a sigh. It had been a long day, during which Kitten had had to be rescued from a nine-foot-high tree limb, a confrontation with an understandably angry wolverine, and a large patch of stinging nettles.

"What would your mum say?" Daine had scolded her, exactly as Numair had heard her admonish Alan, Aly and the younger Contés when they were under her care. He suspected that, like him, Daine had been thinking regretfully of the time, only a few days earlier, when Kitten had been frightened of her own shadow and clung to Daine like a shipwreck victim to a lifeboat hull.

"Her mum would cuff her round the head with one paw," Numair had pointed out, turning from his attempts to capture the formidable Mount Redoubt in pixels. "And then wash her to within an inch of her life and not let her up until she promised to behave better in future."

Daine's folded arms and narrowed eyes had told him what she thought of his contribution to the conversation.

Kitten was sleeping now – "No doubt," Daine remarked on her way past with the supper things, "gathering her strength for the next assault on our nerves" – and looking absurdly innocent of wrongdoing.

"At the very least," Numair said ruefully, "she's going to be awake half the night."

"You," Daine said indistinctly, "are a very bad cat."

Numair rubbed one eye. "What's the matter, love?" he inquired, only nominally awake.

"Your cougar—"

"My cougar?" he sat up, forgetting where he was, and the tent lurched as his head and shoulders pulled it sideways.

It was very dark. Numair considered checking his watch, which had a luminous dial for just this sort of situation, but decided, on balance, that he preferred not to know what o'clock it was. There was a smell, though, that he recognized all too well.

"Whatever she ate last night doesn't seem to have agreed with her," Daine said unnecessarily. She sounded rather queasy herself. "P'raps it was deathly ill, and that's how she managed to catch it to begin with."

An indignant mew greeted this suggestion. At least she's feeling better now …

"Where?" Numair asked wearily.

"All over the outside of my sleeping-bag."

He sighed. "Well, put it outside, then, and we'll deal with it in the morning."

"And where am I meant to— Oh." There was a shuffling, swishing sound as Daine extricated herself from her ill-fortuned sleeping-bag. "Are you sure there's room?"

"Of course there isn't," he retorted. "There's hardly room for me. But we'll manage – we have done before, after all."

He thought he heard Daine mutter something about newlyweds and being touched in the head; but she was making such a noise with the sleeping-bag that he couldn't be sure.

In the morning they were drowsy and cross, almost sleepwalking through the making and consuming of tea and porridge and the striking of the camp. The evidence of Kitten's unfortunate menu choice had mysteriously vanished, along with the sleeping-bag itself, but it was only when Numair put his head and upper body into the tent to deal with the bedrolls, and found only one, that this absence became apparent.

On hands and knees, he backed quickly out of the tent, unfortunately tangling his legs with Daine's as she passed the tent with the cooking-pot full of "grey water" to be poured into the latrine pit. Daine tried to back away but trod on Kitten, who yowled in protest; Daine toppled over, spilling the water liberally over all three of them and landing flat on her back amongst the fir needles and tree-roots.

"Ow," she said. "Whatever did you do that for?"

"Your sleeping-bag," Numair said urgently, wringing out his hair. "Where did you put it?"

Daine looked about her. "Just where you're sitting, more or less," she said.

"After that, I mean. This morning."

"I've not seen it this morning," Daine said, frowning. "I thought you'd taken it off somewhere to clean the sick off it, and … hung it up to dry, I suppose. D'you mean you didn't take it anywhere?"

Numair shook his head. "I must have forgotten," he admitted. "I only remembered just now, when I started to roll the bedrolls up and noticed yours was gone."

They turned as one to stare at Kitten, who met their suspicious gaze with wide, innocent blue eyes.

"If we keep on," Numair said, "we ought to be able to reach the trailhead today. This evening, rather. But if you feel tired—"

Daine sighed. "I know," she said. "But believe me, love, I'm as anxious to get back as you are." Oddly, this was quite true; as they left the true wilderness behind them and began meeting more and more other people, her longing to stay here had evaporated. The last day or two – struggling to keep Kitten out of trouble (her talent for which seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds) and, even more importantly, out of the sight of their fellow humans, while running short on food supplies, not to mention sleep – had been positively stressful, and at the moment Daine, quite simply, wanted nothing so much as a large, warm meal and a hot bath.

But the mountains had still some astonishments in reserve. Today their route took them through Deception Pass and past Ptarmigan Lake – the very lake whose photograph had so astounded them a few weeks ago. In the flesh, so to speak, the sight was even more arresting, the turquoise colour more vivid and jewel-like, the silence moving and profound.

"It's wondrous," Daine whispered, hardly daring to breathe.

They stood staring at the still, intensely blue-green surface for more minutes than they had to spare, transfixed by the beauty of the scene and revelling in their great good fortune, to be sharing it with each other.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, Daine saw something ripple that glassy calm, and a cold dread gripped her. "Where is she?" she asked Numair.

He looked about, as did she, but of course there was no Kitten to be seen.

Daine returned with her eyes to the place where she had seen the ripples in the water; and, as luck would have it, it was rippling still.

And the valley echoed with an eerie, whistling chirrup: the sound of a young cougar desperately calling for its mother.

"Damn it," said Daine, already halfway to the water's edge. Numair was only steps behind her, running footsteps heavy in the sudden silence following Kitten's cry for help. "I ought to have known."