At the Queen_s command

Nathaniel nodded. "I'm thinking we're seeing signs from diabolical forces, if you're wanting God's honest truth." He proceeded to outline what Prince Vlad had explained about Ryngian power and what he expected them to do in the west.

Makepeace Bone absorbed it all, then nodded solemnly. "I been a-wondering when God was going to call me to do His work. Sounds like this du Malphias feller is a Diabolist at the very least. Iffen you'll have me, I'll be going with you. If not, I reckon I'll go anyway."

Owen smiled broadly. Right from the start, Makepeace's presence changed the expedition's dynamics. Even though Nathaniel and Kamiskwa had begun treating Owen as more than self-loading cargo after he killed the Ungarakii, they still shouldered more than their share of responsibility. Granted he had no wilderness experience, and they were willing to teach him, but there were some things they chose to do just because it was easier.

With four of them, and Makepeace being as big as he was, they could no longer travel in one canoe. Owen partnered with Makepeace in a second. This made their journeys a bit faster and, despite the aching shoulders and chest, Owen enjoyed the added work.

The giant's presence also made Nathaniel a little less reserved. He'd called Nathaniel "Magehawk," too, but Owen didn't press for that story. That would have violated the trust they'd been building up. Instead he would sit back at night, writing in his journal, as the other three men shared stories they'd obviously heard before but enjoyed nonetheless. And Makepeace, for all of his understatement, told as good a story as the other two.

Listening to them over the next several weeks Owen realized they all had a sense of freedom that he'd never known. One night Nathaniel told a story about his having been caught stealing eggs from an old woman's farm when he was a child. He'd tried for years and years to redeem himself in her eyes. He'd chopped wood in the winter, he'd brought her skins and meat, he'd carried messages, fetched packages, and always stopped in when he was near her home just to see if she needed anything.

"Then, 'bout five years ago, I came up on her farm and there weren't no smoke from the chimney, no chickens in the yard. I was thinking the worst, of course." Nathaniel rotated the spit on which he'd skewered a crow. "I went into Oaktown, asked. They said she was feeling poorly, been taken in by the Preacher and his wife. So I went to see her. She was in her bed and when she saw me, she started cussing a blue streak, calling me all kinds of thief.

"I reckon the Preacher he done read my face. I was disappointed to see her in such a state and all. And he says to her, 'Grannie Hale, you been hating this boy for nigh on to twenty years over a handful of eggs he didn't even get away with. Can't you forgive him, even now?'"

Nathaniel smiled. "So she looked up at him, all toothless grinning and says, "I don't hate him. I done forgive him twenty years ago, Reverend. I just hain't tole him I did. Iffen I had, who'd a-brung me venison and skins? Who'd a-been chopping my wood, hauling water, and patching my roof?'"

"And the Reverend said, 'Maybe he would have found it in his heart to do so anyway.' And she spitted him with a stare was clear-eyed and cold. 'You preach redemption, but it's at a word and a dunking. I make him work for it. It sticks that way.' And ain't no two ways about it, she was righter than rain."

Owen never could have told that sort of story on himself. It would have opened him to ridicule. He got enough of that just because of the circumstance of his birth. And yet the ease with which they shared such stories revealed an inner confidence that he craved.

Is it this place that breeds these men, or the freedom that encourages them? He jotted that question down. He stared at the empty page below it for a long while, and he found himself unable to compose a satisfactory answer.

Three weeks out of Hattersburg, as dusk was falling, they paddled across Pine Lake. Small, not particularly deep, it lay nestled in a small valley, with thick forest right down to the water. A few islands dotted it and fish jumped at bugs. The wind stirred the water a bit, but Owen felt that if he had to live out his days with that vista visible from his front porch, he could die happy.

The wind blew out of the north, slowing their progress, but brought the sound of voices. They came from a long, slender island running northwest to southeast. On the leeward side, where the island's central spine blocked the wind, a fire's golden hints glimmered.

Nathaniel and Kamiskwa immediately cut east. They headed out and around, approaching the island on the windward side. As they got close enough to land, Makepeace and Owen paddled toward the small, sandy beach on the island's lee side. They readied their muskets before they came within range then, fifty yards offshore, changed course to run parallel to the beach.