the sort he was familiar with; they customarily wore round, close-fitting helmets that covered almost the entire head. Enemy sorcerers usually wore similar black helmets festooned with talismans, and the common soldiers made do with whatever they could scrounge up — most often ancient, rusty relics passed down through generations of warfare. This gray object did not look like any of those. It didn’t look like a helmet at all; it looked like a cloth hat.
He wondered whether it might be some unfamiliar variety of beast, perhaps a magically created one or some odd kind of small dragon. He had seen pointed hats; they had once, he understood, been the standard issue for wizards until someone pointed out that they made excellent targets, but he could not imagine what one would be doing here, far to the north and west of anything resembling civilization. Who would be wearing such a thing in a marsh on the edge of nowhere?
He sank back to the ground and pulled his left sock back up, ignoring the fact that it was still soaking wet, and then pulled on his other sock and both boots.
The rustling noise continued; whatever the tall thing with the gray point was, it didn’t seem to have noticed him. He stood up again, then crouched and began inching his way toward whatever it was, parting the grass carefully with his hands.
As careful as he was, however, his movement was not silent. He stopped again and listened.
The other had also stopped. For a tense moment, Valder waited. Then the rustling began again, and the other moved away. Valder followed, trying to move only when the other moved, but the rustling of his own passage drowned out the other’s noise and made it very difficult to judge when the other had stopped.
A few feet from the spot where he had sat and dumped out his boots Valder found himself at the northern edge of the dry hummock, facing a wide, shallow channel. He eased his foot into it until the sole of his boot was resting on solid bottom, sunk an inch or two into muck. His other foot followed, until he was standing in six inches of foul-smelling water and three inches of goo. Both feet were once again thoroughly soaked.
He waded across the channel, moving slowly so as not to splash. No grass grew in the center of the channel, and the reeds were not thick, so that he was able to proceed without making very much noise. He heard new sounds ahead, not rustlings, but clatterings, as if things were being casually moved about.
He reached the far side of the channel and slogged up the bank, pushing aside reeds and grass; he paused at the top to peer ahead.
The gray point was not in sight, but something else was, something yellow-brown, warm and inviting in the setting sun. It looked very much like a thatched roof. From his previous viewpoint it had blended with the surrounding foliage.
He was so intrigued by this evidence of a human habitation where he had expected none that he forgot his pursuers for the moment and made his way toward the roof without first checking behind. He knew that the inhabitant was just as likely to be a northerner as an Ethsharite, but if the gray thing had indeed been a hat, then whoever wore it was probably not a soldier. Valder was armed and reasonably capable. He had the sword on his hip and a dagger on his belt; a sling was tucked away. He wore a breastplate of good steel. His helmet had been lost two days earlier, and he had abandoned his bow when he had run out of reusable arrows, but he still felt confident that he could handle any civilian, whether northerner, Ethsharite, or unknown.
One reason for his intense interest in the roof was that its mysterious owner might well have a boat, since he or she lived here in a coastal marsh — and that might save Valder the trouble of building a raft, as well as being safer and more comfortable.
He crept forward through the tall grass, across another dry patch, then through a reed-clogged expanse of water and mud and over another hummock, and found himself looking at a tidy little hut. The walls were plastered over with yellowish baked mud or clay; wooden shutters covered the two small windows on the near side. The roof, as he had thought, was thatch. A doorway faced the ocean, with a heavy drape hooked back to leave it mostly open. Seated in the doorway opening was the hut’s inhabitant, an old man in a gray robe, his tall, pointed hat perched on one knee. He was leaning back against the frame, staring out over the sea at the setting sun. The hut was built on the highest bit of land in the marsh, but faced down a short, steep, bare slope, giving a fine view of rolling waves and crying gulls.
Valder saw no weapons, but that didn’t mean the old man had none; he had no way of knowing what might be inside the hut. The hat and robe did seem to resemble an archaic wizard’s costume, and wizards of any sort could be dangerous.
He saw nothing to indicate the man’s nationality, unless he counted the fact that the Northern Empire had very few wizards, archaic or otherwise — but then, the garb could easily be that of some obscure variety of sorcerer or other northern magician. He debated with himself what action he should take. He was not about to turn and leave, with the patrol still somewhere behind him. He could approach by stealth, try to take the old man by surprise, but that would appear definitely hostile and might cost him an ally, and, with the rustling grass, stealth might not be possible. Far better, he decided, to make his presence known and then see how the hut-dweller reacted.
With that resolve, he stood up straight, waved a hand in the air, and called, “Hello, there!”
The old man started violently, grabbed at his rope belt, and looked about wildly.
“Hello! Over here!” Valder called.
Spotting him at last, the man got to his feet and stared at Valder in open astonishment. “Who in Hell are you!” he demanded.
He spoke in Ethsharitic; Valder relaxed somewhat and looked the old man over.
He was short and scrawny, with unkempt white hair hacked off raggedly at shoulder length and a messy beard. The gray robe he wore was clean but badly worn, with faded patches at each elbow and faint stains here and there. The pointed gray hat had fallen unnoticed to the ground when its owner arose. A rope belt encircled his waist and carried a large leather pouch on one side, a sheathed dagger on the other, where it had been hidden from Valder before; the old man’s right hand rested on the hilt of the knife. His feet were bare, his eyes wide, and his mouth open with surprise.
He did not look dangerous, despite the dagger; for one thing, the weapon was still sheathed, where an experienced fighter would have drawn it automatically. Valder guessed the man to be a hermit, someone who hadn’t seen another human being in years. His amazement at Valder’s presence was very evident.
“I’m lost and alone,” Valder replied.
The old man stared at him for a moment, then called, “Didn’t ask that.” He sounded peevish; his surprise was fading into irritation at Valder’s intrusion. “I’m a soldier; I got separated from my unit. You don’t expect me to give my name, do you? For all I know you’re an enemy magician; if I tell you my name, you might have power over me.”
The old man squinted, nodded an acknowledgment of the truth of Valder’s words, and then motioned with his left hand for Valder to approach. His right hand remained on the hilt of his knife. “Come here, soldier,” he said.
With his own right hand on the hilt of his sword, Valder made his way through a few feet of grass and several yards of mud and reeds and eventually splashed up out of the marsh onto the little island of dry ground surrounding the hut. He stood waiting while the old man looked him over carefully. As he waited, he remembered the three northerners somewhere behind him and suppressed an urge to tell the old man to hurry up; there was no need to frighten him yet.
“Ethsharitic, hah?” the old man said at last.
“Yes. Scout First Class, with the Western Command under General Gor.”
“What are you doing out here, then? Nothing to scout around here.” Before Valder could reply, he added with sudden harshness, “Isn’t any fighting around here, is there?”
“I got cut off from my unit, far south of here, and got chased north. The fighting is still a long way off. I thought maybe you could help me — loan me a boat or something.”
“Maybe I can. No boat, but come in and tell me about it and we’ll see.” He gestured and led the way into the hut.
Valder smiled. The old man’s face was as easy to read as a baby’s. He had obviously forgotten how to control or conceal his emotions after being alone for so long; Valder had plainly seen his initial surprise and confusion turn first to annoyance at this unexpected disruption of his routine and then to eager curiosity. Valder could not be sure, but he guessed the old man was also eager for a little human companionship. Even a hermit might get lonely eventually.
