The masked witches

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Vandar Cherlinka hefted the straw-wrapped earthenware bottle. The lack of weight made it plain that only a few swallows of jhuild remained inside, and he wished he could keep all the tart red firewine for himself.

Only for an instant, though, and then he pushed the thought firmly out of his mind. For no man rose to lead a berserker lodge without training himself to be as generous as he was valorous. He told himself that he never would have felt the selfish urge at all if his traveling companion weren t so uncompanionable.

The problem wasn t that Lady Yhelbruna reputedly the oldest hathran in all Rashemen never removed her brown leather mask and gloves or even pushed back the cowl of her robe in Vandar s view. As curious as the next fellow, he d wondered if at some point during the trek, he might discover if the witch was a magically preserved beauty or a hideously wrinkled crone the only possibilities that gossip and rumor entertained but he hadn t really expected it. No, what rankled was her cheerless taciturnity for mile after hard, clambering mile, the silence broken only by her incomprehensible murmurs to herself and the occasional terse command.

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