The Golden Comrade Sings

Killer-Kate and Luke-Lackland: 790 words.  Magic and wit pass bar and gate; Kate and Bonecold Refugee, spear and shield, pass beneath dreadful clouds into their cause's last sanctuary in the Dales.  And to bear the clouds and her comrade, Kate breaks her longest silence, and finds new words fit for her dearest song.  With which spell of no magic, she rallies the first and most needful of her host to her burning standard - her own self.

I think it will prove critical in all this that Kate as Grey Wolf is as terrible a person as I ever foresaw, yet lighter and kinder and with her feet far more firmly planted.  Indeed, I guess that the climax of this chapter might have rung very tired or false were she otherwise.  The grim gaiety is her fence, the kindness her cutting edge, the simplicity her stance through which the power flows up from the ground.  My crescendo is not very loud, yet.  But for the first time in two tales of her, I have seen what Kate is when she's whole.

Yesterday I took my mother out to lunch, and furious plot-noodling occurred over the beer and pasta and pudding.  I managed to get straight in my head what happened in Langdale after Luke's move, remove most of the idiocies from both sides' strategies, and manoeuvre both the Earl and the rebels to just about where I wanted them.  This required considerable work because I am a rubbish general, although the brilliant three-dimensionally mapped retreat from Sparkling Chardonnay to Delicious Spicy Noodles was entertaining enough to more than make up for it.

Tomorrow - first check and first recovery.  Then my way's clear to the Long-Awaited Scene and the end of the chapter.