Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar

creatures—which was not all that far from here.

Unhooking his armed crossbow from its saddle-catch (were some of those shadows moving even closer!), the young man wiped the sweat from out of his eyes, then leaned forward and whispered in Ranyart's ear. 'I can't speak for you, old friend, but I don't much care for this stretch of road. I know that you're tired, but I promise you that if you'll just quicken your pace and get us the hell out of here, the small bag of sugar I have in my pouch is yours.'

In answer, Ranyart broke from his amble into a trot, then a gallop, and soon they passed through a clearing to emerge on a more inviting expanse of road where the trees and mist and shadows were at a comforting distance, and the moonlight shone all around, crisp and cold and clean, forming no phantom fingers.

But there was in the air a strong stench of burned wood and straw, of fire-scorched stone and something more; an odd, thick, sickly-sweet aroma that—though it was not so mighty as to overpower the other smells— seemed to be inexorably entwined with all the others.

Ranyart chuffed, shaking his foam-streaked head.

'I know,' replied the young man, wrinkling his nose. 'But we're both too tired to go any farther tonight, and there is a mild wind blowing against us; at least that makes the stink less offensive. We'll stop here until dawn and hope that the wind continues to blow in our favor.'

Beneath him, the muscles in Ranyart's back rippled, as if the horse were shrugging its reluctant consent.

'Good. Then it's settled.'

They made camp quickly, Olias taking care to find a nearby stream so Ranyart could quench his thirst, then turning his attention to building a fire and killing a pair of squirrels for this night's meal. He arranged his ground- bedding under an imposing old sorrow tree (thus called because its like, rare in these parts, was usually found in the distant Forest of Sorrows), then lay the crossbow within easy reach before attaching his dagger sheath to his uninjured ankle. As a further precaution, he slipped a small stonecarver's blade beneath his sorry excuse for a pillow, then removed the sugar from his pouch and gave it to Ranyart, almost smiling as he watched his horse devour the brilliant-white chunks.

When Ranyart had finished, he stared at Olias as if. to ask, Is that all?

'I'm afraid there's none left, old friend. You'd think after all these years, you would have learned a little moderation.'

Ranyart snorted once, loudly, then threw back his head as if quite insulted, and stalked off to the side of the road where he settled himself for the night.

'I'll remember this when you come begging for your morning oats.'

Ranyart snorted again, but this time less indignantly— perhaps even with a touch of humility.

'You'll not charm me,' said Olias. 'I've known you far too long to—'

The rest of it died in his throat when he heard the sound of approaching hoofbeats, coming hard and fast from somewhere down the ghostly road he'd left behind not half a candlemark ago.

The back of Olias' neck prickled and his heart pounded against his rib cage. Somehow, the armsmen had found his trail.

'Hell to Havens!' he hissed, throwing aside his blanket and grabbing up his crossbow, then rolling quickly to the right where a small, downward-sloped patch of land created a furrow just big enough for a man to hide himself. It was only after he was in position that he realized the sound was that of a single horse, carrying a single rider (a sound he'd trained himself to recognize). Perhaps one of the armsmen, in an attempt to prove himself to the others, had stubbornly pursued him this far.

Olias looked at the crossbow in his grip, and at the deadly, sharp, shiny silver tip of the arrow.

No. He wouldn't hurt this armsman, not in a way that could either kill him or cripple him for life.

He held his breath, listening to the near-frantic hoof-beats getting closer, and was wrenched from his concentration when the campfire hissed, then snapped loudly, spitting sparks upward, a few of which danced out into the center of the road, all but announcing his presence.

A careless fool's mistake, not dousing the flames.

No time to worry about that now.

Pushing forward on his knees and biting down on his lower lip to fight against the screaming pain of his wounded ankle, Olias scrabbled on his belly like an insect up toward the campsite and grabbed the quiver, slinging it over his shoulder and its strap across his chest, then Sent a silent call to Ranyart, who was at his side in moments, bending low the bulk of his massive body so Olias could snatch a coil of rope from one of the saddle hooks. Craning to see if the rider was yet in sight, Olias quickly disarmed the crossbow, slipping the silver-tipped arrow into the quiver and removing a grapnel arrow in its stead. Tying one end of the rope to its stem, he loaded the grapnel arrow into the crossbow and rearmed the firing mechanism. That done, he took a deep breath, rolled twice to the left, came up on his elbows, aimed at a large stone near the base of a tree across the road, and fired.

The grapnel caught solidly, and from the middle of the road it would be well-nigh impossible to see it unless one were specifically looking for such a thing, which the armsman most likely would not be, for—gods willing— he must be as tired as those he was pursuing.

Olias wound the remainder of the rope around his right wrist, making certain that the portion lying across the road was flat in the dirt and would not be seen until rider and horse were right on top of it, and by then it would be too late.

Slipping back down into the cramped furrow, Olias held his breath as the hoofbeats grew louder, closer, somewhat less fierce and slightly slower than before; he wondered why the armsman wasn't digging heels into the horse, forcing speed.

Still, it was running swiftly enough that the rope, when he yanked it taut, should trip the horse and cause it to throw its rider without permanently harming either of them.

The horse's hooves clattered against some stones embedded in the hard-packed ground as it bolted from the forest and neared the campsite. Olias grasped the rope with both hands now, winding it once around his left wrist and threading it through his grip, then rose to his knees and readied himself to pull—

—when the horse, nearly upon the trap, stopped dead hi its tracks, hooves sparking against stones, one front leg in the air and bent at the knee—an almost absurd image, as if some wizard had frozen the beast in mid- motion—then slowly, mist jetting from its nostrils, began cantering backward.

The armsman had spotted the trap. Damn!

Disentwining his wrists from the rope as quickly as he was able, Olias pulled another silver-tipped arrow from the quiver and armed the crossbow, then struggled to his feet (Gods, the pain in his ankle was agonizing!) and limped into the road, taking aim at the rider.

'Let me see your hands, armsman, and may the gods help you if—'

For the second time that night, the words died in his throat.

The boy who sat upon the horse was no armsman; he barely looked human. Even from this distance it was obvious to Olias that the boy had been the victim of a brutal beating. Most of his face and chest was covered in blood and wounds, his lower lip looked to have been half-sliced away by a knife's blade, and one side of his face was so horribly swollen that neither his eye nor part of his nose could be seen.

Olias snapped the crossbow to his side, pointing the arrow toward the ground, and moved slowly forward, one hand extended in a gesture of peace so as not to alarm the horse.

It was only as he came up beside the gray mare that he saw the rest.

'Gods,' he whispered. 'Who did this to you, boy?'

The rider made no reply.

Not only had the boy been beaten, not only had he been cut and thrashed and (judging by some of the marks across his exposed stomach) whipped until nearly dead, but someone had burned him, as well. Clumps of ugly, flame-seared hair—looking more like pig's-bed straw than anything that should be part of a human being's body— hung limply from the boy's head, made all the more hideous by the contrast of its color against that of the sickening, glistening, crimson-raw sections where his scalp had been either sheared, pulled, or burned away from his skull.

Olias swallowed. Twice. Hard and loudly.

Over the years since his father's death, Olias had worked feverishly toward hardening himself against others' pain and misfortune. None had offered any comfort or sympathy to Father in his time of need—nor to himself or his