All four held ornate silver daggers.

I stopped, amazed.

They were permitting Chenyth to watch the consecration of Harish kill-daggers. It was one of the high mysteries of their cult.

They sensed my presence, but went on removing the enameled names of their last victims from amidst the engraved symbols on the flats of their blades. Those blades were a quarter inch thick near the hilt. The flat ran half the twelve inch length. Each blade was an inch wide at its base.

They seemed heavy, clumsy, but the Harish used them with terrifying efficiency.

One by one, oldest to youngest, they thrust their daggers into the fire to extinguish the last gossamer of past victims' souls still clinging to the deadly engraving. Then they laid their blades across their hearts, beneath the palms of their left hand. Foud spoke a word.

Chenyth later told me the ritual was coached in the language of ancient Ilkazar. It was an odd tongue they used, like nothing else I've heard.

Foud chanted. The others answered.

Fifteen minutes passed. When they finished even a dullard like myself could feel the Power hovering round the Harish fire.

Lord Hammer came out of his tent. He peered our way briefly, then returned.

The four plunged their blades into the fire again.

Then they joined the ritual everyone else had been pursuing. They produced their whetstones.

I considered Foud's blade. Nearly two inches were missing from its length. It had been honed till it had narrowed a quarter. The engraving was almost invisible. He had served El Murid long and effectively.

His gaze met mine. For an instant a smile flickered behind his veil.

That was the first any of them had even admitted my existence.

A moment later Jamal said something to Chenyth. The younger Harish was the only one who admitted to understanding Itaskian, though we all knew the others did too. Chenyth nodded and rose.

"They're going to name their daggers. We have to go."

Times change. Only a few years ago men like these had tried to kill Ravelin's Queen. Now we were allies.

The glint in Foud's eye told me that things might be different now if he had been the man sent then.

The Harish believed. In their master, in themselves. Every assassin who consecrated blade was as sure of himself as was Foud.

"What're they doing here?" I muttered at Chenyth. I knew. The same as me. Doing what they knew. Surviving the only way they knew. Still,.. The Harish revered their Cause, even though it was lost.

They wanted to bring The Disciple's salvation to the whole world, using every means at their disposal.

Toamas was awake and chipper when we got back. "I ever tell about the time I was with King Bragi, during the El Murid Wars, when he was just another blank shield? It was a town in Altea..."

I guess that kept us going, too. Maybe one mercenary in fifty thousand made it big. I guess we all had some core of hope, or belief in ourselves, too.

VII

"All right, you goat-lovers! Drag your dead asses out. We got some hiking to do today."

Fetch had a way with words like no lady I've ever known. I slithered out of my blankets, scuttled to the fire, tumbled some wood on, and slid back into the wool. That circle may have been springish, but there was a nip in the air.

Chenyth rolled over. He muttered something about eyes in the night.

"Come on. Roll out. We got a long walk ahead."

Chenyth sat up. "Phew! One of these days we've got to take time off for baths. Hey. Toamas. Wake up." He shook the old man. "Oh!"

"What's the matter?"

"I think he's dead, Will."

"Toamas? Nah. He just don't want to get up." I shook him.

Chenyth was right.

I jumped out of there so fast I knocked the tent down on Chenyth. "Fetch. The old man's dead. Toamas."

She kicked a foot sticking out of another tent, gave me a puzzled look. Then she scurried into the black tent.

I tried to get a look inside. But there were inside flaps too.

Lord Hammer appeared a moment later. His mask was paintless. His gaze swept the horizon, then the camp. Fetch popped out as he started toward our tent.

Chenyth came up cussing. "Damnit, Will, what the hell you..." His jaw drooped. He scrambled out of Lord Hammer's path.

Fetch whipped past and started hauling tent away. Lord Hammer knelt, hand over Toamas's heart. He moved it to the grass. Then he walked to the gap we thought of as a gate.

"What's he doing?" Chenyth asked.

"Wait," Fetch told him.

Lord Hammer halted, faced left, began pacing the perimeter. He paused several times. We resumed our morning chores. Brandy cussed the gods both on Toamas's behalf and because he faced another miserable breakfast. You couldn't tell which mattered more to him. Brandy bitched about everything equally.

His true feelings surfaced when he was the first to volunteer to dig the old man's grave.

Toamas had saved his life in the mountains.

"We Kaveliners got to stick together," he muttered to me. "Way it's always been. Way it'll always be."

"Yeah."

His family and Toamas's lived in the same area. They had been on opposite sides in the civil war with which Kavelin had amused itself in the interim between the El Murid and Great Eastern Wars.

It was one of the few serious remarks I had ever heard from Brandy.

Lord Hammer chose the grave site. It butted against the wall. Toamas went down sitting upright, facing the forest.

"That's where I saw the thing last night," Chenyth told me.

"What thing?"

"When I had guard duty. All I could see was its eyes." He dropped a handful of dirt into the old man's lap. The others did the same. Except Foud. The Harish Elder lowered himself to his belly, placed a small silver dagger under Toamas's folded hands.

We Kaveliners bowed to Foud. This was a major gesture by the Harish. Their second highest honor, given a man who had been their enemy all his life.

I wondered why Foud had done it.

"Why did he die?" Chenyth asked Fetch. "I thought Lord Hammer fixed him."

"He did. Chenyth, the circle took Toamas."

"I don't understand."

"Neither do 1."

I wondered some more. Ignorance and Lord Hammer seemed poles apart.

Maybe he had known. But I couldn't hate him. The way Fetch talked, thirty-seven of us were alive because Toamas had died. The circle certainly was more merciful than the forest.

Lord Hammer gestured. Fetch ran to him. Then he ducked into his tent while she talked.

"Get with it. We've got a long way to go. We'll have to travel fast. Lord Hammer doesn't want to spend any more lives. He wants to leave the forest before nightfall."

We moved. Our packs were trailing odds and ends when we started. Our stomachs weren't full. But those were considerations less important than enduring the protection of another circle.

As we were leaving I noticed a flower blooming in the soft earth where we had put Toamas down. There were dozens of flowers along the wall. The few places where they were missing were the spots where Lord Hammer had paused in his circuit of the wall.

What would happen when all the grave sites were full?

Maybe Lord Hammer knew. But Hammer didn't have much to say.

We passed another circle about noon. It was dead.

The day was warmer, the sky clear. The ice began melting. We made good time. Lord Hammer seemed pleased.

I stared straight ahead, at Russ's back, all morning. If I looked at a tree I could hear it calling. The pull was terrifying.

Chenyth seized my arm. "Stop!"

I almost trampled Russ. "What's up?" Lord Hammer had stopped.

"I don't know."

Fetch was dancing around like a barefoot burglar on a floor covered with tacks. Lord Hammer and his steed might have been some parkland pigeon roost, so still were they. We shuffled round so we could see without leaving the safety of the trail.