Bernal leaped forward. His knife flashed, and he heaved the dog’s massive body aside to bend over a pathetic, moaning figure. It was an elderly man, hideously wrinkled as though wasted by illness. His head was totally bald but with incongruously thick eyebrows. He was of an age rarely attained in those unsettled times, but that was not why Bernal stared at him. This was no ordinary fugitive. For one thing, he was a foreigner. He possessed none of the usual Lantian racial characteristics. He was slight of build and fair-skinned. For another, he had no beard—merely an untidy growth of facial hair. He had shaved—or been shaved—within the last tenite, and beardlessness was the sternly enforced perogative of a peerager. He also wore finely woven, meticulously cut and fitted peerager trousers, but his blue smock was the one-name badge of high office in Lant. These two garments on the same person were a stark impossibility.
A strange black tube some twelve centimeters long and three in diameter lay on the ground beside him; nearby was a clumsily fashioned back pack with flimsy straps that had broken during the struggle with the huge dog. The old man had tried to protect himself with his arm and his pack, but the dog ripped the pack from his grip and made a gory mess of his arm.
Bernal examined him as carefully as the moonlight permitted. The entire forearm resembled shredded meat more than a human limb, but the artery seemed miraculously untouched. Clucking his tongue softly, Bernal went to the Lantiff, one after another, and swiftly sliced pieces of cloth from their clothing. With these he mopped up the blood and skillfully bandaged the arm. While he was working on it, the old man’s eyes opened, and he struggled to a sitting position.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Bernal.”
“You killed the dog!” The old man sounded incredulous. He sat looking about him while his dazed mind groped to understand this miracle. The dog’s next lunge would have buried its teeth in his throat, and he had resigned himself to a hideous death.
“You are a one-namer!” he exclaimed, still sounding incredulous. “And you dare to help me?”
“I scout for the Peerdom of Easlon, and I dare many things,” Bernal said. He fashioned a sling from the back of a Lantiff’s shirt, tied it in place, and then asked, “Can you walk?”
With his help, the old man struggled to his feet. He was taller than Bernal had expected, and there was an amazing resilience his wiry form, for his teeth were clenched with pain and his breath came in shallow sobs. As the shock lessened, that pain would become throbbing agony.
For the moment, his mind was focused on the miracle of his rescue. “The Peer of Easlon must pay you well for taking such risks,” he said.
Bernal smiled. “A scout avoids risks as much as possible, and he works for a cause, not for a reward. In Easlon, I am considered a patriot. Come—there will be less danger if we move quickly. Let’s see if you can walk.”
“My pack!” the old man gasped.
Bernal retrieved the ripped pack and tied its torn straps together. The old man leaned unsteadily against a tree and followed every movement with anxious eyes. When Bernal stooped to pick up the strange tube, the old man exclaimed, “Give it to me!” and extended a trembling hand. He snatched it and tucked it under his blouse.
“Were there more of them?” Bernal asked.
“No. I only kept one. To defend myself.”
“It certainly did that,” Bernal remarked. If he hadn’t arrived on the scene when he did, he wouldn’t have believed that one elderly fugitive could have wrought the carnage that lay about them.
Blood was soaking through the bandage on the old man’s mangled arm, so Bernal added more layers of cloth. Then he picked up the pack and began to guide him toward the road, gently supporting him with an arm around his back.
“I am Egarn,” the old man said suddenly.
Bernal halted. He couldn’t contain his astonishment. “You are
“Egarn.”
Bernal didn’t believe him. Egarn was Med of Lant and the peer’s most trusted advisor. He was an enigma even to the Lantians, living a solitary life, holding himself apart from palace intrigue and preferring the study of sorcery to the court cycle of hunts and parties. Younger peeragers avoided him out of fear that he might cast spells on them, or so it was said, but the Peer of Lant, the most cynical and cruel tyrant alive, was said to rely on him absolutely. Only a colossal court upheaval could have placed him in disfavor.
No hint of such a thing had reached Bernal, but court gossip was difficult to come by when a peerdom was at war. Certainly there always had been something peculiar about Egarn. He held a high office that was reserved for peeragers, and he enjoyed all of its privileges despite the fact that he had only one name.
Bernal could make up his mind later. The fugitive’s importance hardly mattered unless he could be kept alive and gotten out of Lant quickly. They would have to travel fast and cover their trail as well as they could. If this old man really was Med of Lant, the peer’s pursuit would be incessant and relentless. Only a great personal affront or the foulest act of treason would so infuriate her that she would send Lantiff with dogs in pursuit of a long-trusted official.
While he guided Egarn back along the trail left by the clumsy Lantiff, he considered what form the pursuit would take next. The peer’s commanders would suspect the old man had confederates waiting for him, and once the death scene was discovered, they would be certain of it. One elderly fugitive could not overcome five Lantiff and their dogs without help.
Every one-name village in the peerdom’s northwest province would become suspect. An army of searchers would comb the forest and question local inhabitants, who would be uncommonly lucky if they only suffered torture. Bernal wanted Egarn as far away as possible before that search got organized.
The horses were waiting quietly by the road. The Lantiff had dropped the reins when they dismounted for their dash to death, and these massive, superbly trained black beasts from the peer’s own stables would not move as long as the reins trailed.
The dense forest had hidden the moon the moment they left the clearing, but the road was illuminated brightly. Bernal looked about him with a scowl. The niot was dangerously bright for fugitives who might have an army on their heels before the darkness faded. The officer who considered five Lantiff, with dogs, an adequate force for tracking down one feeble old man would taste the whip himself before morning, and a hundred Lantiff would follow the first five—or a thousand, with all of the armed might of the peerdom in support.
Egarn could not ride unassisted. One of these magnificent steeds could easily carry both of them, but if Bernal took one and left the others, the pursuing Lantiff would deduce more than he wanted them to know. He had to take all five.
The first problem was to delay the discovery of the carnage in the clearing. The peer’s commanders would be less energetic about sending reinforcements if they thought the original pursuers were still on the fugitive’s heels.
Egarn sank to the ground the moment Bernal released him. The short walk had exhausted him, and his mangled arm had to be throbbing more intensely with each halting footstep. He was whimpering with pain.
“I must cover our tracks before we leave,” Bernal told him.
First he cut an armful of branches from a pungent stink bush. He spread them along the road and went back for another armful, which he distributed carefully over the trampled trail for a short distance into the forest. He crushed the leaves underfoot and swept the road with them where the old man’s tracks had veered aside when he heard the pursuit close behind him.
“Dogs won’t try to follow your scent through that,” he told Egarn cheerfully. “Especially if your trail continues along the road. You will have to walk about a kilometer. Can you do it?”
“If I have to, I can,” Egarn said grimly.
Bernal busied himself with the horses. The lances were a nuisance, but there was no time to find a secure hiding place for them. He tied the horses in tandem and helped Egarn struggle to his feet. Then he mounted the lead horse. Egarn staggered along feebly, clinging to Bernal’s leg with his good arm, and Bernal bent low to help him as much as he could. They made slow but steady progress. Bernal watched admiringly as the old man set his teeth against the steadily worsening pain and plodded forward without complaint.
Finally they reached their goal—a tiny, unbridged stream. It was an insignificant ribbon of water trickling off
