Tol arrived with his warlords and the Dom-shu sisters. The captured bowmen were sitting quietly on the ground, hands clasped atop their heads. Not so the customs officer. He was stretched out facedown, wrists lashed together behind his back, held at sword point. Both face and fists bore the bloody evidence of his resistance.

Ignoring the fuming customs officer for now, Tol addressed the leader of the bowmen, a man with a city haircut and light sandals on his feet. “You, stand up. What’s your name?”

“Fengale, my lord.” He spoke like a city man-pronouncing “my lord” as “ma ludd.”

“Why are you here, Fengale?”

The sergeant shrugged. “One of the emperor’s chamberlains hired us to defend this post. We arrived here only last night.”

Kiya wondered why Ackal V would deploy hired soldiers when he had plenty of warriors at his command, but this was no mystery to Tol. The emperor had withdrawn all his hordes, concentrating his warriors closer to the city. What Tol couldn’t fathom was why Ackal V had bothered to defend the customs house at all.

He turned his attention to the customs officer. Two warriors dragged the fellow forward. He fought and cursed the whole way.

“Traitor! Rebel! Your head will feed the crows for this!”

Tol waved a hand. “Yes, yes. Who are you?”

The officer couldn’t break the grips of the burly Riders holding him, so he settled for stating loudly, “My name is Hathak. Captain Hathak, of the Imperial Customs Service!”

“Well, Captain Hathak, what’s so special about your house?”

The petty official made a great show of not understanding, and Tol added, “We aren’t fools, Captain. There has to be a reason the emperor wastes even a small number of troops defending a solitary customs house.” To Mittigorn he said, “Have the house searched thoroughly.”

Mittigorn’s men carried out the order enthusiastically. Partitions were torn apart, floorboards pried up, and soon enough a shout of triumph rang out.

Two chests of gold coins (ironically stamped with the profile of Ackal V’s revered father, Pakin III) were found secreted under the floor of the house. In the rafters the men found sheaves of spears, bundles of shields, and sabers. All the metal implements had been dipped in wax to keep away rust, and all bore the stamp of the imperial arsenal in Daltigoth. Some were of recent make, others were older weapons.

Tol studied the cache carefully, all the while wondering why the weapons had been secreted here. A commotion outside interrupted him, and Miya appeared in the customs house door.

“You’d better come!” she said gravely.

Outside, they found Kiya standing over Hathak, once more facedown on the ground. The Dom-shu woman had her sword out and was glaring at several Riders standing nearby.

“They started beating him to make him talk,” she reported. “I put an end to it!”

Tol looked to Mittigorn and the warlord, still mounted, shrugged. “One way or another we have to find out what he knows, my lord,” he said.

Tol looked from the bloody, bound prisoner to Kiya’s proud, angry face. Distasteful though it was, he asked Mittigorn, “What did you learn?”

“Not much. We were interrupted,” Mittigorn said dryly.

Hathak had revealed that the gold was from tolls collected over the past half-year. The arms had been delivered to the customs house and hidden before the hired bowmen arrived from the city.

Tol gnawed his lower lip. He needed every bit of information he could lay hands on.

“Take Hathak inside,” he said to the waiting warriors. As they hoisted the fallen man up, Tol said to Mittigorn, “Find out what he knows.”

Miya gasped. Kiya grabbed his arm and demanded, “You’re going to let them torture that man?”

He broke her hold and seized her wrist. “Do you think this is a game?” he asked harshly. “We’re not fighting nomads any more. The emperor would not place money and weapons at a lonely outpost for no reason. I have to know why he did it!”

Like most foresters, Kiya would gladly fight and kill any opponent who challenged her, but the idea of beating information out of a helpless captive made her furious.

“If you do this, you’re no better than him!”

Kiya jerked her arm free. She swung onto her horse and galloped off, not back to the column, but westward, away from the poised army. Tossing an anguished glance at Tol, Miya followed her sister.

Tol stalked back to his own horse, his entire body radiating anger. He told Lord Mittigorn to seek him out once they had the truth from the customs official.

The commander of the Black Viper Horde acknowledged the order. He was unmoved by the drama with the Dom-shu sisters. He didn’t expect women (and barbarian women at that) to understand a warrior’s duty. However, his equanimity was shaken when Tol ordered him to disarm and release the bowmen.

Dark eyes widening, he asked, “Is that wise, my lord?”

“They’re only hirelings. We don’t have time for prisoners, so take their bows and turn them loose. That’s an order!”

Mittigorn snapped to attention in his saddle. “Yes, my lord.”

Tol cantered back to the waiting column. The sky, which had been an unblemished blue all day, was clear no longer. On the northern and southern horizons white clouds were piling up.

When Miya lost sight of her sister around a bend in the road, she urged her mare into a canter. Bands of light and shadow flickered across the Dom-shu woman’s face as she rode along the cedar-lined road. The air was hot and still; only the wind stirred by her passage made it bearable.

Rounding the curve in the road, she saw that Kiya had stopped where the lines of trees ended. The road there sloped downward, running straight and true into a breathtaking vista of green pastures and arrow-straight rows of fruit trees. An equestrian statue by the road marked the border of the Great Horde Hundred, the exact center of the Ergoth Empire.

Miya drew alongside her fuming sister. Neither of them spoke, they merely stared out at the bountiful countryside spread before them. Kiya’s hair had come free of its confining thong and fanned out over her shoulders. As a child, Miya had been jealous of her sister’s blonde locks, thinking the color much prettier than her own. Now, the sight of her sister’s unbound hair suddenly reminded Miya of the white burial shrouds used by high-born Ergothians. She shook her head, dislodging the thought.

“Husband didn’t have much choice,” Miya finally said. “The tax collector is a coward, anyway. He’ll probably talk if they only threaten him with violence-”

“Do you see them?” Kiya whispered in a strange voice.

“See what?”

“The clouds, Miya. Look at the clouds. Do you see the faces?”

Miya shaded her eyes, obediently studying the sky. Towering over the valley below were great masses of clouds, their bottoms flat as marble tiles. They were intensely white in the glare of the summer sun. Clouds and valley formed a vast panorama unknown in the close confines of their forest home. Beautiful in its own way, Miya admitted, but she didn’t see any faces.

Miya said, “All I see are clouds, Sister.”

Kiya frowned. As before, at the Isle of Elms, she saw rows of people, their faces without expression, staring down at her. She was not given to seeing portents and omens around every corner. That she was seeing this, and Miya was not, must be significant. The silent watchers must be a warning.

The sound of voices behind them brought their attention earthward again. The Army of the East was approaching. Many Riders were pointing at the sky and exclaiming/

Tol and Egrin, leading the central column, cantered up to the Dom-shu women. As they arrived, Egrin’s gaze strayed to the clouds and he jerked his mount’s reins. “Draco Paladin preserve us!” he whispered. “Who are they?”