In the morning sobriety cut the world to clear, bit at him, made him look at what he'd done.
He unpacked his horse and looked at the salt burns under the bags and rubbed his jaw. He could see the girl, curled up small where he'd laid her, in the corner of his eye. The Blackwater had loosed his grip on the long hold he'd had on himself; now fear whistled up through the cracks between his fingers and sang to him: there is nowhere you can go that you will not be found. He listened for a while and brushed his horse. He agreed with the song, and that was its power. It had been years since he had heard its voice at all, but now it was so clear. They'll have started after you, and if you fall, she falls. He dug through the bag and calculated the days. What the fear sang was true, but he had another, colder, honesty that he drew from.
The girl woke and uncurled, and he fed her and sat beside her to watch her eat; then he gave her a pallet. He walked away into the brush and crouched and waited while she made her decision. She sat with her auburn hair shining, staring down at the pallet, and then slowly crumpled down to it. Her fists relaxed with sleep and, assured that she wouldn't run, he leaned back against the tree with the sun warm on his sore legs and dozed. Later he woke, groggy, and hunted and fed her again, and over the firelight, saw her laugh.
As a boy, he had abandoned his home and become a squire, and in the time that his duties hadn't taken, he had watched avidly the men who awed him. He'd squinted from the side of the yard, and watched all of it, their movements as they trained in the yard in the mornings, their mannerisms. At first, his presence had been unremarked, but he was tall, and he'd tried his hardest. Soon his unquestioning efficiency had won him the stability he'd craved. Later, he'd found that they wanted another thing that was also in him, and that, too, he had provided. It came from inside him and it was the best and worst of him, it led him, and protected him; he had become a man in those years and also something else.
Once in the yard, training–he'd been a boy, twelve or so, gangly and pouring sweat, the heat dropping sparks of light behind his eyes–the master-at-arms had leaned back and held up a palm and laughed, telling him through his laughter, you can stop getting back up, it's too hot and I want a drink. But he had gotten up and gotten up again, kept crawling back up, over and over through the years. The thing that was inside him was simple and knew only to survive, and it had.
Watching the fire, looking over at the girl, he felt the forgotten weakness pounding in his chest. He had spent so long hunting at the request of his queen, and then of his boy-king, that he hunted in his dreams. Now he sat in the woods, and for the second time in the wheel of his life he saw that he had taken something beyond him and it was he who would be hunted. The weakness sang. He wondered if the girl could hear it.
He rose and kicked over the fire and walked through the brush to his sleeping horse, leaned his face against him, and breathed in the warm dusty salt smell of him. The girl made soft noises behind them, pulling herself into her blanket. He wasn't at all sure if he'd done the right thing; his compass spun with the fear and so he asked instead of the other thing inside him, the thing with its always-bared teeth; its breath was cold as it answered. The horse's pulse was strong and slow against his brow. He felt the terror guttering like a candle; he felt the cold creep in over it. He ran his hand down the muzzle and walked back to his pallet.
In the dark, he looked over to the girl sleeping beside him. Her outline was very small; her breath was coming rapid with her dreams. The smell of scrub pine was sharp. The further North, the denser the wood. Let them come. Lying there, he took hold of the fear in his mind, then took up the memory of the blood in his mouth and let them at each other, and when the fear was crushed, he fell asleep.
He woke to birds loud above them; the sky was silver-grey and clean in his lungs, and he spat the sleep out of his mouth and stretched in his pallet. In the night, the weakness had changed itself. It had become a fuel inside of him.
He reached into the girl's blanket and pressed her wrist to wake her, waited while she trailed out into the wood. She came back and sat behind him and watched him pack; when he turned around, she was looking at him with her eyes wide.
"The water's in this. Here, do you want it? Are you hungry?" She hesitated and then acquiesced, held her hands out for her bread. He liked the way she stood when he went to lift her to the horse–her face tilted away, expectant and remote, composed, as if she were lifting herself.
Then the woods were slipping past them, made bright with slanting light, and the final shreds of his anxiety slipped away with them. They rode through the day. The slants of light had revolved on their points when the horse broke through a thicket and dropped down to the low bank of a creek. Birds scattered in waves from them, swooping in a whirl around the lean fisherman standing there in the creek, wet to the thigh and silent. His gaunt face pointed down at the water, but his eyes rose to meet the Hound's, transfixed. The Hound grinned down at the trembling man as they passed, pulling the grin up wide into a snarl, and the eyes faltered and dropped back down to the water.
When they had regained the trail, the girl tipped her crown back against his chest and looked up at him.
"Why didn't he run from us? He wanted to."
"We could go back and you can ask him."
She shook her head, and he snorted.
The wood grew darker by slow degrees and soon she was shifting fretfully; he pulled her back against him and she wilted, and dozed, her head nodding against his shoulder with the jolting gait of the horse. He watched for a clearing and let his mind turn inward and down. Very clear was the distinction between what he was and what he now asked of himself; he went past it and further down. Waiting at the bottom was the cold pool of resolve. He took his fill. It was not depleted; it was endless.