Da's cousin Huath is no stranger to me. He hasn't showed his face for two or three summers but its not a face to forget. He's younger than Da, not much taller even if he ain't got a crookback, and he has a nasty red scar that goes crosswise from one side of his chin to his eyebrow. One side is in a snarly sneer that never changes. He can smile on the other side and he often does. I knowed him since I was born and so nothing surprises me about him.

What does surprise me is the new one. Labraid. Right away I don't like him. He laughed at my wife's ears and if he wasn't one of us, I'd leap across the table and teach him his manners. Baine is almost drooling over him and 'Daig keeps showing his teeth like an edgy hound ready to go for that blue-veined throat. Sure he has a sword and he has the hard looks of a killer. His throat is smooth and pale and has a pretty hollow at the bottom. I see that and I can't stop looking at it. The more I drink, the whiter and smoother it gets. And the more Baine drinks, the more she stares at him too, only a different way, all flushed and fish-eyed.

Winter Mist puts her arm around me and wriggles closer, letting her body lean against my side. I can feel the curve of her hip. Every now and then she tickles me with one of those tiny nibbling kisses that drive me mad with lust. I have to listen hard to catch what Da and Huath are saying because they're talking robber-talk which is full of doublespeak, slurry doublespeak too. I throw in and tell them what I heared the Niafer cave-searchers say when I was up in the tree, but make it so they were hunting the queen of the foxes and not the Rian of Niafer. Huath howls and pounds the table so hard that some of the cups fall over, bringing the hag scuttling out to fill them again.

Da and Huath say its time to move and we go. I think my lovely-eared bride was falling asleep. She seems surprised we're not staying the night here. We all stumble out to our horses. I lift my feather-weight wife up onto the mare and mount up behind her, so I can whisper to her as we ride.

"Where are we going now?" she asks in a voice that's honeyed with sleepiness.

I whisper love words mixed with everything else she missed.