would discover the one responsible and mete out justice for the deaths of his loyal men. It was very possible, he added with a grim smile, that Hanira was right, and his unknown enemy was a Tarsan rival of the guild leader, in which case he felt confident Hanira would do him the favor of finding and punishing the culprit first.
Miya put her head through the tent flaps. “We’re done. The bags are full. Sister has gone to fetch the horses.”
For years the Dom-shu women had resisted riding horseback. Their tribe were forest-dwellers in the vast woodland known as the Great Green, and regarded the use of horses as a weakness. Real men and women walked on their own two feet, the sisters always said. However, on the long campaign from Hylo to Tarsis-a distance of hundreds of leagues-Miya and Kiya had reluctantly learned to ride.
Frez and Darpo appeared, each leading two horses. Darpo was pale and stood slightly hunched, favoring his side, but he saluted his commander with fervor.
When the Dom-shu sisters returned on their own animals, Frez moved to boost his injured comrade into the saddle, but his commander intervened.
“It’s my honor,” Tol said. Darpo put his booted foot in Tol’s cupped hands, and Tol tossed him up into the saddle.
“What way do we take, my lord?” Darpo asked, in a voice shaky with pain.
Tol wanted to get to Daltigoth as quickly as possible. His fellow warlords were riding north to the Great Plains River, to circumvent the mountains and the dangerous, impenetrable Great Green. They would then turn west, entering the empire northwest of Tol’s hometown of Juramona in the province of the Eastern Hundred. That would require more than thirty days of travel. Tol had a different route in mind.
“We’ll cross the Harrow Sky Mountains,” he said, referring to the range on the west side of the Bay of Tarsis. “Then we’ll cross the hill country to the Gulf of Ergoth and take ship to the capital.”
There were raised eyebrows all around. Felryn said, “That’s rough territory, my lord.”
He was putting it mildly. The Harrow Sky hill country was a wild land, infested with bandits, petty independent warlords, and wild tribes. The coast was rife with fierce pirates. Several emperors had launched punitive expeditions to suppress the outlawry there, but none ever managed to conquer it.
“I am Prince Amaltar’s champion,” Tol said firmly. “My place is at his side, and as quickly as possible. We will cross the mountains.” Felryn didn’t like the plan, but he protested no more.
It was midmorning when Tol led his small party to Lord Regobart’s tent. The commander of the Army of the East was surrounded by scribes and clerks, all busily making copies of the proposed peace treaty with Tarsis. At Tol’s approach, Regobart left the murmur of voices and scratching of quills, and greeted his fellow general.
“If luck and the gods are with us, we’ll get to Daltigoth in twelve days,” Tol said, looking down from Shadow’s broad back.
The old warlord’s single gray eye widened. “Twelve days! Do you fly on Silvanesti griffons?”
Tol described his chosen route. Regobart’s reaction was much the same as Felryn’s.
“Prince Amaltar needs his Champion, but he needs him alive!” the old general said tartly.
He squinted at Tol’s small entourage, knowing without asking that this was all the escort the younger general intended to take. With a shake of his gray head, he said good-humoredly, “Well, at least you have the Dom-shu with you. They’re as good as a regiment of horsemen.”
Kiya’s expression didn’t change, but Miya preened slightly under the old warrior’s praise.
Tol handed over the muster rolls of the Army of the North, and passed his baton, symbol of his command, to Regobart.
“Many warlords are leaving. Do you think the Tarsans will make trouble once we’re gone?” he asked.
Regobart waved the question away. “No! When they heard the emperor had died, they became even more docile!” He winked. “They fear that without a supreme lord in command, our troops will run wild and sack the city. The Tarsans are treading very lightly indeed!”
Tol clasped hands with Regobart and turned Shadow away. He and his people rode through the busy camp, passing out of the stockade via the north gate.
The splendid spires of Tarsis were visible over the city’s white walls, but Tol could not make out the Golden House. He faced forward again and saw the others had moved on ahead. Only Felryn lingered behind with him.
“When one door closes,” the healer said, “somewhere another opens.”
They skirted the north end of the bay, reaching the Torrent River by sunset. Too wide to be spanned by a bridge and too rough for most small boats, the river usually was traversed by means of an anchored ferry. However, the ferry station was abandoned and several outbuildings had been burned, probably by marauding imperial cavalry.
They decided to operate the ferry themselves. There were two large barges tethered to the shore by heavy cables. One craft lay awash, a casualty of war. The other seemed intact. Thick skeins of woven rope stretched from the east bank to the western side, a quarter league distant. They would cast off on the remaining barge and pull themselves along by means of the ropes.
Dismounting, they led their horses onto the flat-bottomed craft. Frez and Miya untied the mooring lines. The swift current immediately tugged the ferry away from shore. The sudden lurch frightened the horses, who chivvied and pranced until Felryn and Darpo calmed them. Only Shadow remained placid, merely twitching his long tail several times. Tol had once praised his mount’s composure in the face of danger; Kiya had retorted it wasn’t composure but stupidity: the big gray horse was, she opined, dumber than a tree root.
“Everyone but Darpo take told of the rope,” Tol ordered.
The wounded soldier protested his special treatment, but Tol ordered him to mind the horses as well as his aches and pains. The rest of them began to pull.
Bit by bit, the ferry crept away from shore. The sun was setting behind the mountains, from here only a far- off smear of purple on the horizon. As they hauled on the rope, Darpo sang an old seafaring song. In his youth he’d sailed the trade route between Hylo and the lands of the northern coast. The scar he bore was a memento of that former life, earned when a line had snapped and lashed his face.
The sea chantey lent rhythm to their task. As they pulled more in unison, the barge’s pace increased.
By the time they reached the western shore, twilight had come. Buildings on the far shore were intact, but silent and dark. All who were able had fled the advancing Ergothians for the safety of walled Tarsis.
The barge was tied off, the horses led ashore. Tol rode up to the ferrymaster’s house. The door was ajar. He called for a torch.
The interior of the ferry station was a shambles; it had been ransacked in a search for valuables. Miya, Felryn, and Tol kicked through the debris in search of maps.
Tol found what he sought in set of pigeonholes on the inside wall. Handing the torch to Miya, he pulled several documents from their holes, scanning and discarding them one by one. At last, he spread one curling parchment wide. It was a Tar-san map of the Harrow Sky region. The dangerous land west of the mountains was only vaguely rendered, but the passes leading to it through the high mountains were clearly shown. Directions to those passes were what Tol needed.
A sharp call from Kiya, still outside, sent the searchers hurrying out of the wrecked house. The others, still mounted, were all pointing toward the river.
Hovering high in the air over the lapping waves was a shimmering light. Perhaps a handspan wide, it quivered like living flame, but had a most unnatural color-a frosty blue.
Felryn couldn’t identify the sight, but Miya suggested it was only a will-o’-the-wisp.
Her sister sneered. “So high in the air? Over flowing water?” Kiya said. “Don’tbe daft!”
The blue light neither advanced nor retreated. As he stared at it, Tol had the odd feeling he-all of them-were being watched in return. He mentioned this to Felryn, who shrugged.
With no other recourse, they ignored the strange light and rode on. Tol wanted to make the foothills before they camped for the night.
They did so, though not without misgivings. Each time one of them turned to check, the light was still there, following and flickering in the air just behind them.
Before midnight Tol called a halt. They’d left behind the sandy coast and entered a thinly spread pine forest. The ground was rising, and more stone had appeared in the soil. Frez found a small stream, and there they made camp.
