The elf takes up his staff

It sounded like morning and smelled like winter. The damp air was like a cloth tied over his ears, but it also magnified his sense of smell. The last piles of melting snow at his feet steamed with acrid cold, and beneath them was the dead, metallic odor of mud too chilly to molder.

The drip and plash of water falling from pine branch onto pine branch was further muffled by the springy needles, but its fragrance was spice and balsam like the churches of the men. This tincture of incense dropping onto his hair seemed a consecration. Perhaps she would want to be married in a church by a priest. Then the man Egelric would have nothing to say.

He had been waiting for the morning, and it seemed a further blessing that the rain had stopped. He could have traveled at night – there was no day for him in any case – but the lesser the chance of meeting men, the greater the chance of meeting elves. He could hide from the men, provided he was not so careless as to walk into one of them. He would walk boldly among them, unseen and unseeing, and he would go to the place where they had taken Cat.

He supposed they had taken her to one of the castles or houses of the men across the river. His sun had risen at his feet the previous morning, and set somewhere in the north. No more he knew from this distance.

Nor did it matter: he did not intend to go to her, but he wanted to be close to her. If she were to get into danger now, he would not be able to reach her in time to help her. He only wanted to be close enough to go to her if she needed him. He could wait for her to want him.

It was a long march through unfamiliar territory, and he had only his ears, his nose, and his staff to guide him. There was the low country on the south bank of the river to cross, too, and he had not yet forgotten what it was in this season: the gray stalks of reeds frozen in the midst of decay, the black water, the humps of floating vegetation that appeared to be solid ground until one stepped upon them. Then there was the bridge with its traffic. Then there were the villages.

But he would have to go dwell among the men if he wanted to avoid the elves. He would use his ears to follow the snuffling and snoring of hibernating bats to some neglected barn or outbuilding. Where bats could sleep in safety, so could he.

Then he would wait, hoping she would not need him, hoping she would want him.

Then, if they took her away from him again, he would take up his staff and follow.