riverbed. She snarled and whimpered, and Chetiin said, “That’s the way they went, but the mists smell”-he paused, searching for the right word to translate the worg’s language-“wrong. Unnatural.”
Ekhaas searched her memory for anything she’d heard of the Mournland. “They say that laws of life and death are suspended there-that wounds don’t heal and dead flesh doesn’t decay. Water, plants, and animal life are tainted.”
“It’s true,” said Chetiin, his scarred voice unexpectedly soft. “I’ve been there. Don’t count on your healing songs, Ekhaas. Don’t count on anything-nothing is as it seems. We’ll need to be careful. If the Valenar raiders have made camp inside the border, they’ll be extra vigilant because of the Mournland’s dangers.” His face tightened. “The mists may be a problem. They’re disorienting.”
“Won’t Marrow be able to track through them?” asked Dagii.
Chetiin gave him a curt nod, “Yes, but they confuse more than just your sense of direction. If you feel anything… odd, if you feel like you just want to lie down and sleep, fight it.”
“We’re going in and out,” Dagii said. “We won’t stay long and we won’t fight unless we have to. We see what we need to of the Valenar camp and then we leave.” He looked around at each of them, then nodded to Marrow. The worg loped up the bank, Dagii close behind.
There was no need for a warning to stay together. Ekhaas knew that they all understood it implicitly. The wall of mist drew closer and closer as they climbed the valley’s far slope-then all at once, they were inside it, as if the Mournland had reached out to claim them.
Moons and stars were completely cut off. By rights, she shouldn’t have been able to see any better than a human in the dark, but somehow she could. A dim radiance seemed to permeate the mists, as if they caught the moonlight, rendered it thick and opaque, and smeared it through the air. She could see no more than two paces in front of her. Chetiin was a shadow and Dagii, walking beyond him, a ghost. Ekhaas felt no shame in reaching ahead to put one hand on Chetiin’s shoulder and reaching back so that Keraal could grasp the other.
The mists were slightly cool, but not cold. If she stopped moving and the heat of her body warmed the air around her, she probably wouldn’t feel anything at all. Sounds were at once magnified and muffled as if she held a great glass vessel around her head. Her footfalls on the ground-which was dry in spite of the mists-were as quiet as if she walked on green grass, yet her breathing was loud in her ears. She swallowed and heard it like a big stone dropped from a height into a still pond.
It was impossible to tell if they were moving. The mists were constant, the rise of the land-or maybe its fall- so gradual that it could have been level. She understood what Chetiin had meant when he said the mists could be disorienting. It would be easy to wander in circles. Easy too to simply stop and stand still…
“Ekhaas.” Keraal’s voice. A push from behind her. Startled, she stumbled. Her hand left Chetiin’s shoulder. Instantly, the goblin’s small hand seized hers in a hard, rough grip.
“Keep walking,” he said.
“I thought I was walking.”
“It’s the mists.” He sounded tired.
There was a muffled sob from ahead. “Dagii?” Ekhaas called.
“It’s nothing.” His voice was thick.
“Nothing?” Keraal now. Ekhaas looked over her shoulder. His face was drawn and wracked with guilt. “My clan is dead. I led them to their destruction. You know my grief, Dagii. Tell me yours.”
“No, I can’t. I… can’t.” Dagii struggled. “I-”
“Fight it,” Chetiin murmured like a distant echo. “You must fight it.”
Ekhaas ground her teeth together and dragged up a song from inside her. There was magic in it, but not the focused magic of a spell. Rather it was a simple magic, just as it was a simple song, the kind of tune heard in every dar drinking hall-or the drinking halls of any other race for that matter. Into it she poured all of the bawdy joy that she could, singing it as loud as she dared.
“Ahhh, when I was a baby, my mother gave me suck.
She changed my clothes and wiped my nose and tied my hair for luck.
But now that I’m a warrior, I hold other things more dear.
I love my sword, I love my song, but most I love my beer!”
She heard Keraal snort in amusement. She squeezed his hand and Chetiin’s. “Sing!” she said, and launched into the chorus.
“Beer! I love my beer! Beer I love! I love my beer! Be-eer-eer-beer!”
Slowly and dirge-like at first, the men joined in, but their song gained strength until even Dagii sang “Be- eer-eer-beer” with an offkey lustiness. By the time she launched into the second verse, their joined hands were swinging back and forth in time to the song.
“When I was a child, my father gave me sticks.
He told me they were spears and blades and taught me many tricks.
But now that I’m a warrior, I keep my weapons near.
I have my sword, I have my shield, I also have my beer!
Beer! I have my beer-”
In no story that Ekhaas had ever told or even heard had the heroes crept up on their enemy while simultaneously singing a drinking song. In fact, she was fairly confident that no duur’kala had ever heard of such a thing. There was no dignity to it. There was precious little stealth. If there had been elves lurking in the mist-though she couldn’t imagine that they would linger here-they probably would have dismissed the whole spectacle as an illusion too odd to be believed.
And yet it was ridiculously fun. By the time Marrow came to a halt and huffed at them in warning, they were all laughing softly, the terrors of the mist banished. Up ahead, the mists were thinning and honest moonlight filtering through. Marrow sat down on her haunches and growled at them. Keraal, wiping tears out of his eyes, choked, “Yes, mother! As you say, mother!”
Chetiin chuckled. Marrow actually looked bewildered.
Dagii drew a deep breath, steadying himself. “Move to the side,” he said, gesturing. “If the elves come this way frequently, they may have sentries posted.”
They followed him, each of them struggling to suppress the lingering humor of the song that had seen them through the mists. Ekhaas gulped lungfuls of air, pride warming her belly. Dagii caught her eye and gave her a thin smile that was as rewarding as gold.
As they emerged from the mists, she could feel the wrongness of the Mournland that Marrow, through Chetiin, had tried to describe. The air felt too thin, the moonlight too harsh. The stars didn’t twinkle but instead seemed hard as ice. There was a smell in the air that reminded her of a lightning strike or certain powders burned in an alchemist’s furnace. Even the land had changed-somehow they stood just below the rocky brow of a steep slope, though she was certain that they hadn’t climbed anything more than a gentle grade. Looking back along the brow, she could see a gap, probably the start of a way down the other side and likely the way that the elves had gone.
The boulders lining the brow of the slope made climbing easy, but Chetiin still reached the top before any of them. Staying low to avoid presenting a betraying silhouette, he stuck his head up over the edge, froze for an instant, then ducked back down, his eyes very wide. With one hand, he waved them all forward. With the other, he gestured for absolute silence.
Dagii reached the edge next. Ekhaas watched his ears stand before falling back flat against his head. Then she was at the edge, too, and peering between two boulders down into another wide valley — at a camp that stretched from one side of the valley to the other. Tents made a small town. Horses picketed together at the center of the camp made a herd that could have raised a noise like thunder if they’d been running. Next to the picketed horses stood a pavilion flying a long swallow-tailed banner with a pattern of stars. There was activity at the pavilion. The survivors of the attack on Tii’ator were likely reporting their defeat. Ekhaas tried to guess at how many elves moved beneath the harsh moonlight and how many more might be asleep in those tents. Far more than the four or five warbands Tariic had anticipated in his rousing speech in Khaar Mbar’ost.
Dagii touched Ekhaas’s hand and motioned for her to go back. All of them slipped carefully to the ground and joined Marrow back at the edge of the mists.
“Maabet!” cursed Keraal. “That’s a full Valaes Tairn warclan. They’re hiding an entire warclan in the Mournland! How did they get them all through the mist?”
