At twilight, as the sun dipped behind the western shoulders of the Guard peaks, Len Vey walked out along the northern road from the Highfield station.
He was carrying a light leather satchel containing only four letters. Ordinary commercial bills for the blacksmith and the wheelwright at the three-mile turn, and a family letter for a tenant sheep farmer whose cottage sat on the edge of the birch woods.
The day had ended in a wash of deep, cooling violet, brushed with long streaks of semi-clear copper. Then he rose along the high mountain clouds.
The heat had dropped ten degrees in half an hour. That brought that familiar, sharp alpine chill that made the breath smoke faintly in the dusk. Overhead, in the darkening vault of the northern sky, the first evening stars were beginning to kindle. The cold, diamond-pure light of the winter star-patterns that Len had watched through the shattered Star tower skylight on the morning of the deactivation.
He walked with the quiet, easy rhythm of Surefoot, his ash walking staff swinging lightly in his right hand.
His left arm rested in its boiled leather brace, snug and warm against his hip, protected from the evening draft by the cuff of his wool coat. The walnut-sized callus on his forearm bone was quiet. The weather was settled and dry. The bone demanded no tribute of vinegar or comfrey tonight.
