Chapter 42: A Man of Forty-Four

Nobody in the ring made a sound.

Hamish Gault knelt in the dirt with his white head down and looked at his own hands.

They were an old man's hands now, spotted and thin.

He turned them over and over and did not seem to know them.

I changed back where I stood, and Brigid threw her coat over my shoulders from the rope.

I did not feel the cold.

Ewan lay on his side a few feet away, in his own skin, with blood running down his chest.

I went to him on my knees.

"Don't," he said, hoarse. "I'm standing."

"You're lying down."

"I'm about to stand."

He put his good hand in the dirt and pushed himself up.

Then he sat, because his legs would not do the rest.

I put my arm around his waist and held on.

"You came in," he said.

"You let me."

"I did." His mouth moved. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done."

"I know."

"Don't tell the Keep."

The Elder came across the ring with his stick, slowly, in his blanket.

He stopped in front of the kneeling man.

"Hamish Gault," he said. "You are challenged and you have fallen. Do you yield the ring?"

For a long moment Hamish said nothing.

When he spoke, I almost did not know the voice.

It was dry, and thin, and it had no warmth left in it anywhere.

"I yield," he said.

A sound went around the ring then, from three packs at once.

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