mortals must face this day and we knew it was coming. Life has been good to me, for in the end I was given you and your sister.' He kissed her on the forehead. 'You can be as sharp-tongued as a viper, but you can also be as sweet as wild clover honey. I love you and your sister more than my own life. I'd trade all the years with kings for but one more hour with you.' He squeezed her slightly, then gently pushed her away. 'Now lead my friends here to safety.'
As he spoke he looked past her to Dennis and Asayaga.
'Settle your differences later, you two. It was a drunken brawl and men get killed in drunken brawls. Leave the dead here.'
Dennis said nothing.
'You are a Hartraft, boy,' Wolfgar admonished. 'Either command or step aside.'
The words were his grandfather's and Wolfgar spoke them with a voice that rang with the remembered power of long ago.
Dennis nodded. He shouted for his men to form ranks and prepare to march.
The column headed out of the gate of the stockade and turned south up into the forest where it would eventually pick up the trail that led to the western pass. In the middle of the column were the horses carrying the children and several of the older women. Half a dozen of the old men and women, however, had announced that they would stay behind with Wolfgar, and the partings from their children and grandchildren were bitter.
Torches flickered on top of the stockade gate and along the wall, revealing where several straw dummies had been set up, crowned with helmets. Wolfgar and the others remaining behind would move along the palisades, making as much noise as they could to try to convince Bovai the stockade was still fully manned. The ruse might delay the moredhel for a time as they stopped and deployed out before attempting to storm the stockade.
Tinuva, who had ridden out to scout, came in and urged the group to move, for in a matter of minutes the lead scouts of the enemy would be close enough to see what was transpiring.
The rear of the column passed and Dennis stood watching them. Wolfgar stood by the gate where his daughters were already mounted. They both leaned over, arms around their father, sobbing quietly. He reached up, patted each on the check, then slapped the rumps of their horses, sending them on their way.
Dennis waited for the last to leave, Asayaga standing silently beside him. Looking into the long hall, he saw the three bodies lying on the table amidst upended cups and overturned platters. It would be their funeral pyre soon and again he thought of Jurgen, picturing him standing within, waiting for the boy to join him on the journey. Somehow he wondered if in a way the boy was a replacement for himself and for a reason beyond his understanding his eyes filled with tears.
He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. It was Wolfgar.
'Along with you now, young Hartraft. Take care of my girls.'
Dennis nodded, unable to speak.
'And you, Tsurani. Marry Alyssa. Grandsons of your blood would bring me honour.'
Asayaga bowed low. 'Your request honours me, Wolfgar.' Then he said, 'And if it were possible, I would ask for she is…' He let the sentence go unfinished. 'But on my world she would be a slave, and there is nothing I could do to save her. I will see her safely to Kingdom lines, with my life if needs be.'
Wolfgar said, 'I thought it might be something like that. Very well. She'll get over you. Now, hurry along before the bastards catch up with you. And don't kill each other: it would be a waste of a good friendship.'
The two said nothing.
'Now go. An actor should know when to leave the stage, a poet when the lay is finished, and a bard when it is time to put aside the lute.'
Asayaga saluted and then hesitated. He reached out and touched the old man lightly on the face and then ran for the gate to catch up with the column. Only Tinuva and Gregory were left, waiting for Dennis.
'Goodbye, Wolfgar.'
Wolfgar laughed softly. 'It'd have been nice to have had one more night. I was planning on trying for that lovely redheaded girl, the one that's taken to the Tsurani lad who's wounded. Ahh well…' Still laughing, he patted Dennis affectionately and said, 'If you had the brains of a sack of rocks you'd marry my Roxanne. She can be a hard one at times, but she has strength and she can love. She would be good for you, lad. She'd heal that wound you've been nursing all these years.'
Dennis's face flushed, and he seemed too embarrassed to speak. He let Wolfgar accompany him to the gate, softly whispering his famous ballad about the shortcomings of the King and the memories it stirred caused Dennis to smile. Wolfgar's hand slipped away from Dennis's shoulder.
Before he even quite realized what was happening, Dennis was outside the gate, Wolfgar and the other old ones slowly swinging it shut behind him, then throwing the lock bar in place.
Dennis looked behind him, but the way back in, back to all that was, had been closed off.
'Come on, my friend,' Gregory said, 'it's time we moved on.'
Dennis set his face in a mask of determination. He nodded once and said nothing more.
FIFTEEN. FLIGHT
The morning was cold.
Leaning against a stunted tree to catch his breath, Tinuva turned to look back. In the early morning light it was easy enough to see Wolfgar's Stockade, for it was burning now, a distant smudge of smoke rising up and spreading out in the still morning air. The smoke hung low, an indicator of bad weather to come. Raising his gaze, he swept the sky. To the east it was still clear, but to the west a fingerlike spread of clouds was drifting. By early evening it would be snowing again.
The column staggered slowly past, heads lowered against the icy breeze which swept the top of the pass. The Tsurani, stoic as ever, marched uncomplaining. Most of them were now wearing heavy felt boots and wool trousers: in fact, except for the lacquered armour emerging from beneath the white-and-grey camouflage cloaks it was hard to tell the difference between them and the Kingdom troops, that and their shorter stature. All the men were wearing crudely made snowshoes, fashioned while passing the peaceful days with Wolfgar, but more than one pair had already broken and the unfortunate men without such gear had to labour through the drifts like a swimmer breasting an icy surf.
Without the horses, the column never would have made it to the top of the pass for in places the drifts were higher than a man's head and the animals had to be used as rams to batter down the icy walls so that the column could pass. He could see where a week ago it would have been impossible to traverse the pass. What was so frustrating was that the delays and exhausting work to get through the notch in the mountains served to make an easy path for those in pursuit.
The men were silent and Tinuva could sense the tension between the two bands. Throughout the night, in spite of the dread that followed them, the whispered conversations had been about the fight between Barry and Sugama and the near-duel of Dennis and Asayaga. Some of the Tsurani even blamed Dennis for the betrayal by Corwin, thinking that as captain he had failed to uncover the traitor and was thus dishonoured.
If it had not been for the unfortunate young Richard, the truce would have disintegrated into a general slaughter with the moredhel simply having to finish off the survivors. Tinuva wondered how the two sides would manage to fight together when the time came, for surely they would indeed be fighting within the next day, or two days at most.
Even from this great distance Tinuva could see that Bovai's army had dozens of mounted troops formed up outside the burning stockade, with at least another two hundred or more on foot, and that the column was already on the move. The combined command troops of Tsurani and Kingdom soldiers would be outnumbered at least two to one, if not more.
'They're coming?'
Gregory was by his side, shading his eyes against the early morning sunrise, looking back to the valley.
'Just setting out.'
'Arrogant bastards, took the stockade and slept the night while we cut the trail for them to follow.'
'Why not? We can't throw off their tracking. They'll catch up before we can reach safety.'
