"Damn," Seregil muttered as he collected his weapons and searched the dead men scattered around.

"Get your arrow from that one, Alec."

Alec approached the dead man and gingerly tugged on the shaft protruding from his neck. As he pulled it free, the man's head rolled to the side, his open eyes seeming to fix on his killer. Alec backed away from him with a shudder, carefully wiping the arrowhead in the snow before dropping it into his quiver.

Back at the road they gathered the other bodies into a heap. Alec pulled the arrow from the first man he'd shot, but before he could clean it, Micum took it from him.

"That was your first man, wasn't it?" he asked.

"Micum, it's not his way," Seregil warned, knowing what his friend was up to.

"It's best to do these things proper," Micum replied quietly. "I did it for you, remember? It's you should be doing it for him."

"No, it's your ritual," Seregil sighed, slouching against a tree. "Go ahead, then. Get it over with."

"Come here, Alec. Stand facing me." Micum was uncommonly serious as he held up the arrow.

"There's a twofold purpose in this. The old ways, the soldier ways, say that if you drink the blood of your first man, none of the others you ever kill will be able to haunt you. Open your mouth."

Alec shot a questioning look to Seregil, who only shrugged and looked away. Under Micum's

commanding gaze, Alec opened his mouth. Micum laid the arrowhead briefly against his tongue, then withdrew it.

Seregil saw the boy grimace, remembered the salt and copper taste that had flooded his own mouth years before when Micum had done the same with him. His stomach stirred uneasily.

When it was over, Micum patted Alec's shoulder.

"I know you didn't enjoy that much, any more than you enjoyed killing those fellows. Just remember that you did it to protect yourself and your friends, and that's a good thing, the only good reason to kill. But don't ever get so that you like it, any more than you liked the taste of the blood. You understand that?"

Alec looked down at the steaming crimson stains spreading out from the bodies in the snow and nodded.

7 South to Boersby

In spite of his wound, Micum agreed with Seregil that they should bolt through as quickly as possible to Boersby. Giving wide berth to the few steadings and inns that lay along the road, they kept up a steady pace for as long as Micum could stay in the saddle, slept in the open, and ate whatever Alec shot. Micum's wound didn't fester, but it was giving him more pain than he cared to admit. More aggravating still, however, was Seregil's increasing silence during the day and a half it took to reach the banks of the Folcwine.

From past experience, Micum recognized this as a sure sign that something was amiss; Seregil's black mood could go on indefinitely if something didn't happen to shake him out of it.

They rode out of the forest at late afternoon and sat looking out over the broad course of the Folcwine.

Micum was bleeding again, and it left him faint and irritable.

"Bilairy's Guts, Seregil, come out with it before I knock you down!" he growled at last.

Scowling down at his horse's neck, Seregil muttered, "I wish we'd taken just one of them alive."

"One of-oh, hell, man! Are you still brooding about that?" Micum turned to Alec. "A nest of forest bandits-hardly a rarity in the Folcwine—surprises him, and instantly there's some dark plot afoot. I think he's just piqued that he didn't hear them coming."

Alec looked down at his hands, apparently finding it politic not to comment.

"All right, then." Seregil turned in the saddle to face Micum. "We searched the bodies. What did we find?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary," Micum snapped. "Not one solitary thing!"

"That's right. But think again, what did they have?"

Micum snorted with exasperation. "Cloaks, boots, belts, tunics, all local stuff."

"Swords and bows," Alec ventured.

"Locally made?"

"The bows were. I don't know about the swords."

"Looked to be," Micum said slowly, thinking back. "But what in the name of all-"

"Everything was new!" Seregil exclaimed, as if they should immediately understand. "Did they have gold, jewelry, fancy clothes?" he demanded. "Not a scrap! A little silver in their purses, but not so much as a luck charm or knucklebone otherwise. So what we're left with is a gang of ruffians in new local clothing, carrying new local weapons, who are either so inept at their trade or of such austere temperament that they forgo any of the usual adornments."

With that he sat glowering at the others, thin mouth twisted in an exasperated grimace.

He looks like a filthy young lordling berating dim-witted servants, thought Micum, again resisting the temptation to knock his friend off his horse.

Alec suddenly straightened in his saddle. "They weren't bandits at all. They were just rigged out to look like it!"

Seregil's features relaxed into something like a smile for the first time that day. "But more than that, they were foreign to the area. Otherwise, they'd have had no need to buy everything new."

"When we searched the bodies there weren't any guild marks, were there?" asked Alec. "You know, like that Juggler at Asengai's?"

"No, at least none that I recognized. But that may not be significant in itself."

Micum smiled to himself, watching them go over the details of the ambush again like two hounds on a fresh scent.

The boy was hooked for certain.

"So who are they?" he broke in at last.

"Plenimarans? Even if they tracked us, which I doubt, how could they get far enough ahead of us to set up an ambush?"

"I don't think they could," said Seregil. "These fellows were already in place, waiting for us."

Micum stroked down the corners of his heavy mustache. "But that still means they'd have to have gotten word of who we were and which way we were corning."

"That's right," Seregil agreed. "It could have been by magic, or pigeon. In any case, it means there's a good deal more afoot here than we thought. All the more reason for staying off the main roads and getting to Skala as soon as possible. Time may be shorter than we think."

"If the Overlord's forces—" Micum began, but Seregil cut him short with a quick glance toward Alec.

"Sorry, Alec," he said, "we trust you well enough, but we answer to others in this matter. It's probably safer this way anyhow."

Seregil looked up at the lowering clouds.

"We're losing the light fast, but we're too close to town for me to spend another night outside. What do you say, Micum? Are you well enough to press on?"

"Let's press on. You've got contacts there, don't you?"

"At the Tipsy Frog. We'll stay the night there."

The lamps were lit by the time they reached the town.

Unlike Wolde, Boersby was a rough and ragged wayside town consisting almost entirely of establishments catering to the traders. Jumbled together at the water's edge like thirsty cattle, inns, taverns, and warehouses competed for frontage with the long docks stretching out into the river.

With winter coming on, the town was crowded with the last rush of traders trying to make a profit before the roads closed until spring.

Seregil led the way to a dubious-looking hostelry at the edge of town. The battered signboard over the door displayed a bilious green creature—no doubt intended by the artist to be a frog—draining a hogshead.

A sizable crowd milled about in the dim confines of the main room, hollering back and forth and pounding on tables for service. A fire smoldered on the large hearth, filling the room with an eye-stinging haze. A heavy plank laid across two barrels served as the bar, and behind it stood a lean, pasty-faced man in a leather apron.