impeding his progress. Someone would pay, and pay in blood.
Hoten rode up to his chief. “The trail goes straight in,” he reported. “It can’t be more than two days old.”
Zannian scratched a newly sprouted patch of beard on his chin. “Straight in? The dragon too?”
“Aye. The tracks run right down the center of the pass as far as we rode.”
Zannian turned his horse to face the open country behind them. His men were strung out all the way to the horizon, still regrouping after their headlong flight away from the injured Sthenn.
“We’ll hold here a while,” he said. “Some of those dogs won’t get here before sundown.”
Hoten cleared his throat and spat. “Speaking of stragglers, where’s the Master?”
Zannian eyed his lieutenant. “Those who speak that name lightly come to bad ends.”
“I mean no disrespect,” said Hoten, his tone anything but respectful. “I only wondered where our mighty leader is now that we’re at the enemy’s throat.”
“He’ll return when it suits him.”
No one had seen Sthenn since he’d lost his claw to the villager’s spirit stones. Weeping acid tears of pain, the dragon had flown away, leaving the raider band in total disorder. Most of the men who’d ridden away from the green dragon’s torment slowly returned. Others never came back. Without Sthenn’s fearsome presence to stiffen their spines, they deserted for good. For a time it seemed the entire band might fall apart.
It was Nacris who had acted swiftly to keep the raiders together. On her orders, the Jade Men captured ten deserters and put them to death. Lacking trees from which to hang them, Nacris had the men beheaded and their heads displayed on spears.
Along with fear, she wielded another potent weapon — the power of greed. She reminded the men of the booty waiting in Yala-tene. She loudly scoffed at the notion Sthenn would not return. The desertions ceased, but it would be several days before the entire band was together again.
The young raider chief yearned for battle. Slaughtering those fools in their fancy robes wasn’t fighting, merely killing. Daydreaming of past battles, he suddenly found his thoughts filled by the black-haired girl. Sthenn had promised she was in the valley ahead.
Zannian licked his dry lips and wrapped the reins tightly around his left hand.
Hoten noted his chiefs characteristic gesture. Zannian always did it before riding into battle.
“Take a scouting party into the pass, Hoten,” Zannian said. “Leave your horses and go on foot, quietly. That narrow pass is perfect for ambushes. I want you to make sure the way is clear for the rest of us.”
“We get to be the bait?” A warning glance from his chief made Hoten shrug and add, “As you say, Zan.” He rode away to cull a suitable patrol from the men on hand.
Hoten found Nacris hobbling about on a crude crutch near the mouth of the pass, close to the stony banks of the Plains River.
“Careful you don’t fall in,” Hoten said, dismounting.
She laughed. “No water can harm me.”
“How can you know that?”
“My death’s been foreseen. The Master himself divined it. Neither water, nor fire, nor stone, nor metal shall kill me.”
He left his horse cropping the sparse grass. “Do you really believe that?” he asked, putting a hand to her weatherworn cheek.
She neither acknowledged his gesture nor pulled away, but said, “Why not? A dragon’s eyes see further than mine.”
He took his hand away. “I see another way to interpret that augury — Sthenn himself will kill you one day.”
Nacris laughed again, a short, harsh bark. “I’ve thought of that, too.”
“How can you be so indifferent?”
She hobbled a few steps away and looked into the pass, still misty in the morning light. “My life ended here twelve years ago,” she said flatly. “The man I loved died, the woman who killed him lived, and I was crippled. Since then, I’ve been waiting to take my revenge. When I have it, then I can rest what remains of my body.”
Hoten knocked her crutch aside and caught Nacris in his arms. Bitter and hard as she was, he cared for her.
“If I threw you in the river and held your head under, what would you do?” Hoten whispered.
“Drown.”
Her lack of fear infuriated him. “That’s all?”
“I’m not strong enough to fight you.” She looked him squarely in the eyes. “If you want a struggle, wait till we capture Arku-peli. There are many women there who can gratify you.”
Disgusted, he released her, picked up her crutch, and thrust it at her.
“Now I know why the Master gave you command of the Jade Men,” he said. “You’ve become as soulless as they are.”
In a cold fury, he left and rounded up the first twenty men he found idling by the water. He had each arm himself with a throwing stick and bundles of missiles. They left everything else behind — horses, food and water, heavy spears, and shields. Bait they might be, but Hoten saw no reason to weigh his men down. If the villagers were waiting for them, speed would be more valuable than armament.
They tromped past Zannian. The chief was listening with ill-disguised annoyance as his mother lectured him on tactics. Hoten acknowledged his leader with a nod. Mother and son both ignored him.
The outer pass was wide, with the river flowing down the middle. Heavy sandbars and tumbled gravel filled the floor of the ravine, tufted here and there with knifegrass and brittle scrub. The pass was twelve paces wide at this point, but the frowning cliffs and lofty slate peaks beyond made it feel much narrower. The men kept bunching up as the burden of the surrounding heights bore down on them. Time and again Hoten had to give the same warning.
“Stand apart, louts! You want some mud-toe villager to drop a stone and get six of you at once?”
The tracks, human and dragon, led unequivocally forward. Hoten followed them for three leagues, then the prints abruptly vanished. The tracks didn’t lead off in other directions. They simply disappeared. The gravel ahead was free of marks.
“Did the dragon pick them up and fly away?” wondered one of the raiders.
“Maybe,” Hoten said, but he wasn’t convinced. He squatted to study the ground more closely.
“It’s spirit power again,” said another man uneasily. The men muttered among themselves, clearly not finding such a thing hard to believe.
“There are no spirits at work here,” Hoten said harshly. “Not unless spirits use pine boughs to sweep tracks away.” He held up several loose pine needles, still sticky with sap. “This happened not long ago.”
Behind Hoten a voice called out, “Someone’s coming — many, and on horseback!” The raider was kneeling on a patch of rock, his hand pressed flat against it. Hoten did likewise and also felt the heavy vibrations. The strength and rhythm of the pounding could mean only one thing.
“It’s our own people,” Hoten announced. “It’s too soon. I’ll have to head them off.”
He ordered his men to hold where they were, then ran down the stony slope.
He soon spotted the outriders of the main band. Standing atop a convenient outcropping, he waved his hands over his head. The horsemen stopped. Zannian emerged from the ranks and rode to meet his lieutenant.
“What news, Hoten?”
“You came too soon, Zan. My men are only a hundred paces farther on. The bronze dragon himself could be hiding in the cliffs above us, and we wouldn’t know it until it was too late.”
“You give the mud-toes too much credit,” Zannian scoffed. “The ones who escaped us on the plain are probably home by now, and the rest are wetting their breechcloths just thinking about our coming. We should attack before they have a chance to regroup.”
“I think that’s unwise, Zan.”
The chief shrugged. “Then argue with my mother. It’s her idea.”
Hoten looked for Nacris, but she wasn’t to be seen. “We’re going,” Zannian announced. “Find a horse.”
One of the lead riders shouted a warning. Hoten pushed through the standing horses to the water’s edge, and Zannian followed him on horseback. They soon saw what had made their man cry out: a body, floating
