lean, hard young man who could survive off country which, to the untrained eye, would not support a pygmy mouse. In Marou he found both a father figure and a peer, things he’d never had or missed. The only thing from his old life that still called to him were the books.
Shael was footsore, hungry and weary. She’d never realized just how much bigger the world got when it was crossed on foot. If it hadn’t been for pure untrammelled luck she’d have starved to death, or been forced to go to one of the marauding bands she had seen and run from. Her future then might have been short indeed. On her second day she had found a farmhouse with its newly dead owners sprawled on the grass outside. But the attackers had fled before looting it. She resolutely turned aside from the dead woman and her spitted son to search hastily for food. She’d found their packs readied for flight. The boy’s spare boots were an added blessing,