"Uff da," he swore mildly.

Most places wouldn't let you in once they'd buttoned up, and the ones that did usually charged a fine for open ing a postern after curfew. He touched Boy up with a pressure of his legs. That was hard on him, and even more on Billy… but he didn't think Billy would survive a night in the open right now.

There were tall hills to his right-the last stubs of the mountains he'd crossed. The rolling floor of the valley opening westward was divided into small farms, their fields bordered by hedges and rows of trees. Within the enclosures were the green of pasture or new-sown winter wheat just beginning to mist the soil, dark brown of plowland with wind ruffled puddles between the furrows or the rather messy look of a well dug potato field, the bare spindly branches of orchards, cherry and apple, pear and peach. Now and then there was a clump of woodlot, oaks and firs, and more thickets along the river. He recognized the crooked stumplike plants on a south-facing hillside as grapevines, still with their spin dly branches unpruned, though he hadn't seen their like often before.

I have drunk wine, though, and I wouldn't mind some at all, he thought, and smacked his lips absently. Though right now something hot would be very good.

Days like this, as the shadows grew darker and the wind blew colder, even a young man felt how the years would tell on him in another two decades. He coughed to clear his throat and spit aside.

There weren't any buildings in the fields apart from the odd byre and shed. The land was all worked from walled hamlets like the one he'd passed not long ago-they called them duns here. The Sutter River gurgled and chuckled to his left, flowing westward into the valley; the steep hills just north were densely forested, dark green and brooding with tall firs.

Then a scatter of sheds and workshops loomed up to either side of the road out of the misty dimness, showing lamps or furnace light-mostly strong smelling tan yards and pottery kilns, the sort of trades smart towns didn't leave inside the wall. He heard the splashing and grinding sound of water turning millwheels to his right, and saw the occasional yellow glitter of flame through the branches of thick planted trees.