The other did not answer for a moment, and when he did it was in a soft voice. “Perhaps it is because we could use you.”

“Me?” said Roric bitterly. “A man who may be dead before morning, and if he lives will be an outcast at least, and probably outlawed as well at the next Gemot? No one needs me.”

“I do not think you will be dead before morning. But I must agree,” with another chuckle, “that you will be of less use to us if you are. I need to ask you several things, and I am interested in your answers.”

Roric leaned on his sword, listening but still hearing nothing ominous among the quiet sounds of the night. The other person, whoever he might be, was not a wight or he would not cast a shadow. But his soundless materialization on the bench suggested someone of great voima: a Weaver, perhaps, or a Mirror-seer-even a Wanderer. But if he were one of these, he should already know the answers.

“All right, then,” said Roric, and a smile came and went for a second across his face. “We may as well talk while we’re waiting for the attack to come.” In the moonlight this man-if he was a man-seemed so unreal, so much a product of his own vision, that he could have been talking to himself.

“Then what have you done, Roric No-man’s son, to make your fellows want to kill you and cast you out?”

“I’ve loved a high lord’s daughter,” shortly.

“And so your king has come to kill you?”

“How did you know a king wants me dead?” demanded Roric, raising his sword again. This person who knew his name but apparently not much else could in fact be one of the king’s men, here to distract him from the coming attack, only seeming insubstantial because of night and moonlight.

But the other again gestured with upturned palms. “This is a royal manor, and the crown on your shoulder-clasp suggests royal service. Is your king planning to kill you himself?”

“No, not with his own hands.