Two horsemen, trailworn and dusty, cantered down the road. A group of men working on the south bank of the river saw the riders before they heard them. The noise from saws and the pile-driver drowned out all other sounds. The workers called a warning to their commander.
It was spring, the seventh year of the reign of Emperor Pakin III. Tol and the men of the Juramona Foot Guard were building a new bridge across Three Kender Creek. The old bridge, indifferently constructed by local folk, had been swept away by a winter torrent. It connected Juramona to the heartland of the empire, and Lord Enkian had charged Tol and his corps of foot soldiers with the important task of replacing the bridge.
Tol knew the job was not meant as an honor. True warriors-those who rode in an imperial horde-were above common labor. Still, Tol took the task cheerfully, so cheerfully in fact Lord Enkian wondered if there was some hidden advantage in the job his calculating mind had missed. Tol explained that two years of peace had left his men little to do but chase cutpurses and fight the occasional house fire in town. Rebuilding a bridge would strengthen their backs and toughen their hides.
The answer was as honest and straightforward as Tol himself, and the calculating Enkian could not believe it. He sent a personal spy, Tol’s old shilder comrade Relfas, to keep an eye on things.
Tol had hired a builder, a dwarf by the name of Tombuld, to lay out the new bridge and oversee construction. Tombuld had erected much larger structures across high valleys in the Khalkist Mountains, so a single span across Three Kender Creek didn’t present much of a challenge. His design called for a simple cantilever bridge, supported on each end by stout stone piers. Tol and his men had been at work for six days when the pair of unknown riders appeared.
Tol climbed out of the creekbed. Shading his eyes against the morning sun, he watched the horsemen approach.
In the two years since he’d rescued the Juramona hordes in the Great Green, Tol had grown stronger without gaining very much in height or girth. As a youth, his physique had been intimidating. As a man, it was deceptive. Of only modest height, all his power was in his shoulders and legs. He was agile rather than brutishly strong. Succumbing at last to masculine vanity, he’d grown a beard, though he kept it closely trimmed.
“Turn out the watch,” he said, not raising his voice.
Sixteen sturdy soldiers left their work and divided a stand of arms between them. They fell into a double line on Tol’s left. Drilled by Tol in his new ideas of fighting on foot, the men extended their spears in unison, presenting a formation both precise and dangerous. All they had to do was swing across the road and the way would be blocked by a hedge of spears.
The riders slowed, then stopped. Through the dust, Tol could see they wore complete coats of ring mail beneath sleeveless linen gambesons.
“You there,” called the rider on Tol’s right. “Is the way passable?”
“Yes. If you go carefully, you can cross,” he answered. The new bridge rails were spanned by temporary planks. “Are you messengers from Caergoth?”
The horsemen were startled. “Yes, we are. How did you know?”
“Your armor is too extensive for our local hordes. That, and the fineness of your tack speaks of the city.”
The rider grinned, pushing back his wide-brimmed iron hat to reveal a sunburned nose. “Sharp eyes! Are you a warrior?”
“I am a Rider of the Horde.”
“Why do you work in your shirtsleeves, like a common drudge? Are you being punished?”
Tol shrugged. “The bridge needed rebuilding. My men needed to sweat.”
“You provincials have strange ways!” commented the sunburned fellow. He patted the leather case around his neck. “We have dispatches for the marshal of the Eastern Hundred.”
“You’ll find him in the High House in Juramona.”
Tol called for water to be brought for the messengers and their horses. He introduced himself, and again the men looked surprised.
“Your name is known to us! You slew the chief of all the forest tribes in single combat!” said the message- bearer with the sunburned face.
Tol only smiled, for the tale had grown in the telling.
Tombuld came bustling across the bridge planking, growling at the men for shirking. Tol waved the dwarfs objections aside, pointing to the imperial couriers.
“Well, send ’em on their way and get back to work!” Tombuld said, tugging on his long beard in frustration. “Bridges don’t build themselves, you know!”
Watered, the horsemen went on their way, muttering between themselves about “impudent dwarf artisans.” Fortunately, the crotchety Tombuld did not hear them.
Tol ordered everyone back to work. Down in the gully, he resumed toiling alongside his men, filling the stone pier with rubble and mortar.
“Why couriers? Is it war?” Narren asked him.
“I doubt it,” Tol replied. “War would bring more than two messengers for Lord Enkian. Besides, no recent traveler on the road has mentioned war.”
The only menaces Tol could think of were the elusive monster XimXim, still at large in Hylo though quiet for some time, and Spannuth Grane, who was presumed to have fled the Great Green for parts unknown.
Two years earlier, Lord Odovar had sent his seneschal, the priest Lanza, to report on XimXim’s depredations against the kender. Lanza entered a cave above Hylo city and was never seen alive again. Later, some kender found his head, hands, and feet, all neatly severed and left in a tidy heap at the foot of the mountain. After all this time and many hundreds of deaths, there was still no one who could say just what XimXim looked like, or even what kind of creature he was. People heard him in flight or saw his distant silhouette against the clouds, but to go closer meant certain death.
A rumor had reached Juramona that a powerful sorcerer had quelled XimXim, but no one knew if it was true. After Odovar’s death, Lord Enkian paid scant attention to the monster and did not bother to confirm the story.
As for Grane, imperial bounty hunters had scoured the Great Green for him, but never found so much as a hair. Some of the finest trackers in the empire had vied for the glory and gain to be had from collaring the renegade, but he had escaped them all, vanishing like a morning shadow at midday. No new plots or rebellions had surfaced, and many had begun to believe the high-born sorcerer dead. No, thought Tol, as the riders passed, the empire was almost sleepy with calm.
Tol’s soldiers worked until twilight on the new bridge, then returned to their camp overlooking the creek. In his tent Tol found Kiya and Miya waiting for him. Kiya had made supper, and Miya was waiting to scrub the day’s dirt off him. Although they were spouses in name only, Kiya and Miya took their responsibilities seriously. The Dom-shu women never left Tol’s side, refusing to remain in Juramona when he was away.
“Strip, husband! A healthy man must be clean!” Miya said. She held up a boar-bristle brush that could scour verdigris off a copper kettle.
“I can wash myself!” he thundered. To Kiya, he said, for the hundredth time, “Let the camp cook prepare our food! It’s his job!”
Long ago he’d learned quiet answers didn’t impress the Dom-shu sisters. They respected him only when he was as forthright as they. Respect did not, however, translate into obedience.
“It isn’t right for a stranger to cook for a woman’s husband! Mates can cook for each other, but it isn’t proper for strangers to do so!” Kiya replied, also for the hundredth time.
In truth, the three of them got along well together. They occupied a spacious timber frame house in Strawburn Lane, near the potters’ kilns. Little more than a ruin when Lord Enkian gave it to them, the house had been filthy and infested with rats, but the Dom-shu women quickly set things right. Miya crawled under the house with a club and killed or evicted all the rats in a single morning, while Kiya fumigated the interior with burning sulfur, and scrubbed walls, ceiling, and floors till they shone. Confounding village preconceptions about tribal people, the sisters were scrupulously clean and kept the house that way, too. Woe to any visitor who walked in with manure on his heels! Regardless of rank, the miscreant was likely to find himself pitched headfirst into the street and barred from entry again until he cleaned his boots.
Rather than wives or hostages, it seemed to Tol that he’d acquired a pair of brawny, bossy sisters. Their first night in the new house, he’d been relieved (if a bit surprised) when the Dom-shu women prepared a bed for
