The Spoor in Virgin Snow

The late-winter snow covered the pine forest two spans deep, and by mid-afternoon the chestnut stumbled at a frozen ford and went down on its knees. Íñigo felt its foreleg: hot, swollen. The animal couldn't put its hoof down without screaming. Going on horseback was impossible, and leaving it tied up for the wolves was something Íñigo was not prepared to do after twelve leagues.

He took off the saddle, stowed the document and the canteen in his pack and led the horse slowly to an overhang of rock where moss grew and meltwater ran. He loosened the girth. He stroked its muzzle.

"You've done your part. If I get out of this, I'll come back for you."

He went on foot. His cordovan boots, made for the carpets of the Chancery, were soaked in ten paces and frozen in twenty. Within the hour he had stopped feeling his toes and had started counting the trees so as not to think about it.

He carried the order against his chest, under his shirt, and with every step he felt the three seals pressing into his skin like three stones in a shoe.

He was at a hundred and twelve when a branch cracked behind a juniper. Íñigo reached for his rapier. He hadn't drawn three fingers of steel when a broadhead arrow buried itself in the snow two inches from his right boot.

"Draw that clerk's iron and the next one opens your gullet, little lord."

The voice came from the low branches of a fir. Out of them stepped a young woman in a white fox-fur jerkin, greased leather breeches and a short yew bow with the string drawn. Her eyes were a cold hazel green, and she looked at him the way one looks at game not worth the arrow.

"I'm not looking for a fight," said Íñigo, raising his open hands. "I need to reach Oakhaven before nightfall."

"A gentleman from the south only crosses this forest for two reasons: either he comes to collect with an escort of pikes, or he's running from his masters like a chicken thief. I don't see any pikes."

"I'm carrying a document that can stop the tercios from burning your villages."

She narrowed her eyes. She lowered the bow by a finger, no more.

She looked at his hands. Íñigo looked at them too, as if seeing them for the first time: white, clean-nailed, with a quill callus on the middle finger and no other. Hands for counting, not for fighting.

"My name is Irati. My father and my three brothers were killed by the southern lancers at the Arlanza ford, the autumn the crown decided to collect the pasture tithe. I owe nothing to any document of yours."

"Nor do I owe anything to the man who signed it." Íñigo slowly took the document from his pack and let her see the three seals. "It's an order of invasion. If it reaches the generals, they cross the Gorge before the new moon."

Irati didn't come closer to look at the document. She looked at something else: the small parchment showing from the other pocket of his doublet, the council's seal plain to see.

"And that?"

"My safe-conduct."

"A traitor with a safe-conduct from the king." She laughed without humor. "How convenient. If things turn ugly, you show it at the first post station and go home for supper."

Íñigo didn't answer at once, because it was true.

"Since this morning that paper only serves to identify me," he said at last. "But yes. If I showed it and gave them back the order, my uncle would forgive me. He's family."

Irati looked at him for a long while. Then she held out her hand.

"Give it to me. The safe-conduct. I'll keep it until we get there. If we arrive and you haven't tried to slip away with it, I'll give it back and you can do what you like with it."

Íñigo hesitated for a second. He gave her the parchment. She tucked it into her jerkin without looking at it.

It was the hardest thing he had done all day, harder than stealing the order. The order was his uncle's. The safe-conduct was his.

"Your boots leave a trail a blind man could follow," said Irati. "Take them off and put these on."

She tossed him a pair of rawhide sandals wrapped in wool from her satchel. Then she cut a fir branch and began to sweep away the tracks with a speed Íñigo had never seen anyone sweep anything. He changed his footwear sitting in the snow, his fingers too clumsy for the laces, and followed her.

They hadn't gone half a league when Irati stopped dead and sniffed the air. Íñigo smelled it too. Smoke. And, mixed with the smoke, a long bark, a big dog's.

"They've brought mastiffs," she said. "You can't fool mastiffs with a branch."