"What happened to him?" asked Tjorr, clasping his hammer; for this was an uncanny thing to meet on a treeless autumnal plain at nightfall.
"I do not know," said Eodan. "Robbers—the same who killed Phryne?—or some trolldom, perhaps, for we are in no good country. We cannot speak with that man, so best we leave him alone to his weird."
They trotted on. But it grew too dark to see, and Eodan would not risk passing by his oath-sister. In the morning the kites would show him from afar where she lay. Then the Romans would come, and he would stand by her grave and fight till they slew him.
"I would like a fire," said Tjorr. He fumbled in the murk, caring for his horse. "The night-gangers would stay away."
"They will anyhow," Eodan told him. "It is not fated that we should be devoured by witch-beasts."
Tjorr said, with awe heavy in his tones: "I will believe that. You are something more than a man tonight."
"I am a man with a goal," said Eodan. "Nothing else."
"That is enough," said Tjorr. "It is more than I could bear to be. I dare not touch you before dawn."
Eodan rolled himself into the saddle blanket, put his head on his wadded cloak and lay in cold, streaming darkness. The earth felt sick, yearning for rain, and the rain was withheld. He wondered if some of the lightning Tjorr called on had indeed been locked up in the hammer. When they died tomorrow, the rain might come; or perhaps, thought Eodan, the first snow, for he is the rain but I am the winter.
I am the wind.