I knew by the signs it would be a hard winter. The hollies bore a heavy crop of berries and birds stripped them bare. Crows quarreled in reaped fields and owls cried in the mountains,...

But that was all bravado. Already – how had it come about so quickly – desire had begotten need. A few whispered words (perhaps he didn’t mean them) and I was ready to follow. It...

You still haven’t said where you come from. Where is your home?”I said, “I am a sheath, so home is wherenever my shade, my blade is.

I took to the Kingswood the midsummer after the Dame died. I did not swear a vow, but I kept to myself just as strictly, living like a beast in the forest from one midsummer...

The master and mistress of the house and the rest of the Blood -even the Crux himself- brought our food, poured the wine, did our bidding. The centerpiece was a roasted stag. crowned with gilded...

But I found signs of their trespass: a burned patch planted with a fistful of grain, a tree felled or stripped of fruit, a deer strung up in a snare. I never saw a poacher....