Whether the other felt the sense of companionship or not, the connection the Huntsman felt then like the electric static before a lightning storm, he did not know. It did not, he thought, matter in the longview of things or change anything of his position as the younger man's commander beyond that they belonged then to the same pack. The other was hardly out of his teens, if he was at all, but carried a sharpness to him that spoke of a hunger for approval long held back from him. Or, if not of a need for approval, of the need to be seen as an equal, of a man of worth.

"Take your wolf and take up a patrol," he told him, "We will clear the camp of the supplies we might have use of or information Rome might want, but we need to be sure that we have missed no scout, no errant soldier."