Teyvasoke,

18th of Aft-Summer

Just walk slowly, keep your hood up and avoid catching anyone’s eye,” ’Gren murmured out of the side of his mouth. He spoke slowly to ensure I understood. Neither brother had talked anything but the Mountain tongue since we had left Apak’s camp, which had done wonders for my understanding of the language. It had been worse for my temper; some days I’d been so frustrated I’d have cheerfully punched them both on the nose. My accent was reasonably convincing by now—having a good ear for a tune helps there—but there were still too many things I just didn’t know the words for.

I ran a hand over my hair, damp with sweat in the noon heat. The short crop still felt strange, the hair strawlike after Harile’s foul-smelling concoction had leached out most of the color. Sorgrad was confident passing eyes would slide incuriously over a light-eyed, sandy blond in the company of two undeniably pure-blooded Mountain Men. Still, I was taking no chances, concealing myself in a sacklike garment ’Gren had acquired. Some woodcutter had learned the hard way not to leave his linen drying on the broom bushes fringing his little steading.

“So where have this lot been?” wondered ’Gren aloud. We’d waited and watched and finally come in on the tail end of a straggle of returning troops.

“Raiding the lowlands,” Sorgrad nodded at the dust kicked up by protesting flocks of abducted sheep in the grassy expanses farther down the valley.

I looked around at the new arrivals competing for cramped space to spread their blankets and set up cook pots. “No one’s going to be surprised to see faces they don’t know hereabouts, are they?”

We walked slowly up the broad floor of the wide valley, which was crowded with tents and rough shelters. On either side ramparts of rock marched down from the heights to enfold the soke with their protection, pierced with the dark entrances of mines. Ahead the land rose in a shallow sweep, past broken ground pocked with workings up to a gentle rise still dotted with a few remaining trees, then it changed abruptly, folded into deep, forested gullies. The twin mountains, light and dark, reared up beyond, clouds streaming like banners from their summits.

I brought my wits back from that distant beauty to considerations closer at hand. They might be a motley crowd but this was more than the ragtag collection of raiding parties that Lescari dukes dignify with the title of army. In the time it had taken us to reach here, a sizable host had gathered. I only hoped they’d disperse as rapidly if we could get rid of the Ice Islander’s enchantments. I looked sideways from beneath my hood at a gang of youths sitting around an unlit fire pit. One with dark eyes startling below corn-silk yellow hair was brushing his mail-shirt free of specks of rust, another with the rounder features of mixed blood was using a whetstone on a sword with a notch in the metal jagged as a freshly broken tooth. A third bent over a dusty boot that looked to have covered more leagues than my own. The ring of hammer and metal punctuated conversation on all sides.

“If we’d bleached what was left of his hair, Sandy could have passed among these mongrels,” ’Gren said cheerfully.

“I think he’s better off where he is. That limp and those crutches are just too noticeable.” We’d left the exhausted wizard with a handful of determined Forest hunters in a disregarded hollow beyond the knife-edged ridge on the sunrise side. He was under strict instructions not to use any magic lest he draw attention of the Sheltya or the Elietimm. Usara might be confident Hadrumal’s tricks would hide him from an enchanter’s notice, but we weren’t prepared to let the mage risk it. Not until we had our quarry. I hoped he’d stay unscathed. I’d left my precious song book with him, for one thing—a mage being the nearest I could find to safekeeping for the present.

But once we had the bastard, I’d welcome Forest arrows or spears of lightning or anything else to cover our flight. Sudden shouts behind me froze the hot trickles of sweat between my shoulder blades, cold fingers of fear running down my spine.

“Wrestling,” Sorgrad grinned, seeing my expression.

I wished I knew a Mountain equivalent of that finger flick Caladhrians use to convey rebuke.

“Everyone’s bored.” ’Gren’s expression grew animated. “Same as when snow keeps you all to camp or stormy weather makes the mines too wet to work.”

“You’re not to get involved, you hear me?” Sorgrad’s face was serious. “Get overexcited and kill someone again and ten men will be dragging you up before Sheltya who’ll empty your head to your bottom teeth.”

“I thought the whole point was to get ourselves Sheltya? Oh, all right, I’m only yanking your hood,” ’Gren grumbled.

“We’d best steer clear,” I said noncommittally. “We don’t want to be noticed and you flattening all comers would start talk.”

The path took us up beyond a jagged spike of rock and away from the ranks of tents where tense men eyed each other like hounds chained too close in a kennel yard. We stopped to take our bearings.

This ridge of rock marked a deliberate division. There were women up here, some in voluminous drapes like the ones hampering my knees, others in long skirts dusty around the hems and blouses loose-necked in the heat. I looked back down the valley; there were no females of any age in the tents below the little waterfall valiantly making the most of its meager reserves as it tumbled glittering over the rock. A handful of women were lingering by the side of the stream, water pots in hand, idly chatting. One lass was paddling her naked feet in the frothing water.

“She’s trouble going begging for business,” remarked ’Gren with a certain relish. A burly man stripped to the waist as he laundered his linen was on the other side of the stream, watching with interest. He tossed a stone into the water, splashing the young woman’s skirts. She shook her head at whatever it was he said to her but her smile and the flirt of her skirts gave the lie to any denial. A second man, not over-tall but with shoulders massive from years of breaking rocks, came up behind her. Catching the incautious wench unawares, he shook her hard enough to snap her head backward. The other women scattered back to the dubious sanctuary of their tents.

“Our pal had better get this lot fighting some enemy or he’ll have them fighting each other,” observed Sorgrad thoughtfully.

“They’ll just knock the rough corners off.” ’Gren was unconcerned. “Remember early season in a trapping camp or at a new digging.”

“There aren’t any women to fight over after a wasted day at the trap lines,” countered Sorgrad.

“Would it be worth our while setting a spark to the tinder?” I wondered.

“I’m game,” volunteered ’Gren.

“Perhaps if we need a diversion on the way out.” Sorgrad turned to look at me. “You’d pass for a man better if you were wearing a hauberk.”

“In this heat, I’d pass out,” I retorted. “No one’s going to tell me buck from doe as long as I’m wearing this sack.”

Both ’Gren and Sorgrad were in sleeveless chainmail, burnished so bright by the sun it was painful to the eye. They bore the strength-sapping weight uncomplaining and with little enough sign of discomfort, but I hate wearing armor and wasn’t about to slow myself down with it in this heat. I eased the clinging linen of my shapeless overtunic as it clung to my sweaty neck. The sun beat down relentlessly and I envied these people the stuffy shade of their tents. “Has anyone got any water?”

Sorgrad passed me his bottle and nodded to the thirsty arrivals jostling for water below the little waterfall. “We’ll go higher upstream and get a refill.”

A man with a massive hammer sloped over one solid shoulder went past with a self-important air, a lad behind him struggling with a hampering bag of tools clutched to his narrow chest. I drained the last tepid mouthfuls of leather-tainted water, musty but still preferable to the cloying sourness of my mouth. We strolled across the flat stones separating the scored turf from the summer-shrunken river bouncing and sparkling down its rocky bed.