Tol and Miya stood over the injured Kiya. Common folk gave them a wide berth, and the masked troublemakers disappeared. The Skylander threat was gone, but waves of panic and rage flowed through the crowd, and Tol feared his little party would be trampled. He and Miya beat back anyone who ventured too close.
A horn blared over the chaos. Tol and Miya exchanged a disbelieving look. They knew that call.
“Juramona!” cried Kiya hoarsely.
In a final pell-mell rush, a troop of horsemen parted the mob. Tol at last beheld the banner on the tip of the trumpeter’s spear: the Eagle Horde!
Hailing the riders, Tol slammed his sword back into its sheath. The officer in the midst of the troop removed his helmet.
“Egrin! It’s Egrin!” Miya cried, slapping her sister happily on the shoulder. Kiya winced but looked pleased as well.
To Tol’s glad eyes, his former mentor seemed unchanged by the years. His auburn hair and thick beard might be a bit more gray now than when they’d first met, but Egrin still sat tall in the saddle, his back straight as a tent stake.
Reining up before Tol, Egrin saluted. “My lord,” he said. “It is good to see you.”
“And you, my old friend! How did you find me?”
The elder warrior smiled slightly. “All of Daltigoth knows where Lord Tolandruth dwells. I merely asked the first soldier I came across.” Dryly, he added, “Once in the area, I had but to follow the sounds of battle. I knew you would not be far away.”
“Marketing in this town is rude business,” Miya said, grinning. She’d helped her sister stand and now supported Kiya. “Try to strike a bargain and see what happens!”
Egrin dismounted, chuckling. After clasping arms with Tol he said to the Dom-shu women, “It’s good to see you both. I rest easier every night knowing you guard Tol’s back.”
Kiya grunted. “He needs us,” she said sourly. “Thirty-two years old and he still runs at danger like a young hothead.”
Tol protested, “I am a temperate man!”
“Temperate as a bull,” Miya said. She asked Egrin, “Has he always been so?”
“No more so than most young men. I would call him bold rather than hotheaded.” The marshal regarded his renowned former comrade fondly. “Bold, with a knack for doing the unexpected.”
“And lucky,” Kiya said. “Lucky as the gods’ favorite.”
Tol gruffly put a stop to their discussion. A grimmer task needed doing. Kicking through the debris, he found the body of the gang leader he’d dueled. He squatted in the wreckage of the morning market and rolled the dead man over. He removed the fellow’s blue mask.
To his astonishment the face of Pelladrom Tumult was revealed, the young noble Tol had seen standing at the new emperor’s side. Why was a high-born, well-positioned young warrior leading a gang of thugs smashing up pushcarts?
“Who is he?” Egrin asked. Tol told him, and the marshal said urgently, “Cover his face!”
Sellers were returning to the square, collecting around the famous Lord Tolandruth. Tol let the blue kerchief fall, hiding the dead man’s features. Egrin summoned two of his own men to remove the body.
“I offered him quarter, but he forced this conclusion,” Tol said, as the scarf was tied in place over Pelladrom’s face and his body thrown over a saddle.
Drawing near so only Tol could hear, Egrin whispered, “Lord Enkian is on his way to Daltigoth for Prince Amaltar’s ascension.”
Enkian was Warden of the Seascapes, the province farthest from Daltigoth. Summer rains had swollen the major streams between the northwest coast and the capital. It might be another three or four days before Enkian arrived.
Tol sighed. Enkian had never liked Tol and would be furious at the killing of his youngest son, but the fight had been a fair one. Tol said as much, but Egrin shook his head, insisting, “You don’t understand. Enkian does not come alone! He brings five hordes!”
“Five thousand men?” Tol said, voice rising.
Although out of favor with the prince for his criticism during the war, a noble like Lord Enkian, coming to pay his respects to Pakin III and swear loyalty to his successor, was allowed to bring an entourage to the capital. For a modest man like Egrin, that meant twenty riders. A rich, prominent lord like Tremond of Thorngoth might bring a hundred, all dressed in his personal matching livery. Five hordes was not an honor guard but a warband.
Egrin’s face and voice were grim. “We had word of this as we rode south. People thought the Tarsans were invading!”
“What does he think he can do with five hordes? Seize the city? The Daltigoth garrison numbers ten times that many.”
“I don’t know what he intends, but he will not take the death of his son kindly. If he has five thousand men at his back, you must be careful, Tol!”
“Let him seek me out,” Tol said. “I’ll not hide what I’ve done.”
Unhappy, the marshal agreed. He returned to his waiting retainers and ordered two off their horses. With canvas and planks from a shattered stall, the soldiers made a litter for Kiya. She didn’t like being carried but her knee was painful enough that she relented after only a few protests. Egrin had accepted Miya’s enthusiastic offer to lodge with them in their hired villa, so Tol and Miya mounted the empty horses and led the Eagles home.
Despite the dark turn the day had taken, the journey to the villa was a happy one. Like the Dom-shu sisters, Egrin was very dear to Tol. The elder warrior was his second father, a substitute for his real family, whom he had not seen in years.
Three years after leaving to live in Juramona, Tol had returned to visit his family. He’d intended to remain a week but had departed after only three days. Although pleased to see them again, and they to see him, it had been an awkward visit. They didn’t know how to act around him, and he no longer seemed to have anything in common with them. His life in Juramona was utterly foreign to them. Where his mother, Ita, had cried for the changes in her boy, Bakal was gruff, yet obviously proud of Tol’s position as shield bearer to Egrin, Warden of the Eastern Hundred. As his mother hugged him goodbye, Tol had surreptitiously pressed into her hand a little money he’d saved. After taking leave of his father, and enduring a quick, embarrassed kiss from middle sister Nira (eldest sister Zalay was preparing to deliver her second child), Tol had mounted his horse and ridden away.
That was the last time he’d seen them. Apart from everything else Egrin meant to him, he was the only one of Tol’s old comrades to have known his family.
Once the party reached the Rumbold villa, a healer was sent for to tend Kiya’s knee. Having been in the saddle since before dawn, Egrin and his men were famished. Tol took them down to the kitchen and they dined together at two big tables.
“You look very well, Egrin,” Tol said, and he truly meant it. “Hardly a day older than when I first rode into Juramona with you on Old Acorn.”
Egrin waved a dismissive hand. “You were a child then; all adults seem elderly to the young.”
He pressed Tol for an account of his recent adventures. Tol told of the final battles before the walls of Tarsis (discreetly leaving out all mention of Hanira and the golems), and his subsequent hazardous journey through the hill country. He made the magical attacks on his party sound like natural storms. Without hard proof Mandes was responsible, Tol would not accuse him publicly.
Egrin was saddened to hear of Felryn’s death.
“A good man, and a wise and gentle healer.” He raised his wooden cup, brimming with beer. “May he stand forever at the right hand of Mishas!”
Tol and the sisters echoed the marshal’s toast. When Tol related the tale of Xanka and the Blood Fleet, Egrin shook his head in disbelief.
“At the mercy of this bloody buccaneer and you bullied him into a duel? Then you slew him before his crew and fellow captains?”
Tol shrugged. “I could see Xanka was a coward at heart. If I challenged his courage in front of his men, I knew he’d fight me. To do anything else would have cost him too much prestige, maybe even command of the Fleet.”
Egrin asked to see the blade Tol had used to defeat the pirate chief. Number Six was duly handed over. Egrin
