I was grateful when the winds finally tore a rent in the cloud cover, and moonlight and starlight leaked through to gray our way. We made a better pace then, despite the fresh snow that Sooty waded through. We broke out of a thin birch forest, onto a hillside that lightning had burned off a few years ago. The wind was stronger here with nothing to oppose it, and I gathered my cloak and turned up the collar again. I knew that once I crested the hill, I would see the lights of Buckkeep, and that another hill away and a vale would find a well-used road to take me home. So I was of better cheer as we cut our way across the hill’s smooth flank.
Sudden as thunder, I heard the hoofbeats of a horse struggling to make speed, but somehow encumbered. Sooty slowed, then threw back her head and whinnied. At the same moment I saw a horse and rider break out of the cover, downhill of me and to the south. The horse carried a rider, and two other people clung to it, one to its breast strap and one to the rider’s leg. Light glinted on a blade that rose and fell, and with a cry the man clutching at the rider’s leg fell away to wallow and shriek in the snow. But the other figure had caught the horse’s headstall, and as he tried to drag the beast to a halt, two other pursuers burst from the trees to converge on the struggling horse and rider. .
The moment of recognizing Kettricken is inseparable from the moment I set heels to Sooty. What I saw made no sense to me, but that did not prevent my responding. I did not ask myself what my queen-in-waiting was doing out here, at night, unaccompanied and set upon by robbers. Rather, I found myself admiring how she kept her seat and set her horse to wheeling as she kicked and slashed at the men who tried to drag her down. I drew my sword as we closed on the struggle, but I do not recall that I made any sound. My recollection of the whole struggle is a strange one, a battle of silhouettes, done in black and white like a mountain shadow play, soundless save for the grunts and cries of the Forged ones as one after another they fell.