"The lord… ?"
Ils grunted. "They chose him in succession to Andvar. He thinks it a blessing not undivided."
"So it appears we have a friend in a high place," said Kermorvan, and added dryly, "or a deep one. But you, Elof, I am glad to see you whole! He had you, that spearman, but they all fell upon me ere I could help! How did you escape?"
Elof told them of how he had set the talisman, and Ansker asked to see. His gnarled fingers, like twigs of old oak, chased the dark clouds as they coursed across the hilt, traced the outline of what lay beneath. "I marvel. You were wise not to throw this thing away. But have a care! There is much of you in that blade, and in binding it there you have bound the Forest close to you. More than one virtue is held here now."
"Useful enough, was that one," said Roc cheerfully. "Seems you and my lord here kept the Ekwesh chieftain too busy to order his attack proper, left us time to split up and leg it. Then it was raining these good folk and the man-eaters legging it in their turn, and still running, I'll wager, those as can. A rare scare they've had."
"Rare, indeed," said Kasse the huntsman, his normally saturnine face keen with wonder. Then it clouded. "A shame, that this sword of yours could not throw a shadow on that fire the young fools lit. It was that called the savages down on us."
"They were not to know!" said Elof sharply, seeing Tenvar flinch and Bure turn away. The death of their friend would weigh heavy enough on them, they needed no further flaying.
"They were already waiting for us, Kasse," said Kermorvan, massaging his neck. His face was grim. "They were only choosing their moment to strike. Leave the lads alone, and let us take muster. Holvar is slain, and Maille, grievous enough. Are all the rest of us here?"
They looked, one to another, faces crusted with mud and mold and smeared blood, some grim and stern, some haggard with shock. Shoulders sagged, or quivered with shock and tension suddenly released. Elof felt himself shivering, suddenly weak, but there was only one more face he could not see. Ermahal jerked his thumb. "Per-rec's over there. Spear through his thigh meat, but the little men are caulking him fine."
"Good!" breathed Kermorvan. "I feared it might be worse. And the ponies?"
"We catch maybe four, five," volunteered a duergar warrior, "maybe more now. Bags were torn loose among trees, many. We gather them also."
Kermorvan bowed his head gratefully. "Then we may be in better state than I feared. And ever more deeply in your debt, my lord."
"Friends need not talk of debts," smiled Ansker. "As you said yourself once, we fight a common foe. Well, you are weary and hurt, but we must not linger; these lands are alive with the barbarians, and those who fled will summon a mighty horde. You must go with us a short way at least, northward beneath the mountain shadow. If the eaters of men tread there by night they will not live to learn better. Come!"
It was a weary group of travelers who filed back out of the wood and up into the hills. Many already looked longingly at the last glow of sunset in the skies above their own fair land. But the young northerners looked back toward the wood where their comrade had fallen, and the corsairs also. The smoke of a larger fire arose there now, twisting skyward against the weeping clouds. Ermahal scowled. "Let the savages see it! And make feast on their own, if they've stomach!"
Though it was less than a league the duergar led them, it seemed miles uncounted to the travelers, their limbs leaden, their wounds pulsing fire in the cool breeze. But when they staggered and slipped on the rocky slopes, a short square-built figure was always at their elbow, saying no word but bearing them up with care. The men gazed wonderingly at these stern creatures, whom they could no longer think of as vermin or idle legends. Ils held by Elof s side, and he was glad of her. Only Kermorvan, striding out with Ansker at the fore, seemed not to be weakened by their ordeal. But as he turned to look at the smoke of the burning and the wreck of his company, the horror and anger that seethed behind his eyes were not hidden from Elof.
The duergar brought them to a little dell among the slopes, hidden from view behind a screen of scrubby birches. A spring rose there among tall stones, but there was no more to be seen till one of the stones was tilted smoothly back into the hill, to reveal a wide stone chamber in the rock. "Shelters like these we make for our watchers and woodcutters," said Ansker, ushering them in, "when they go abroad in these lands, or into the Forest. Here you can rest and be healed of your hurts in safety." He looked at Kermorvan, still pale and grim, standing apart from the others. "And we may take counsel, perhaps, to help you on your way."
A fire could be lit in the wall-hearth, its smoke cunningly dispersed above the rushing waters. The company hastened to slump down around it, but Elof turned to Kermorvan, and with him Roc. Ils joined them, bearing water and salves to tend their wounds. Kermorvan sat silent and unspeaking. "You need not reproach yourself," said Elof. "How were you to know such an ambush was prepared? You took precautions enough."
Roc nodded vigorously, but Kermorvan shook his head. "I was careless, nonetheless," he said quietly. "Too much concerned with the perils of the Forest, not enough with what might be nearer at hand. But you mistake what most troubles me now. Ils, the Ekwesh force was hurrying south, you said?"
She nodded, tending a gash on Roc's cheek. "At a killing pace, even for their long limbs. A large band; those you faced today would be a tenth part of it, no more."
Kermorvan's face hardened. "So. Then they had some tryst to keep. And what, other than with us? They knew we were coming. They were summoned to picket all the likely passes, and waylay us. Summoned, aye! Another treason, another betrayal! There are still spies within the city!"
Roc swore. "And able to send word northward damned fast!"
Kermorvan nodded. "Exactly. This is no tentative gesture; it smacks of swift and deadly scheming." He shivered. "Did I hope for ten years' grace ere the Ekwesh returned?"
Roc nodded grimly. "We'll be lucky to have one! And what worth does that leave our journey? You might be better employed shaking some sense into the city…"
Elof fought to force down the laughter that welled up in him from a spring of sudden hope. "And that's what's weighing you both down? You doubt the worth of the journey? But are you too weary to see the other side of that coin? We may not know the worth, but it seems our enemies do—high enough to have them send a thousand men running to forestall it, for a start!"
Roc thumped fist into palm, Ils breathed sharply. The growing fire crackled and blazed under a caldron of water,
and as Kermorvan looked up slowly the flames shone golden in his gray eyes. "Yes. Yes, it must be so. It must! I was too weary indeed to see that, and stricken with grief." He smiled suddenly, lopsided because of his cut mouth. "Very well, we press on! And my next command as your leader is that you, Elof, and you, Roc, sit tight and let your hurts be tended. At once!"
"And you?" scolded Ils severely. "That torn mouth won't wait if you keep wagging it! You're next in line, my long lad."
That night they slept the deep sleep of utter exhaustion. The stream's rush lulled them, or perhaps there was some healing herb mixed in the strong wine of the duergar, for all were strangely free of pain or dreaming, all save Elof. He awoke near dawn from a vision he would not tell of, though his face was streaked with tears. He had seen black swan's wings again, wheeling northward against a scarlet sky of dawn, and then, just before they vanished, eastward once more. And when after daybreak they conferred with Ansker, northward was the route he bade them take. "Southward, downriver, that is barred to you now; the hunters know you are about, and can follow you out of our range. But if you turn north we can shield you awhile, and cover your tracks with our own."
Kermorvan sat deep in thought. "That is kind indeed, Lord Ansker. I thank you for it. But our way lies eastward; sooner or later we must cross the Westflood and enter the Forest. Why not here?"
Ansker nodded. "Sooner or later you must, indeed. The duergar do not often enter Aithen the Great, but we know something of it. It is a place of deep shadow and deeper mysteries; many spells and many secrets, small and great, are worked in the gloom beneath its dark canopy. It is not a land into which I would willingly send a friend. But since your quest leaves you no choice…" He drew a small brass case from the sleeve of his tunic, and opened it to unfold a long sheet of the duergar reed paper. Craning over Kermorvan's shoulder, Elof recognized the snaky backbone of the Shieldrange, drawn in finer detail than he had ever seen before. Ansker's blunt finger traced a long blue line running alongside its eastward face. "Here is Gorlafros, which flows from the very margins of the Ice to the southernmost borders of your land. Swelled by the meltwaters of the Ice, it has carved itself many wide lakes and outflows. This one, the greatest, flows through the Shieldbreach and feeds the Marshlands that Elof knows; doubtless it disgorges there many of the terrors it bears from the Ice. This far south of it the river is wholesome enough. And not so far north of here there is another outflow, almost as great. But this one flows eastward."
"Into the heart of the Forest?" exclaimed Kermorvan in excitement. "But how far, Lord Ansker? And is it navigable?"
Ansker nodded and smiled. "You are quick to grasp my meaning. Indeed it is, for vessels of shallow draft. But as to how far, I cannot tell you; the duergar have not penetrated so deeply into Tapiau'la within living memory. It is said to end in a lake, within sight of some tall mountains. That is all I can say."
"My lord, it is vastly more than we knew!" exclaimed Kermorvan, his pale face flushed, his gray eyes agleam once more. "You have given me a surer road, where I thought to find none…"
"Surer, but not safer," cautioned the duergar lord. He hunched his broad shoulders uneasily. "You may have slipped the Ekwesh from your scent, but there are other perils, perhaps worse ones. No road is safe, beneath the trees."
"But this one we will venture," said Kermorvan softly, as a silken surcoat over steel. "And since you have recovered so much of our baggage, and beasts enough to carry it, we will heed your advice, and leave soon. Within the hour, if your folk are ready."
"What about Perrec?" put in Elof. "He can ride, but he won't be fit to walk far for a long time."
"Him we must send back, I fear," said Kermorvan. "He can take such of the riding ponies as we can spare; we will keep only the baggage beasts, and set them free to make their own way south again, or into your land, Ansker. From this point forth we will fare better on foot." He touched his mouth gingerly. "I have proof of that. Beware of galloping among low branches!"
Perrec protested bitterly enough, but underneath it the corsair seemed glad enough now of an excuse to withdraw without cowardice; the broad Ekwesh spear had torn his leg so terribly that none could dispute his reason. They saw him off an hour or so later, mounted on Kermorvan's strong pony, with two other beasts and an escort of day-hardy young duergar to see him across the hills in safety. "He will say no word in the city of our chosen route," said Kermorvan grimly. "Tidings of that, at least, will not reach the ears of spies. Now let us be on our way!"
"At least we won't lack much!" said Tenvar, who had seen to loading the ponies. Elof patted the bulge of his recovered tool-pack reassuringly.
"Aye, naught but what's most needed," grunted Roc. "Do you wait and see!"
But he too was cheered, for it was a fine morning, and the sun warm and soothing upon their aching limbs. Most of the duergar, save Ils and some younger warriors, pulled hood and helm low to shade their eyes, and muttered about being frozen one minute, fried the next. Elof and Kermorvan sympathized, remembering the seasonless cool twilight under stone, and were happy enough that the duergar's chosen route north led them for the most part under cover of thick woodland, or in the twilight. "For the Ekwesh have the long sight of sailors," Kermorvan observed. "And their shamans, it is said, may call upon the service of other eyes."
Elof thought of the swan, but said nothing. He looked at Ils, deep in some converse with her father, and remembered the biting suspicion in her voice.
She is this Louhi's
, Ils had whispered,
and not yours .
. .
After a quiet journey of many days following the river, the travelers came to a fair-sized lake, the first of those that Ansker had mentioned, and passed through the dense woodlands on its banks. When they reached the far side, in the light of a gray morning, they found themselves beneath the outermost curve of the Meneth Scahas, and looking across hilly country, bleak and treeless, to a whole chain of lakes.
"Here the Open Lands live up to their name," Ansker told them. "Too open for the duergar, I fear, and too far from our mountains. It is here we must part."
"My lord," said Kermorvan fervently, "already you have done more than we would have dared ask. I cannot imagine how I could repay you, but we will not forget…"
"Hmmph!" was Ils' comment, though Ansker frowned at her. "And your folk? True, they can't forget what they won't learn!" Kermorvan flushed scarlet, with shame or anger, and she chuckled and jabbed a plump finger into his ribs. "Oh, don't worry, long man; I know you mean well…"
"And not just him!" put in Ermahal unexpectedly. "We've learned, us. And we're not what you'd call the cream of our folk. More like the dregs, all 'counts rendered! If we can, so'll others. Or take a sore brain bone, on account!"