Tavi made sure the light of the little lantern was blocked from the docks behind them, then rose, staring back at the dock they'd just departed.

A slender figure, sword in hand, stood at the end of the dock, barely visible in the light of the furylamps on the boardwalk: Phrygiar Navaris. Several others came to stand beside her-the rest of Arnos's singulares. Tavi fancied he could feel Navaris's serpentine hatred drifting over the water.

"It would seem," Ehren said, "that someone doesn't want you making this trip."

"Then someone," Tavi replied, "is going to be disappointed."

Chapter 22

Amara crouched beside Bernard in the wavering light of his woodcrafting as another patrol wound slowly through the forest and away from them. As the last of them went out of sight, she murmured, "Have I mentioned how attractive you've been, the last several da-"

Bernard moved suddenly, and his hand clamped gently over her mouth. He let out a soft breath that nonetheless conveyed a warning, and Amara fell silent. The forest sighed around them, the thickening leaves rustling in a low breeze. She saw nothing, heard nothing. She turned to Bernard, her face set in a question.

He touched a finger to his lips. Then, his eyes unfocused, he raised his bow.

Amara stared at him, hardly daring to move.

Bernard glanced down at the ground beneath him, and she saw his face grow intent. His lips moved.

The earth suddenly rippled out from him in a circle-not a violent upheaval, but a single, rippling pulse, as if someone had struck the ground with a large hammer.

Bits of dust and old leaves leapt up from the ground in a low shower. Not twenty feet in front of them, some of the bracken struck against something solid but unseen.

In the same instant, Bernard's bow bent and thrummed. There was an immediate, ugly sound of impact, and then a man appeared, dressed in leathers and bearing a bow of his own. Bernard's broad-headed, thick-shafted arrow protruded at an angle from the man's back.

Bernard moved, a single bound that took him most of the way to the other man, and Amara could see that he had dropped his bow and drawn his hunting knife from the sheath at his side. The other man straightened, turning, but before he could cry out or bring his own weapon to bear, Bernard was on his back, and bore him to the ground. Amara watched as, with brutal efficiency, Bernard reached around with his knife and cut his throat.

Bernard held the other man down, grinding his face into the dirt until his struggles ceased half a minute later. Then he straightened, slowly, his head up, eyes focused in the direction the rest of the patrol had gone. After another full minute had passed, Bernard turned to Amara and nodded once, beckoning.

Amara turned behind her. "Sire."

Gaius came out of the woods behind them, moving more easily than he had since the first days of their journey, though he still carried the walking staff. The First Lord moved up to stand beside Bernard and looked down at the body. He touched the fallen man's powerful bow with the end of his staff.

"A Knight Flora," the First Lord said quietly. "Like you."

"Never served as a Knight, sire," Bernard said, shaking his head. "Centurion in the auxiliary cohort."

Gaius glanced at him. "Mmmm. But obviously you had the skill for it."

Bernard shrugged. "Knights in my Legion… seemed a little full of themselves, sire. Didn't feel like spending all my time with them."

Amara walked up to stand beside her husband, still somewhat shocked at the suddenness of what had happened. She had seen violence before, but she had never seen Bernard engaged in it against another man. She knew he had been a soldier, in his past, but for some reason she had never pictured him killing in such a way. For a moment, his idle chat with the First Lord seemed wildly inappropriate-but only until she saw the faintly sickened expression in his eyes.

She touched his elbow. "Are you all right?" she asked.

He nodded without speaking. Then he looked at his bloodied knife, knelt down, and wiped it clean on the man's clothing. When he rose, his voice was rough. "He'd heard us. Or sensed us somehow. I could tell he had stopped right about there."

Gaius grimaced. "You had little choice, then. Even if he hadn't seen through your veil, he'd have circled back and picked up our trail."

Bernard nodded. "And the way he was trailing their normal patrol means that he was expecting to catch us moving after they had passed." He looked up and met Amara's gaze for no more than a second. "They know we're out here and that we've got some woodcraft on our side if they spared someone like him to look for us."

"How long before they notice he's missing?" Amara asked.

Bernard took a deep breath and nodded to himself. "As long as possible." He turned to the body, and rapidly went through the man's pockets and a small belt pouch. He discarded everything he found, shook his head, then touched the ground with his fingertips, murmuring under his breath. The earth quivered, and then the body began sinking into it, as if into very soft mud. Within a minute, it was gone from sight altogether, leaving nothing but an oblong, rounded patch of bare earth in its wake.

At Bernard's direction, Amara and Gaius helped him scatter more of the detritus of the forest floor over the bare patch, and he went over it himself, once they were done, until he was satisfied that they had concealed it. "All right," he said afterward. "A man like this, if he'd found our trail, might well take off and follow it alone for a time. Even if the patrol noticed he was gone within the hour, they might not think anything of it if he doesn't show up until the end of the day."

Amara nodded. "It makes sense. What do we do about it?"

"We make a better pace," Bernard said. "As fast as we can, for as long as we can. I can cover our trail pretty well for an hour, maybe two. The farther we get before we start leaving tracks again, the longer it will take them to find our trail using a standard search pattern."

"We've most of the distance still ahead," Amara said. "A couple of hours- even a full day's lead won't be enough. They'll catch up long before we get to Kalare."

"We don't have to beat them to Kalare," Bernard replied. "We just have to beat them to the swamps. No one's going to be able to track us through that." He looked up at Gaius. "We've got to pick up the pace, sire."

Gaius nodded, his expression sober. 'Til manage, Count."

Bernard turned to Amara. "I've got to walk behind us to hide our trail. It's going to take much of my attention. Do you think you've learned enough to hold a straight course?"

Amara swallowed. Over the week they'd been traveling, Bernard had been improving upon her rather rudimentary fieldcraft as they marched and in camp at night. She would never have believed how difficult something as simple as traveling in a straight line could be, once one was surrounded by miles and miles of forest. It all looked the same. The sun was often hidden by the canopy of leaves and branches, assuming it was a sunny day in the first place, and that old chestnut about moss growing on the north side of the trees was entirely unreliable.

As it turned out, there was a great deal more simple know-how than furycrafting involved in navigating overland. That was to be expected, she supposed. The vast majority of Alerans lived in steadholts in the countryside, and few of them possessed anywhere near the talent Bernard did in even one form of furycrafting, much less two. Amara had formed a habit of learning new skills, thanks to her Cursor training, but the lessons had served mostly to make her acutely aware of how much she didn't know.

She had little choice, though. There were only three of them, and even if Gaius had the necessary skill-which she doubted-he would have difficulty enough simply holding the pace.