The Lady Talasorn sighed. "I doubt they'd herald their arrival, my lord. They'd watch and see just where we all were, and how best to slay us. The first you'd know of any battle would be a Dwaer-blast separating you from your bones."

Craer looked at her-and suddenly beamed from ear to ear, saying brightly, "My, but the Vale's lovely this time of year! I feel a sudden longing to take horse and ride."

Blackgult had said nothing, and continued to do so, but he did- almost-smile.

2

Stones Hunted, Trouble Found

The blacksmith shook his tongs to make sure of his grip, lifted the cooling, darkening bar, and thrust it into the bucket of oil. There was a roar of hissing smoke-into which he spat thoughtfully-and he set his hammer down, straightening with a grunt. "Be ye ready?"

Two men looked up from their last tightenings of the straps and buckles that held the great draft horse. "Aye, Ruld. He's in the harness."

The smith nodded. "Well, then, let's be about it. 'Riverflow stops for no man,' as they say."

"Aye," both farmers replied, completing the saying more or less in unison: " 'Not even if the Risen King commands.' "

Ruld snorted as he strode across his cluttered smithy. "Some 'Risen King'! Risen and gone, like that, an' some fool lad sitting the throne in his place. If they were going to choose any green youngling standing by, they'd've done better to pick a farmer-an' at least have someone who knows crops 'n' harvest and such."

"Aye! Better a Sirl peddler than this boy king," Ammert Branjack agreed, patting the vast flank of his horse in a manner that was meant to be reassuring. "They might as well have chosen a farfaring merchant from half the world away! What were they thinking"

"Ah, that's just it," his friend Drunter said, spitting thoughtfully into a corner heaped with rusty scraps of old metal. "They don't think, up at Flowfoam. If they did, we'd not have half the realm dead, every third brute calling himself baron, and the hissing snake-heads still lurking behind every tree."

"Hoy, now!" the smith growled. "Untrustworthy as the rest an' beloved of talking menace they may be-but the Serpents pay good coin an' do no worse than any baron, an' I've never had a baron fetch me water before, just to be helpful an' not expecting anything in return!" He wiped his brow with a brawny forearm, blinked at the nails splayed out in his hand, and shook his head.

"B'y'Three, but I'm hot today," he growled. "Don't know why… shouldn't be wet as this, after so short at the forge…" He took a swig from the longpipe of water on the post two paces from his anvil, gasped, and shook his head again.

"You be looking pale, Ruld," Dunhuld Drunter said helpfully. " Tis all that wenching, I'll be bound!" He tried a grin, but put it away again swiftly when the blacksmith only grunted.

"Ah, but at least the weather's holding up," Branjack offered. "If this keeps on as it looks to, we'll have a good harvest, sure."

The smith spat and shook his head grimly. "An' who'll bring it in, with so many dead? Grain's nothing but a free meal for the gorcraws if it rots in the fields. Sirl merchants won't pay to reap an' husk-an' won't pay fair coin at all, if they can claim there's a glut. Some of them are claiming that already, an' not a plant in the Vale properly showing its own yet!"

"Ah, but Ruld, we've seen war and plundering outlanders and misrule before this-aye, and bad weather too-and there's still enough to fill every belly in Fallingtree, and Aglirta yet stands around us. Oh, barons rise and barons fall, and no doubt there's lives wasted and coins gone that could have been saved if the Kingless Land never saw strife, and a good strong king ruled well from Flowfoam… but what man alive has seen that, as the years and years pass? Yet we still have a kingdom that Sirl folk, for all their coins, covet dearly."

"Aye," the smith shot back, a strange green and purplish hue washing momentarily across his face, "yet I doubt me not if Aglirta had seen less foolishness of barons and blood spilled needlessly, the Vale would rule Sirlptar outright, long since, an' we'd all have coins to toss an' roll about in."

"And then ye'd only charge a dozen times what you do now, Ruld," Drunter responded, "as would we all, hey? And where would this golden Aglirta come from, where the gods make barons behave differently than barons have ever done, anywhere? And kept the weather grand, folk friends to all, and the reavers of all Darsar-aye, and the swindlers Sirl city breeds, too-far away?"

The smith shook his head like a horse seeking to drive off persistent flies, and growled again wordlessly as he snatched up hammer and shoe, and approached the horse strapped into the shoeing harness. "Tempt me not into clever answers, friend Drunter," he grunted, as he hung the shoe over the usual hook and caught up the massive hoof to be shod, "an' I'll spin thee no airy tales, hey?"

"Wise words, Ruld," Branjack said quickly, wary of the smith's tone of voice. "Wise words! We'd all do well to-"

The blacksmith straightened, shuddered all over-and then whirled around with frightening speed and laid open Branjack's startled face with one strike of the horseshoe.

With a bubbling scream, the farmer stumbled hastily back-and fell hard on his backside. He landed whimpering in fear and scrabbling to get up and out of the way, but the wild-eyed, sweating blacksmith bounded past him, hammer in hand, and smashed Drunter to the ground with a single blow.

Dunhuld landed hard, his skull crushed like an eggshell. Jaw dangling and eyes gushing blood and brains, he for once-and forever after-had nothing to say.

Branjack screamed again as he plunged out the smithy door. Men were trotting nearer, peering to see what was afoot, for Fallingtree was not so large a place that solid entertainment was to be had in generous plenty, and Ruld's smithy was where many of them were wont to gather in easy company, to talk in the din and glow where a man they all respected worked and held just opinions and shared them in a few short words, but suffered others to talk as long and as freely as they would.

Branjack clawed aside the first man who tried to talk to him-which kept him alive for as long as it took the blacksmith to slay that man, and the next, and another after that. Then everyone who'd approached the smithy was running away, and a sobbing, roaring Ruld was amongst them like a wolf savaging running deer. One man fell, spattering the ground with his brains, and then another, landing like a hurled grainsack with neck broken and head lolling. Swearing, a third tried to draw a belt-knife-and the smith rounded on him in a roaring fury and battered him to the ground in a rain of bone-shattering, brutal blows.

Branjack made it most of the way down the lane ere the horseshoe in the smith's hand laid open his smock across the shoulders and his skin with it, and then struck one of his elbows a numbing blow that spun him around.

Face to face with the staring-eyed smith, the farmer wasted no time in trying to turn, but ducked under Ruld's arm and sprinted back toward the smithy, seizing on some wild idea that the smith wouldn't want to break his own anvil, nor spill out the forge fire, so perhaps fleeting shelter could be found behind them…

That thought died on the smithy threshold with Branjack, the shoeing hammer driven so deep through his skull that it almost reached the top of his spine.

Howling, Ruld ran across the warm, familiar room, bloody hammer in one hand and gory shoe in the other-and began to madly belabor Drunter's draft horse.

It reared in the harness, belling and then screaming as loudly as any of the villagers had managed, and then some-and at its third bucking plunge worn straps parted, and it bolted, kicking out hard as it went.