“At the moment I am still too terrified to move, let alone think about anything so abstract as giving thanks. You have an unpleasant and powerful enemy, my fellow Fox.”
“I’ve already told you that. Didn’t you believe me before? As for fear, you handled yourself better than I did—I thought we were done for till you stalled the demon.”
Rihwin shrugged. “That paradox always did intrigue me. I first heard a variation of it posed at the Collegium, purportedly to demonstrate that a longtooth could never catch its prey, even were the victim five times slower than it.”
“It’s logically perfect, but it can’t be true. Where’s the flaw?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea, nor did my instructor. Your elucidation with the bow seemed as elegant as any.”
Gerin tried to sleep. He was too keyed up to find rest quickly. He was still awake when Rihwin passed the watch to Van, and listened to his friend’s sulfurous oaths at not having been waked to help fight the demon. Van was still grumbling complaints into his beard as his comrades at last gave in to slumber.
The next morning, Gerin let Elise drive for a while and tried to get more sleep in the back of the wagon. He knew Van had managed the trick on the way south. Now he wondered how. Every pothole was magnified tenfold when felt all along his body, and rumbling wheels and creaking axles did nothing to help his repose. Red-eyed and defeated, he came forward to take the reins again.
Traffic was light, for which he gave thanks. He wished Van had been able to buy a pair of Shanda horses instead of just the one. The shaggy little animal pulled magnificently. It seemed never to tire.
Its harnessmate the gray gelding was willing enough, but lacked the steppe beast’s endurance. It exhaustedly hung its head at every rest stop. Gerin was afraid its wind would break if he pushed it much harder.
From the chariot Rihwin was sharing with him, Van pointed up the road at an approaching traveler and said, “Someone’s coming in one awful hurry.”
“Probably another whoreson of a courier,” Gerin said. He reached for his bow nonetheless.
A courier it was, whipping his horses as if all the fiends of all the hells were after him. The beasts’ scarlet, flaring nostrils and lathered sides said they had been used so for some time. “Way! Clear the way!” the courier shouted as he thundered past.
He was gone in the blink of an eye, but not before Gerin saw the long Trokmê arrow lodged in the crown of his broad-brimmed hat. North of the Kirs, the blow had fallen.
Rihwin stared blankly at the dismayed looks his friends wore; like Gerin, Elise and Van had recognized that arrow for what it was. Elise hid her face in her hands and wept. When the baron put an arm around her, he almost steered the wagon into Rihwin’s chariot.
“Careful, captain,” Van said.
Gerin’s laugh was shaky. “Here I am trying to make Elise feel better, and look at me.”
“Will someone please tell me what the trouble is?” Rihwin asked plaintively.
Gerin did, in a couple of curt sentences. Despite the gray gelding’s exhaustion, he urged more speed from his horses.
“That’s good thinking,” Van called. “You can bet there’s a mob a few hours or a day behind that courier, all of them hightailing it south as fast as they can go. Best make haste while the road’s still clear.”
“A pox! I hadn’t even thought of that.” Gerin added another worry to his list. He tried to comfort Elise, who was still sobbing beside him.
She shook his arm away. “I wish I had never left—I should be with my father.” She cried even harder.
“I know,” he said quietly. “But no one can change what you did, not god or man. All we can do now is wait to see how things are north of the Kirs and not borrow trouble till we know.” Wonderful, he told himself, you talk as if you thought you really could do it—and if your own guts knot any tighter, you can use them for lute strings.
Despite his own doubts, his words seemed to reach Elise. She raised her tear-streaked face, trying without much success to smile. As the hours passed and the Kirs loomed ever taller on the horizon, a spurious calm came to the northbound travelers. They talked of life in the capital, legends from Kizzuwatna, sword-fish-fishing on the Bay of Parvela south of Sithonia—anything except the Trokmoi and what was happening on the far side of the mountains.
As Van had guessed, they soon began meeting refugees fleeing the Trokmê invasion. The first one they saw brought a sardonic smile to Gerin’s face: there stood Carus Beo’s son, tall in his chariot. He used his whip with more vigor than the baron thought he still had. He shot passed Gerin’s party without recognizing them.
The Marchwarden of the North was but the precursor of a steadily swelling stream of fugitives, many with better reasons to flee than his. The warriors who appeared had the look of defeated troops: they straggled south in small, dejected parties, and many were wounded. Now and again Gerin saw a minor baron among them, sometimes leading his family and a small party of retainers, more often alone, haggard, and afraid.
The Fox kept hoping to find a man he knew, so he could stop him and grill him at length. For two days he was disappointed. On the third, he spied a merchant who had been to Fox Keep two or three times, a man called Merric Forkbeard. The trader was still leading a string of donkeys, but their packsaddles were all empty. Gerin looked in vain for the two youths who had accompanied Merric in times past. When Merric heard the baron call his name, he pulled off the road to share what word he had. He took a skin of wine. His hands shook as he raised it to his lips. He had only a few more years on him than did Gerin, but looked to have added another ten in the past few days: his thin face, which Gerin remembered as full of quiet humor, was gray and drawn, his eyes haunted.
“I can’t tell you as much as I’d like, Fox,” he said, running fingers through thinning sandy hair. “Six days ago, I was on the road between Drotar’s holding and Clain the Fluteplayer’s—a good bit southwest of your keep, I guess that is—when I saw smoke ahead. It was the plague-taken woodsrunners, burning out a peasant village and acting as if not a soul in the world could stop them. I turned around and headed south—and ran into an ambush.” He bit his lip. “That’s when I lost my nephews. They died cleanly—I think.”
Gerin tried to express his sympathy, but Merric brushed it aside. “It’s done, it’s done,” he said tiredly. He took another pull at the wineskin, went on, “I will say you’re the last man I ever expected to see south of the mountains.”
“I was looking for help against the Trokmoi, though I didn’t find much.”
“Even if you had, it would do you little good.”
“What? Why?”
“I came through the pass hours ago. Even then, officers and men were rushing about, making ready to seal it off. What use would your aid be, trapped on this side of the Kirs?”
Gerin stared at him, aghast. “Hours ago, you say?”
“Aye.”
“Then I have no time to waste bandying words with you, I fear. The gods keep you safe, Merric, and may we meet again in happier times.” The baron twitched the reins and got his wagon into motion. Van and Rihwin followed close behind in the northerner’s chariot.
Merric watched them speed north. “I don’t think I’m the one who needs the gods for my safety,” he muttered to himself.
Now Gerin could show the gray gelding no pity. Once north of the Kirs, he might be able to replace it, but unless he forced an all-out effort from it now, all such problems would cease to matter.
The rich southern countryside flashed by in a blur. To the north, the Kirs grew ever taller. Their crowns of snow were smaller than they had been twenty days before. High summer was drawing near.
The stream of fugitives continued to thicken, clogging the road and stretching the baron’s nerves tighter. Yet had that stream failed, all his hope would have vanished with it, for he would have known the pass was sealed.
He raced through the grimy town of Fibis, past its crucifixes, and into the foothill
s, now cursing desperately at every slight delay. The gray began to fail. Its nostril flared to suck in great gulps of air and its sides heaved with the effort it was making, but it plainly could not keep up the killing pace much longer. Gerin felt its anguish as keenly as if it were his own. Strange, he thought, how in the end all his hopes rode not on his own wit or brawn, but on the stamina of a suffering beast.
Much too slowly, the pass drew near. Another party of refugees appeared ahead, blocking the roadway and forcing the Fox to the verge. No, these were not refugees—they were the garrison troops who had manned the pass. They marched south in good order, spears neatly shouldered. If they were pulling out, the pass would be closed very soon. Even curses failed Gerin—had he come so far to miss by so little?
At last the gap came into sight. The baron’s heart descended from his throat when he saw it was still unblocked. But at his approach an officer stepped into the road, backed by a double squad of archers. The officer stepped forward with a salute, introduced himself as Usgild son of Annar. “I am most sorry, sirs, lady. No travel is permitted beyond this point. We are but minutes from ending contact with the north, as it is under strong barbarian attack.”
“I know—that’s why I’m here.” Gerin quickly outlined his need.
Having heard him out, Usgild shook his head. “I cannot take the responsibility for delaying a measure vital to the safety of my Empire.” As if to underscore his words, his archers nocked arrows.
“Can nothing persuade you?” Gerin asked, hearing the finality in Usgild’s voice. Perhaps, he thought frantically, I can bribe him. But he knew that had to be futile. Usgild seemed honest. Even if he wasn’t, Gerin did not have enough money to buy him.
Nonetheless, he rummaged through his pockets—and his fingers closed on the tiny bronze Imperial Hand the agent Tevis had left behind in Grizzard’s tavern. He drew it forth and displayed it on his upturned palm. “Can nothing persuade you?” he repeated: “Not even this?”
He was afraid Usgild would doubt his right to the token, but the officer sprang to attention at the sight of the most potent official talisman the Empire knew. “My lord, I had no idea—”
“Never mind all that,” Gerin said, determined to give him no chance to wonder. “Send a man at once to hold things up until we are through.”
“Hanno!” the officer bawled. One of his archers raced for a chariot.
Gerin decided more, not less, effrontery would make him seem genuine. “My supplies are a bit low. I could use some field rations, and also”—he held his breath—“a fresh horse to replace this poor creature.”
Usgild was beyond questions. “At once.” Under his efficient direction, his men met Gerin’s needs. A sturdy bay stallion replaced the gelding, which barely had the strength to be led away. Soldiers stowed square loaves of journeybread, salt beef, smoked sausages, and lumps of pale, hard cheese in the back of the wagon. They and their commander eyed the Fox with almost servile respect, doing his bidding as though they thought their lives were hanging in the balance. They probably did, Gerin thought sourly—an Imperial Hand was no one to trifle with.
He wondered why Tevis had seen fit to give him the emblem of his office. Could a Hand have realized the barons, in their way, served the Emperor too? It was hard to credit a southern man with such breadth of vision, but then Tevis, whatever else he had been, was no ordinary southerner.
Usgild broke into Gerin’s thoughts. “My lord, may I ask your mission in the north?”
“I intend to seek out and slay the wizard who controls the Trokmoi.” For the first time Gerin spoke simple truth, and for the first time Usgild looked unbelieving. The baron hardly blamed him, as he himself had no idea how to put an end to Balamung.
The soldier Hanno returned. Flicking a salute to Gerin, he said, “Imperial Hand or no, sir, if I were you I’d hustle down the pass. You’ve got some wizards mighty peeved at you. They were about halfway through their spells when I told them to hold up, and they’re not what you’d call pleased about having to wait and start over.”
A party like Usgild’s must have been covering the northern end of the pass. The gap through the Kirs, so congested and noisy when Gerin had come south, was achingly empty and silent. The Empire’s fortresses stared, empty-eyed, at wagon and chariot moving lonesomely where hundreds of men, beasts, and wains usually passed.
Half a dozen sorcerers paced the battlements of their sparkling, glassy towers. They too glowered down on the baron and his comrades. Though they were too high and too far for him to read their faces, the very snap of their robes in the breeze bespoke annoyance.
As soon as he was past, the wizards began their spells anew, moving in sharp, precisely defined patterns and chanting antiphonally. Their voices, thin and high in the vast quiet, followed Gerin a long way down the pass.
“I know that spell,” Rihwin said, “but to think of using it on such a scale.…” His voice trailed away. He urged his dapples out in front of the wagon.
The commander of the pass had been no fool: to stop southbound traffic he had posted at the gap’s northern outlet not a token force of archers but a solid company of spearmen and charioteers. They were needed. The road stretching north was full of fugitives, shouting, begging, threatening, gesticulating, but leaderless and not quite daring to rush the orderly ranks of gleaming spearheads standing between themselves and the southland. The din was dreadful.
Or so Gerin thought for a moment. Then the earth shook beneath the wagon. The sub-bass roar of endless tons of cascading stone left his ears stunned and ringing. A dust-filled blast of wind shrieked out of the pass behind him. It caught a couple of birds and sent them tumbling through the air. Guardsmen and refugees cried out in terror, but no sound from a merely human throat could pierce the avalanche.
“Looks like I’m home for good,” Gerin said. No one could hear him either, but what did that matter? The fact itself seemed clear enough.
X
As inconspicuously as he could, Gerin made his way through the shaken solidery. No one tried to stop him. If any of the imperial troops had, he would have shown them the Hand. He was glad he did not have to. He did not want to find out how they would react to the symbol of a regime which had just marooned them on the wrong side of the moutains.
Those who had fled their homes and lands in the face of the Trokmê onslought now parted before Gerin, stepping aside like wolves in the presence of a longtooth. Any man going north of his own free will had to be of superior stuff, not to be hindered by the likes of them.
Rihwin let the baron catch up to him, then said, “You will surely need a fighting tail later. Why not start collecting it now?”
Gerin shook his head. “These are the ones who ran first and fastest. I might be able to shame some into coming with me, but they’d likely disappear again at the first sign of a red mustache.”
“Right you are, captain,” Van said. “Later we’ll run into some who got honestly beat: bushwhacked like poor Merric, or just too many woodsrunners and not enough of them. That bunch will be aching for revenge, or a second chance, or what have you. They’ll be the ones we take along.”
“The two of you make good sense,” Riwhin said, adding thoughtfully, “There’s more to this business than meets the eye.”
They rolled through Cassat not long before nightfall, fighting heavy southbound traffic all the way. The town was nearly deserted. Most of its soldiers and the folk who catered to them must have fled with Carus Beo’s son. Looters prowled through abandoned shops and taverns, seeking valuables, drink more potent than water, or perhaps just shelter for the night.
At most times, Gerin would have been after them sword in hand. To his way of thinking, they were worse than Trokmoi: scavengers, preying off the misfortunes of others. Now he had more important concerns. He drove by, wanting to put as much distance as he could between the rats’ nest Cassat had become and his camp for the night.
Only Nothos’ crescent was in the sky when the sun went down. Mat
h was a day and a half past new and lost in the glow of sunset. Tiwaz would not rise till midnight, and ruddy Elleb less than two hours before the next sunrise.
“Strange, not to have the Kirs staring us in the face,” Elise remarked.
Her three companions round the campfire nodded. To Gerin, it was not only strange but wonderful. For the past couple of days, the mountains and the sealing of the pass had loomed over him like a death sentence. Now he felt reprieved. Tomorrow he would need to start thinking of Balamung and the Trokmoi again but, as he drew in a deep breath of cool night air made flavorful by the fire’s smoke, he deliberately suppressed such worries.
Some responsibility, though, had to stay with him. “We need to be really careful on watch tonight,” he said. “Some of the fools on the run will be more afraid of the Trokmoi than the ghosts. They’ll likely be on the move tonight. And who knows? The woods-runners may be this far south already.”
Travelers in the night there were, but no Trokmoi and no problems, at least during the baron’s watch. But when he woke the next morning to the sound of Rihwin’s fervent cursing, he knew something had gone wrong. “What now?” he muttered, groping for his sword.
“The plague-taken wine’s gone sour!” Rihwin said. “It’s no better than vinegar.”
“Great Dyaus above, from the howl you raised I thought it was Balamung come in person. Worse things have happened than sour wine, my friend.”
“So have better ones. You cannot know what torment my year at Ricolf’s was, away from the sweet grape.”
“Aye, and look at the trouble you got into, once you had it back,” Van said.
Rihwin ignored him. “By the gods, I’d thought a year’s separation long enough, but here I am, bereft again.”
“If you must have you precious wine,” Gerin snapped, “are you not mage enough to call it back from vinegar? If not, why did I ask you to come with me?”
Rihwin refused to notice the expasperation in Gerin’s voice, but eagerly seized on his idea. “Your wits are with you, my fellow Fox! I learned that spell—” (“Naturally,” Elise murmured, so low only Gerin heard) “and it’s easy to cast.”
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