But Khollo could not find sleep. Even with a warm bed of coals radiating heat from the fireplace, a still winter’s night, and an exhausted mind and body, Khollo remained annoyingly wide awake. He tossed and turned for hours, making an absolute mess of his bed in the process, then finally sprang to his feet, and paced the room anxiously.
I’m missing something, he thought, growling with frustration, bare feet slapping the stone floor as he traced a path between his bed and the fireplace. There’s a pattern, a plan, there has to be!
Finally, fed up with the whole affair, Khollo pulled on his trousers and a loose shirt, lit the lantern on his bedside table and padded up the stairs to the council chamber. There were no guards at this late hour, the council chamber being impossible to reach without breaching the outer walls and crossing the fortress courtyard. Khollo closed the door silently and moved to the table, lighting a second lantern.
The wavering glow of the two lanterns cast strange shadows over the map he and Leon had made. The page seemed to move and undulate, the writing alternately spidery and indistinct, then bold and thick. Khollo studied the dates of the attacks intensely, looking for a link.
After an hour of staring unsuccessfully at the map, Khollo pulled a second, unmarked map across the table and sought the first attack. Holwey, he remembered. Then Reoth. He looked at the first map and found the third attack. Lansing. Khollo frowned suddenly.
Lansing? Looking at the map, Khollo measured the distance from Reoth to Lansing. At least a week’s ride. And the attacks had happened only two days apart.
“Finally,” Khollo breathed. “Progress.” He marked Holwey and Reoth on the fresh map as squares, connecting them with a dotted line. Then, he added a circle to denote the attack at Lansing.
The same band didn’t do both of those attacks, Khollo mused. So there’s more than one out there. But how many?
The next attack had happened at Tanner’s Ridge, four days ride from Reoth and five from Lansing. But the attack was only a day after Lansing. Khollo marked this with a triangle, his excitement growing.
The next attack, two days after Tanner’s Ridge, happened a day and a half from Lansing. Khollo marked another circle and connected the two with a dotted line. Next, another attack in the west. The Holwey band again. And then in the south, the west, and the south again.
Khollo made his way quickly through all the attacks. When he had finished, he had three paths running from village to village, meandering north, south, east, and west, seemingly randomly. But they were all moving eventually in the same direction.
Khollo sat back and examined his work. What had once been a meaningless jumble of isolated events was a clear, if somewhat random, plan. Three groups, originating east, south, and west of the West Bank. And all slowly making their way towards the fortress. The last step in each path was undeniably in the direction of the West Bank, and, upon checking the records, Khollo found that there had not been an attack in the area for at least three days.
They’re coming, he realized. Just like Janis said.
Bolting from the room, Khollo raced down the stairs one level to Janis’ room. As he passed the narrow windows in the stairwell, he realized that dawn light was filtering through. It had taken all night, but Khollo had found the pattern.
Khollo came to a halt in front of Janis’ door and knocked urgently. There was a pause, then the door swung inward to reveal Janis, fully dressed and grim-faced, prepared for a trying day of convincing a reluctant administrator that the enemy which had been burning villages was in fact a threat.
He was not prepared to see Khollo, barely dressed, barefoot, and brimming with anxious energy, standing in front of his door.
“Well,” Janis said finally. “This is a surprise.”
Khollo was suddenly aware of his state of dress and his tousled hair, the dark shadows under his eyes. Looking down, he realized that he had not tied the fastenings of his shirt at the neck, and he had not tucked it in either. “I . . . couldn’t sleep,” he muttered finally. “Janis, I’ve found something!”
“Found something?” for a moment, Janis only looked confused. Then he realized the significance of the early morning visit. “The pattern? Show me!”
Khollo led the way back to the council chamber, taking the stairs two and three at a time. Janis followed more slowly, struggling to keep up.
“There,” Khollo said triumphantly, gesturing to the map he had marked up during the night. “The attacks were too far apart to be done by one band. I was able to separate them into three groups and connect the points.” He traced one of the paths with his finger, detailing the route of the western band. “And as you can see, they all end up heading the same direction.”
Janis traced the ends of each line carefully, hands shaking as he studied the new map and what it implied. “They’re coming,” he finally said. “I was right. They’re coming.” He backed away, his face pale, shaking his head. “I didn’t expect that it would be so soon,” he murmured. “We are not prepared, we have no reinforcements, we will be outnumbered – ”
“Doesn’t matter now,” Khollo grunted. “We’ll fight, we have to. We may be able to beat them, now that we know they’re coming.”
“Maybe,” Janis agreed. “I will rouse Ondus, tell him the vertaga will be here anytime from the next few hours to the next few days. He can take care of guards, arming the men,
