Before noon on the second day, Pip began pressing the base of its stubby antlers against the cold stone lip of the spring trough.
Ysabet was sitting on a cedar log nearby, oiling the leather straps of Chaska’s folding cargo-gliding frame while the injured mouse walked carefully along the bench rail between her knees, testing each board with its whiskers. Through the bond, she felt a thick, dull throb behind Pip’s eyes—the same heavy pressure it had gotten in the moving forest before rain.
She looked up at the northern ridges above the marsh. When they had eaten breakfast, the sky over the limestone crags had been pale blue, and Iskren’s older lookout had predicted the high frost clouds would hold off until nightfall. Now a low, bruised bank of slate-dark vapor was pouring over the saddle of the pass like water spilling over a dam.
“Chaska,” Ysabet called, setting the oil rag down and lifting the mouse gently back into its slatted box with her left hand. “Look at the gap.”
Chaska was twenty paces away, helping Lilt stretch her right wing over a wooden trestle. The courier squinted up at the pass, and the easy grin vanished from her face. She whistled once—short and sharp—to the camp hands working by the hay ricks.
