proverbially, I really was out as soon as my head hit the pillow, and my sleep was deep and dreamless.
I was woken by the sound of movement and voices downstairs. I wandered unsteadily down, still bleary- eyed, conscious that the sun was barely up. The landlord was talking to a tall man in a long grey traveling cloak dripping with the rain that had apparently returned. It was his boots that were making all the noise on the wooden floor. The landlord spotted me and made an apologetic face.
“Let me just deal with this gentleman, and then I’ll start breakfast,” he said.
I settled at a table and gave myself over to waking up properly as they haggled over the price of meat and bread. I peered out of one of the leaded windows into the courtyard, where four or five men were tethering horses and stretching as if they’d been on the road a while already. They all wore the same rain-spotted grey cloaks. The exact same cloak. I sat up, needled with a familiar anxiety, and at that moment, one of them came into the bar, stamping and shrugging off his wet clothes.
My first thought was that they were raiders and the grey cloaks were their version of being incognito. But the cloaks were clearly a uniform, one that fit neither the raiders nor any of the troops we had seen before. Shale soldiers wore black, Greycoast blue and silver, Verneytha green and copper. So who were these guys, and where had they come from? Maybe they were some neutral party from the north who could be persuaded to go and bail Orgos and co. out of the death trap they had thrown themselves into.
As these hopeful thoughts circulated vaguely in my head, three things struck me almost simultaneously, appearing raiderlike out of the mist and driving all optimism into a screaming retreat. First, the prices being quoted by the landlord were astronomical if there were only five or six of them looking for a few loaves and a joint of pork. Second, the strangers all had the sort of fluid, powerful bearing that comes from training, exercise, and discipline. And last (but worst of all) was the fact-revealed unmistakably as the newcomer turned from hanging up his dripping cloak-that they wore shortswords and steel grey armor over white linen tunics emblazoned with a blue diamond.
I moved as quickly as I could to the door and looked out beyond the courtyard to where a hundred Empire troops, bristling with spears, their horses steaming, were sheltering from the rain, hoping to grab some fresh provisions for their journey east. They had found me after all.
But of course, they hadn’t come for me. You didn’t send a hundred battle-hardened Empire troops (and who knew how many more right behind them) all the way from Stavis after a minor fugitive. So what were they doing?
It seemed obvious. They had heard of the escalating problems in Shale, Verneytha, and Greycoast, and were moving east to capitalize on the slaughter. They would wait for the crippled victors to emerge, broken and bleeding, and they would roll right over them before they could take a breath, conquering all three lands in a handful of minor skirmishes. And if Orgos, Renthrette, and the rest survived the raiders, they would be wiped out in the conquest that followed.
It was as if one of the soldiers-it no longer seemed to matter much whether they wore red or white-had pushed the tip of his spear into my bowels and leaned on it, so the cold hard truth passed through my body, bringing pain and horror and delirium. You hear of people having their lives pass before their eyes in moments of danger. I had thought the experience would be kind of interesting, if not, in my case, terribly impressive. But now-a moment as full of dread and danger as any I had experienced in the dreadful and dangerous weeks that had just passed-I saw not my life, but other people’s deaths. Suddenly I saw-as in a dream, but with absolute clarity-Orgos’s body cut down and bleeding in the thick of the fight. I saw Garnet unhorsed and lifeless. I heard Lisha scream for the first and last time. I saw Mithos outnumbered and weakening as he flailed and parried. I saw Renthrette facedown in the mud of battle, her hair stained with blood and filth as the victorious Empire tramped past.
God alone knew what I could do to stop such visions from becoming reality, but I had to try.
SCENE LIII Back on the Horse
I rode as fast and as hard as I have ever done, and while that isn’t saying all that much, I covered a lot of ground and was well inside Shale territory by lunchtime. I had to assume that the Empire would march on the surviving armies as soon as they could be removed from each other’s throats. That meant they would head for the plains outside Ironwall, where Mithos was pushing the raiders towards Garnet and Orgos with whatever armies Greycoast and Verneytha could muster. It would take me several hours of steady riding just to get in sight of the citadel, and that was if I rode as the crow flies. But the crow flew straight through Adsine, under the very eaves of the keep that housed the raiders. I told myself that with the mystical transportation methods open to them, the raiders were unlikely to be trotting through the streets of Adsine, especially if the ordinary people of Shale didn’t know that the raiders were their neighbors and brothers, but it was impossible to be sure. I bent low in the saddle, pulled my cloak over my head to shelter me from rain and prying eyes, and spurred my horse towards Adsine.
I figured I had two choices as I entered Adsine and felt the keep watching blankly from the high ground in the center of the town: I could either charge through the streets as quickly as I could (fast but conspicuous); or I could walk my horse in a nonchalant fashion, blending in nicely and taking about a decade to cover four hundred yards. In the end, I followed both impulses, entering the city slowly and inconspicuously and then, when I glimpsed the first stray Shale trooper in his black-and-silver armor, bolting with panic and charging out of town as if the hosts of hell were at my heels. Remarkably, then, I managed to be both slow and conspicuous, once more demonstrating exactly why I wasn’t cut out for this kind of life at all.
I didn’t slow down till Adsine was a good half hour behind me, and I spent that half hour glancing backwards in search of pursuing horsemen. Knowing that those horsemen could be wearing black, red,
To be honest, my newfound heroism was due at least in part to a plan I had been forming in my head. If I could get to the party in time to explain the situation as I saw it, we would have the upper hand. We could hit the raiders hard and fast while our force still outnumbered theirs, then we could take the remains of our army into Ironwall and sit out the Empire’s assault. Those Diamond soldiers were looking for an easy victory, not a lengthy siege of the most secure citadel in the region. If we could get inside as soon as the first battle was over, they would probably just trek back to Stavis with their tails between their legs. People are fond of saying that knowledge is power. This time it might actually be true: knowing that the Empire was on its way might be all we would need to turn them back.
The sun was at my back and turning a deep red by the time the massive citadel came into view across the plains before me. I put my heels to my horse’s flanks and reached the guardhouse moments before they were due to lower that massive portcullis for the night. Indeed, they started its immeasurably slow and clanking descent as soon as I was in, and even though it took ten minutes to close completely, it was the most comforting sound I’ve ever heard in my life. I went up onto the walls before I sought out the party and gave a last look westwards to see if any of our enemies were coming.
SCENE LIV The Gathering
The party greeted me pretty much as you would expect, Lisha with a small-but-genuine smile, Orgos with loud whoops and hugs and “I told you so”s to anyone who would listen, Garnet with a nod that said I had surprised him in a good way (for once) and a matey thump on the shoulder that nearly sent me sprawling. Renthrette just watched me in a sideways kind of manner, like someone keeping an eye on a dog that was likable enough but
