Dawn Wind by Rosemary Sutcliff Read Free Book Online Page A

and he set out on the long journey back to his snares. Two of them he found empty, but in the third, the one set on the standard bearer’s grave, there was a fat buck hare. He took it out, with a salute to the shade of Marcus Petronius, paunched it and let Dog eat the offal; and resetting the snare, set out for Kyndylan’s Palace, his kill swinging in his hand.
    He felt a vague unwillingness, now that he was outside it, to go back into the empty town in the dark—though to be sure the moon was rising—and as he trudged wearily in once more through the dark gate-arch into the brightening moonlight of the street beyond, the sense of being watched was stronger on him than ever. He stopped to listen, as he had stopped so often that day, and a small sound that he had been hearing stopped with him; splat-splat-splat —but it was only a little blood dripping from the hare where he had paunched it.
    The half-fallen rafters made queer shadows on the pavement of Kyndylan’s colonnades, and he found himself avoiding them with care, or else deliberately wading through them to show himself that there was nothing there; a trail of ivy swinging in the little wind made him whirl round in his tracks, and the kee wick-wick-wick of a hunting owl set his heart racing and damped the palms of his hands. But he reached his corner of the slaves’ wing at last, and squatting down, set to work to get a spark from his strike-a-light. It took a long time, and he tore one finger with the flint, but it came at last, and he got the fire going. He felt better after that, and while the fire burned up he set to work to skin the hare. He gave the skin with the head and paws still inside it to Dog, who leapt on it, tearing and worrying as though it were a full-grown buck, and choking himself with the fur. Then he poked the skinned hare into the hot edge of the fire with his knife, and began the difficult business of getting it cooked a little without burning it.
    Presently there was a strong smell of scorching flesh, and when he managed to rake the thing out and get it turned over, there was a blackened patch on its shoulder. He must be more careful. He scraped off the charred surface, and put more wood on the fire, trying to build it a little round the hare without getting it too close.
    It burned with small bright flames over a glowing heart, for the firewood was seasoned timber; the smoke curled upward to find its way out through the hole in the roof, and warmth stole out into the little store-room with the tawny light that fluttered over the intent faces of the boy and the hound.
    At last, probing with his knife, Owain decided that the meat was cooked as well as it was ever likely to be; at any rate he could wait no longer. He had been beyond feeling hungry when he brought back his kill, only a little sick, but now with the smell of the baking meat curling up into his nostrils, the warm water was running into his mouth so that he had to keep swallowing. He raked it out from the hot ash with his knife and a bit of wood, and rolled it over on to the floor to get cool enough to handle. And as he did so, Dog, who had long since finished his share and was lying nose on paws watching the cooking, raised his head and looked towards the doorway, his eyes like green lamps in the firelight, and growled softly in his throat, as he had done the night before.
    Owain also looked towards the doorway.
    The moonlight made a bar of silver on the edge of each of the steps, and shone full on the wall just inside the door. The last time he looked that way, the moonlight had been empty save for the cracks in the plaster; now, on the milky light, he saw a shadow, angular and delicate as that of a grasshopper, but seemingly human.



5
Regina
    O WAIN grabbed Dog’s collar as the great hound sprang up, and scrambled to his feet, shouting something, he did not know what. The shadow started back as though to run, hung for an instant on the edge of the dark, then slipped