He spent most of the night reviewing every facet of his battle plan, trying to assure himself that he had not made any mistakes.
The next morning, he felt full of urgency, and he found that whenever he forgot himself he began to hurry Mehryl's pace. So he turned to Mhoram and asked the Lord to talk to him, distract him.
In response, the Lord slowly dropped into a musing, half-singing tone, and began to tell Troy about the various legended or potent parts of the Land which lay between them and Doom's Retreat. In particular, he narrated some of the old tales about the One Forest, the mighty wood which had covered the Land in an age that was ancient before Berek Halfhand's time, with its Forestals and its fierce foes, the Ravers. During the centuries when the trees were still awake, he said, the Forestals had cherished their consciousness and guided their defences against
This dark forest lay near the line of the Warward's march, beyond the Last Hills.
Then Troy talked for a while about himself and his reactions to the Land. He felt close to Mhoram, and this enabled him to discuss the way High Lord Elena personified his sense of the Land. Gradually, he relaxed, regained his ability to say to himself, It doesn't matter who summoned me. I am who I am. I'm going to do it.
So he was not just surprised when he and Mhoram caught up with the struggling march of the warriors by midafternoon. He was shocked.
The Warward was almost half a day's march behind schedule.
The warriors met him with a halting cheer that stumbled into silence as they realized that the High Lord was not with him. But Troy ignored them. Riding straight up to First Haft Amorine, he barked, “You're slow! Speed up the beat! At this rate, we're going to be exactly one and a half days too late!”
The welcome on Amorine's face fell into chagrin, and she whirled away at once toward the drummers. With a wide, sighing groan of pain, the warriors stepped up their pace, hurried to the demand of the drums until they were half running. Then Warmark Troy rode up and down beside their ranks like a flail, enforcing the new rhythm with his angry presence.
When he found one Eoward lagging slightly, he shouted into the young drummer's face, “By God! I'm not going to lose this war because of you!” He clapped his beat by the shamed Warhaft's ear until the drummer copied it exactly.
Only after his dismay had subsided did he observe what nine days of hard marching had done to the Warward. Then he wished that he could recant his harshness. The warriors were suffering severely. Almost all of them limped in some way, pushed themselves unevenly against the nagging pain of cuts and torn muscles and bone bruises. Many were so tired that they had stopped sweating, and the overheated flush of their faces was caked with dust, giving them a yellow and demented look. More than a few bled at the shoulders from sores worn by the friction of their pack straps. Despite their doggedness, they marched raggedly, as if they could hardly remember the ranked order which had been trained into them ninety leagues ago at Revelstone.
And they were behind schedule. They were still one hundred eighty leagues away from Doom's Retreat.
By the time they lurched and gasped their way into camp for the night, Troy was almost frantic for some way to save them. He sensed that bare determination would not be enough.
As soon as the accompanying Hirebrands and Gravelingases had started their campfires, Lord Mhoram went to do what he could for the Warward. He moved from Eoward to Eoward, helping the cooks. In each stewpot, his blue fire worked some effect on 4 the food, enhanced it, increased its health and vitality. And when the meal was done, he walked through all the Warward, spreading the balm of his presence talking to the warriors, helping them with their bruises ' and bandages, jesting with any who could.muster the strength to laugh.
While the Lord did this, Troy met with his officers, the Hafts and Warhafts. After he had explained High Lord Elena's absence, he turned to the problem of the march. Painfully, he reviewed the circumstances which made this ordeal so imperative, so irretrievably necessary. Then he addressed himself to specific details. He organized a rotation schedule for the leather water jugs, so that they would be passed continuously through the ranks for the sake of the overheated warriors. He made arrangements for the packs of the men and women with bleeding shoulders to be carried by the horses. He ordered all the mounted officers except the drummers to ride double, so that the most exhausted warriors could rest on horseback; and he told these officers to gather
When they were gone, First Haft Amorine came over to speak with him. Her blunt, dour face was charged with some grim statement, and he forestalled her quickly. “No, Amorine,” he said, “I am not going to put someone else in your place.” She tried to protest, and he hurried on more gently, “I know I've made it sound as if I blame you because we're behind schedule. But that's just because I really blame myself. You're the only one for this job. The Warward respects you-just as it respects Quaan. The warriors trust your experience and honesty.” Glumly, he concluded, “After all this, I'm not so sure how they feel about me.”
At once, her self-doubt vanished. “You are the Warmark. Who has dared to question you?” Her tone implied that anyone who wanted to challenge him would have to deal with her first.
Her loyalty touched him. He was not entirely sure that he deserved it. But he intended to deserve it. Swallowing down his emotion, he replied, “No one is going to question me as long as we keep up the pace. And we are going to keep it up.” To himself, he added, I promised Quaan. “We're going to gain back the time we've lost-and we're going to do it here, in the Centre Plains. The terrain gets worse south of the Black River.”
The First Haft nodded as if she believed him.
After she had left him, he went to his blankets, and spent the night battering the private darkness of his brain in search of some alternative to his dilemma. But he could conceive nothing to eliminate the need for this forced march. When he slept, he dreamed of warriors shambling into the south as if it were an open grave.
The next morning, when the ranks of the Warward stirred, tensed weakly, lumbered into motion like a long dark groan across the Plains, Warmark Hile Troy marched with them. Eschewing his Ranyhyn, he started the beat of the drums, verified it, and moved to it himself. As he marched, he worked his way up and down among the Eoward, visiting every Eoman, encouraging every Warhaft by name, surprising the warriors out of their numb fatigue with his presence and concern-striving in spite of his own untrained physical condition to set an example that would be of some help to his army. At the end of one day in the ranks, he was so weary that he barely reached the small camp he shared with Lord Mhoram and First Haft Amorine before he mumbled something about dying and pitched into sleep. But the next day he hauled himself up and repeated his performance, hiding his pain behind the commiseration which he carried in one way or another to the warriors of the Warward.
He marched with his army for four days across the Centre Plains. After each day at his cruel pace, he felt that he had passed his limit-that the whole forced march was impossible, and he must give it up. But each night Lord Mhoram helped cook the army's food, and then went among the warriors, sharing his courage with them. And twice during those four days the Warward came upon Bloodguard tending large caches of food-supplies prepared by the villagers of the Centre Plains. Fresh and abundant food had a surprising efficacy; it restored the fortitude of warriors who no longer believed in their ability to drive themselves forward. At the end of his fourth day on foot-the thirteenth day of the march-Troy finally allowed himself to think that the condition of the Warward had stabilized.
He had walked more than forty leagues.
Fearing to do anything which might damage his army's fragile balance, he planned to continue his own march. Both Mhoram and Amorine urged him to stop-they were concerned about his exhaustion, about his bleeding feet and unsteady gait-but he shrugged their arguments aside. In his heart, he was ashamed to ride when his warriors were suffering afoot.
But the next morning he tasted a worse shame. When the light of dawn woke him, he struggled out of his blankets to find Amorine standing before him. In a grim voice, she reported that the Warward had been attacked during the night.
Sometime after midnight, the Bloodguard scouts had reported that the tethered horses were being stalked by a pack of
