But he had no more time for reflection. The road before him was steep and difficult, even more so since he would be traveling on foot and without supplies. But there could be no turning back: Vingaard was in the hands of the emperor, and Blayne was certain his patrols would be combing the countryside, looking for the enemy soldier who had become a fugitive outlaw.
Resolutely, he started upward, slogging along in his wet clothes. The exertion began to warm him, and by the time the first rays of the sun poked into the deep valley, he was dry, sweating, gasping, and dead tired. He followed the narrow path with stumbling footsteps, always ascending. He took note of familiar landmarks-a waterfall that had bemused him for a whole day, once, when his life was peaceful; a grove where he had stalked a mighty stag just a few years earlier; a steep side valley where he and his faithful hounds had once chased, trapped, and killed a cattle-eating bear. But he didn’t linger at any of those places.
Most of his thoughts were of his father, and they were fond remembrances of the man who had taught him to hunt, camp, ride, and fight. Once, when he paused beside the becalmed stream to catch his breath, he looked into an eddy and imagined Lord Kerrigan’s presence-not so much in the water, but inhabiting the whole place, in the stream and the mountains and the very wind.
“I will make you proud, my father,” he whispered aloud.
Invigorated by the thought, he pushed himself to his feet and continued on, higher into the Vingaard Mountains.
There was a reason only the one road traversed the mountains-through the High Clerist’s Pass-crossing by land from east to west side of the long, narrow range. Most of the valleys leading into the Vingaard Mountains eventually came up against sheer cliffs, dead-end canyons that presented the traveler with impassable rock faces, looming glaciers, and forbidding peaks. In a few-a very few-places, the grade was shallow enough for a narrow path to snake its way into the heights. But those trails were mainly fit for goats and mountain cats.
Blayne knew from his past experience that he had found such a path. By late afternoon, the grade had increased substantially, and he frequently had to use his hands to grab bushes, roots, or rocky knobs to propel himself up and forward. If his horse had survived, he would have had to abandon the animal because the ground was simply too steep, the trail too narrow. Before sunset he was treated to a respite when he stumbled upon a narrow valley. There a pair of waterfalls trilled down from the heights, and a crystalline pond showed proof of trout in its rippling surface.
Wearily he slumped onto a patch of grass beside the pond. His stomach growled, and for the first time he felt his hunger as an acute craving. Fortunately, his father had prepared him for that type of situation. Rolling up his sleeve, Blayne lay face down on the ground next to the place where the stream flowed out of the pond. Many fish were visible, swimming in both directions. He let his arm dangle in the water, motionless, until a fat rainbow trout swam by. With a quick gesture, he thrust his hand under the fish, hoisted it up, and flipped it, wriggling, onto the bank. With a single sharp move he cracked the fat fish on a rock and killed it.
He had no fire, nor any means to make one, but two slashes of his sharp knife cut tender fillets from the fish, and he simply ate them raw, carefully pulling out the tiny bits of bone. Before sunset, he had pulled four more fish from the water, eating two and wrapping the others in moist leaves. Stars sparkled in the sky as he finally stumbled away from the stream, seeking a place to sleep.
He found, instead, a man dressed in a gray robe, regarding him coldly with black, expressionless eyes. The stranger stood under a tree, and the young nobleman got the feeling that he might have been watching him for some time.
Blayne gasped aloud when he spied the man, immediately reaching for his knife. But that weapon fell from his suddenly cold fingers when the gray man waved a hand and muttered a soft word. The world began to spin, dizziness and disorientation drowning out the young noble’s awareness.
“Sleep now,” said the man in gray. “Rest tonight. Tomorrow, you will come with me.”
The Nightmaster again visited Ankhar when he and Laka had gathered his new horde into a great encampment, filling a broad stretch of fields and meadows near the northern edge of Lemish’s vast woodland. The band had grown to number many thousands of warriors.
Perhaps it was not quite so numerous as the half-giant’s first army, the one that had terrorized Solamnia for more than two years, but in several important respects the force was even more impressive: for one thing, about half the warriors in the new horde were ogre bulls, averaging nearly eight feet tall, each as heavy as two strong men. For another, he had the company of nearly fifty flying sivak draconians commanded by the spell-casting aurak called Guilder.
The rest of the troops were lackeys: many hobgoblins and goblins, together with a few ancient, battered draconians, that inevitably trailed in the wake of their mighty masters.
But they were the descendents of fierce warriors who had fought under the Dark Queen’s banners in the War of the Lance, who had waged war against, and in the service of, the Dragon Overlords. A fraction had served under Ankhar in his previous campaign, and they were as thirsty for revenge as they were for plunder.
Some of his old captains, too, had returned to the ranks. The grizzled ogre chieftain Bloodgutter had come at the head of a company of nearly a thousand axe-wielding bulls and proclaimed he, himself, would batter down the walls of any fortress standing in the army’s path. Impressed by his loyalty, and tusk-foaming ferocity, Ankhar had promoted him to General Bloodgutter on the spot.
The fierce warg rider Rib Chewer had also returned to serve the half-giant again. Rib Chewer brought with him hundreds of his clan, each mounted on a snarling, fanged wolf the size of a pony. Those warriors, riding fast across the plains and seemingly tireless, would be the fleet advance guard of his army, Ankhar decided. The flying sivaks would be his scouts and his eyes.
The ogres would be his fists.
“You have done well, son of the mountains,” declared the Nightmaster, appearing-as ever-only after the last glow of the sunset had faded from the western sky. He materialized near the great fire where Ankhar sat with his captains, and his arrival provoked a great stirring and growling among the restive ogres. One, the captain called Heart Eater, leaped to his feet and took a step toward the small, masked human, only to halt in shock when the visitor raised a black-gloved hand.
“What witchery is this?” demanded Heart Eater, struggling and flailing as he tried to free his feet, which seemed to have become suddenly planted in the ground.
“Merely a precaution, to see you do not try and harm one of your master’s greatest allies,” replied the Nightmaster with a shrug. He gestured and Heart Eater twisted free. Off balance, the ogre smashed to the ground and bounced, growling, back to his feet. The others muttered warily but did not intervene.
“Or, perhaps, to see that your master’s greatest ally is not forced to do harm to one of his loyal captains,” continued the black priest, his tone casual. Still, there was power and menace in those words, and the bristling, growling Heart Eater saw the wisdom of returning sullenly to his seat by the fire. Pond-Lily, seated beside her lord and master, watched the exchange wide-eyed, while Laka-on Ankhar’s other side-cackled in wry amusement.
“I have done as you… requested,” Ankhar said, choosing his words carefully. His stepmother sat rigidly, her bright eyes shifting from him to the visitor. The emerald gems in the eye sockets of her skull talisman glowed, and she lifted the ghastly rattle above her head and shook it wildly. “I have an army, and my warriors are ready to march against the knights.”
“Very good,” said the Nightmaster. “Know that you do not march alone, that even as you move to attack, other armies-as well as smaller, more secretive factions-will move against the emperor and Solamnia. His fall is all but assured.”
“Other armies? Will they claim his treasures before I reach them?” demanded the half-giant suspiciously.
The Nightmaster waved a hand, and Ankhar’s worries seemed to evaporate. Even as the man was explaining that all the booty in the southern plains would be the property of the half-giant and his men, the horde’s commander was no longer concerned with such questions.
Instead, he felt impatient. He wanted to go to war.
Jaymes asked Sir Donald to take his horse back to the palace, announcing that he intended to walk. Before the knight rode off on the silver-saddled steed, the emperor lashed his cloak and helmet to the saddlebags. Instead he made do with a plain black cape. Pulling the hood up over his head, he walked down from Nobles’ Hill with his head low, though his eyes and ears stayed alert. His mood was black; his anger felt like a burning coal in his chest. Two women had thwarted him, and he could strike at neither of them directly. Sooner or later they would regret
