Evenings I returned to the Keep, to hot fresh food and warm fires, dry clothes and a soft bed, but the specters of those Forged ones stood between me and those comforts. I felt myself a heartless beast that I could enjoy such things after spreading death by day. My only comfort was a prickly one, that at night when I slept, I dreamed of Molly, and walked and talked with her, unhaunted by Forged ones or their frost rimed bodies.
Came a day I rode out later than I had intended, for Verity had been in his map room and had kept me overlong in talk. A storm was coming up, but it did not seem too severe of one. I had not intended to go far that day. But I found fresh sign instead of my prey, and sign of a larger group of them than I had expected. And so I rode on, ever at the alert with my five senses, for the sixth of the Wit was no help at all in finding Forged ones. The gathering clouds stole the light from the sky more swiftly than I had expected and the sign led me down game trails where Sooty and I found it slow going. When I finally glanced up from my tracking, admitting that they had eluded me this day, I found myself much farther from Buckkeep than I had intended and well off any traveled road.
The wind began to blow, a nasty cold one that foretold snow to follow. I wrapped my cloak more tightly about myself and turned Sooty’s head toward home, relying on her to pick her path and pace. Darkness fell before we’d gone far, and snow with it. Had I not traversed this area so frequently of late, I would surely have been lost. But we pressed on, going always, it seemed, into the teeth of the wind. The cold soaked right through me, and I began to shiver. I feared the shivering might actually be the beginnings of trembling and a fit such as I had not suffered for a long time.