"Val, you're going to stop this nonsense by Christmas, I hope," Gabriella Cho called from beneath the tresses of a riverbank willow. "I'm all in favor of men that bathe. In fact, I wish you'd give lessons. But the river, in this temperature?"
He laughed, breathing hard in the cool water. "I can't pass up the chance for a swim in November. We couldn't do this in the Boundary Waters, not at this time of year. You should try it."
She stepped into the veiled moonlight, holding a wicker laundry basket. "I'll stick to dipping a piece of me at a time in a washbasin, thank you. It's slower, but I can do without the double pneumonia. Anyway, I brought you a treat, you nut."
Valentine waded up and out of the stream, toes pleasantly digging into the cool sand. He felt no embarrassment at being naked in front of Cho; they'd shared too many rough camps for him to worry about modesty. She knelt, unwrapping one of the bundles from her basket and then standing up again with the air of a magician performing a trick. The brick-heated towel she draped around his shoulders warmed him deliciously.
"Thanks, Gabby, this feels great! To what do I owe the royal treatment?" He began to dry himself off, goose-pimpled skin luxuriating in the welcome heat.
Cho retrieved the other towel, stepped behind him, and affectionately tousled his hair. "It's winter quarters for us soon. I hear they're going to split us up into apprenticeships or something in camp."
"That's the rumor," he agreed as she dried his back with a series of strong strokes. He found it easy to be agreeable with his skin tingling the way it was.
"You've filled out a little, Davy," Cho observed. "You used to be such a reed. Too much time cooped up in Father Max's library."
Valentine felt a spark. Are you going where I think you're going? he wondered, applying it equally to the direction of the conversation and her rubdown. Now aware of how close she stood behind him and drinking in her rich feminine scent, he thought with a little nervous thrill how easy it would be to turn around and embrace-
A shriek from the buildings on the other side of the belt of trees broke the moment like a thrown brick shattering a window.
"Fire!" echoed a second, more intelligible yell.
By the time Valentine pulled his pants on and stepped into his boots, a ting-ting-ting-ting sound rang from the metal tube in the gate watchtower that served as Weening's alarm gong.
"Flames, Val, and- Jesus, what's that?"
Something flapped across the night sky over the stream, bigger than a vulture, banking to make another pass over the ring of houses.
The two friends ran for the River Gap, a narrow alley between two homes that served as the smaller of the two entrances to the village. Cho ran three paces ahead of Valentine, who was still fumbling with his pants.
A shot flashed from one of the long rectangular windows just under the roof of the house overlooking the River Gap.
Cho staggered as the whipcrack hit Valentine's ears, a leg yanked out from under her as if someone had pulled it with a trip wire.
Valentine waved his arms above his head. "Don't shoot, don't shoot, it's us!" A second shot whistled past his ear.
He dropped to the earth, crawling for Cho. He found her writhing in the undergrowth, clutching her injured left leg. Oath after oath spat from her contorted mouth.
"Val," she gasped. "Val, my leg's broken, I think. Help me-Oh Christ, it's bleeding bad."
"Don't shoot anymore!" Valentine shouted into the flame-lit night. He pulled off his belt and cinched it around her thigh as a tourniquet. "Send help out here, damn it, you shot her!"
More shots rang out from somewhere, not aimed at them, thankfully. Valentine tried picking Cho up, but an agonized scream dissuaded him.
A scared-witless voice called from the window: "That you, Mr. Valentine?"
He started to reply with profanity strong enough to blister paint, but cut it off. "I'm coming in, we need to get some help out here. Dorian Helm, right?"
"Yessir. I'm sorry, but when you came up so-"
"Never mind. C'mon out here, I want you to keep an eye on her. Get a good look at what happens when you shoot without knowing what you're shooting at."
"Tell him to bring some water," Cho groaned up at him. "David, the bleeding's slowed. Please, God, let them have chloroform or something."
"And water, Helm. A canteen, anything," he shouted at the house. No response. He turned back to Cho. "I hope he heard me. Just hold on for a little while; the two of you stay under these trees. Those flying things are busy lighting fires."
"Knock a couple down for me, Val. What a dumb way to get hit," she said from behind closed eyes. Her lip was bleeding; she must have bitten it in pain.
"Hang tough, Gab. Back in a few."