said grimly. “They are resourceful and capable men. Take it that it was done. It was the horses they wanted, of course. Easlon has long envied us our horses. They must have hid the Lantiff’s bodies, but they were in a hurry to get away, so probably they did it in haste. Sooner or later someone will find them. The horses went north and west. Egarn went south and got caught up in the battle there. His weapon wouldn’t be of much use to him in the middle of a battlefield with enemies on all sides. Probably he had it in his hand when he fell, and it was the first thing looted—if it wasn’t covered by the debris of battle.”
The peer nodded thoughtfully. “Yes. That explains everything. The death of Egarn is the worst defeat Lant has suffered in my lifetime because I gave him my complete trust and he gave much in return and could have given more. But in the end he ranted at me—soft-livered male that he was—about the slaughter of peaceful populations, as though neighbors who train large armies and conspire against Lant are to be considered peaceful until the moment they strike. Now Lant’s army is large enough to be irresistible with or without Egarn’s weapon. We should be planning our next move. Isn’t it time to turn west?”
The first general said cautiously, “It is time to look west, perhaps.”
The peer understood what he meant. Lant had not made a successful border raid into Easlon for sikes. The mountains, gouged and twisted almost to the point of impassability—by great wars of the past, Egarn had said—were an invaluable defensive barrier but an enormous disadvantage to a peer intent on conquering her neighbors. They were as easily defended by Easlon as by Lant, and when Lant’s depredations among its neighbors increased, the Peerdom of Easlon greatly augmented its squadrons of scouts. Not only did they make the Lantian scouts pay dearly for every attempted incursion, but they so completely suppressed all efforts to obtain information that the peer’s generals did not even know whether any of the Ten Peerdoms maintained an army.
Certainly it was time to look west. The Peer of Lant reflected, with the darkly ominous scowl that had brought death and destruction crashing down on many a distant, peaceful village, that the lands beyond her other frontiers were no longer worth despoiling. Peerdoms that fancied themselves to be the next victims of Lant were hiding food and valuables and avoiding the accumulation of goods that could easily be wrested from them. They were even removing their commoners from the border regions. An army traveling in any of those directions would have to carry its own provisions.
The Ten Peerdoms, rich with wealth accumulated during sikes of peace and indolence, were ripe for plundering, but she reluctantly conceded that her cousin was right. Before exposing an army to unknown hazards, they first must take a careful look and gather information.
“A surprise raid?” she suggested. “A reconnaissance in sufficient strength to brush aside the curstuff Easlon scouts but small enough to withdraw quickly when it chooses?”
The first general agreed. A reconnaissance in force could map Easlon’s eastern province while gathering information and prisoners. If the force were large enough to crush local resistance and still small enough to travel lightly and quickly and live off the country, it could test the defenses and pick up invaluable intelligence at negligible risk.
“The Ten Peerdoms have been hiding their prosperity long enough,” the peer said. “Let’s do it.”
Half the peeragers of her court petitioned for permission to lead the raid. The peer scornfully rejected them. Her strategy for years to come would be determined by the outcome, and nothing could be permitted to go wrong. The first general would command in person. Her only concession to court clamor was to assign three of her own sons to his staff on the off chance that the dolts might learn something. After Egarn, she’d had a series of alliances with weak consorts able to beget only sons. She was in her late thirties when she finally bore the two daughters she wanted. These she had brought up in her own image, and she assigned the elder, her prince, to be the first general’s second in command.
The first general himself hand-picked the other commanders, and they hand-picked their troops. There would be a hundred Lantiff, ten scouts, a mapper and his two assistants, and a full contingent of officers.
Once the force was complete, the first general moved quickly. He sent it westward by niot in groups small enough to pass unnoticed among the armies that congregated along the entire western border. He knew Easlon’s scouts were watching the frontier alertly—perhaps even watching from within Lant—and if they became aware of the existence of such an elete force, they might suspect a raid. He would wait for an afternoon of misty fog to move through High Pass. Once his force gained the far side, it could disappear into the thick forest that covered the mountains’ western approaches.
Even if these precautions failed, the Easlon scouts certainly wouldn’t expect a reconnaissance in force to debouch from the High Pass. No one had ever succeeded in taking a horse through that hazardous gap. There had been only two known attempts to do so. In both of them, animals terrified at the treacherous footing and the pounding roar and spray of High Pass Falls had plunged to their deaths and taken their riders with them.
But the raiding party rode horses from the peer’s own stables. These beasts were superbly trained and conditioned to hardship and battle and to the discipline that both required. Med servers had rendered them mute by incising their throats. No horse’s whinny would betray this raid. Their hoofs were muffled with wrappings of cloth, a trick the prince suggested and her mother the peer proudly ordered. Finally, the horses had several days of training at being led in blinders.
They moved through the pass on foot in a heavy mist, guiding their blinded mounts along treacherous ledges, up and down steep inclines, and finally through the thundering, foaming spray of the falls. Abruptly the trail began to tilt downward. Gradually it widened. One by one they remounted, removed their horses’ blinders, and moved on at a slow walk. By the time darkness fell, all had cleared the pass. By morning the force was deep within Easlon’s eastern forest.
It moved at a leisurely pace, but its every action was severely disciplined. This was no frenzied charge at the enemy, but a stealthy, coldly calculated attack with all of its objectives carefully delineated in advance. It sheltered by dae in the dense mountain forest without so much as a sound or a wisp of smoke to betray its presence while its scouts searched surrounding hills and valleys in an attempt to capture any lurking Easlon scout before he could give an invasion alarm. They found none.
They encountered no defenses of any kind. The Peerdom of Easlon had not merely been caught napping but sound asleep. The Lantian force continued to travel by niot and shelter by dae. On the fourth niot it moved forward swiftly, and at dawn it fell upon Easlon’s most eastern community, a flourishing town called Eas.
Eas was deserted. Its granaries were empty. Even its most valuable and cumbersome object, the mill’s irreplaceable, enormous steel circular saw, had been removed and spirited off or hidden.
“The curstuff Easlon scouts saw us at least two days ago and gave warning,” the prince informed the first general. “The one-namers took their prized possessions with them.”
Even so, the loot that remained was enormously valuable. During the sikes of peace, Eas had transformed itself from a frontier village to a wealthy town. Every abode had pottery in graceful designs and colors that were wholly alien to the rough civilization across the mountains. The wall hangings were richly illustrated. Furniture in the humblest home was of a quality and style not even affected by peeragers in Lant.
They despoiled the town at their leisure and scoured the countryside for wagons that could be piled high with loot. Then they set fires and began a well-laden withdrawal toward Low Pass, the only route the wagons could negotiate.
To reach it they had to cross the foaming Stony River, and at that treacherous ford the Easlon scouts sprang their ambush. Beams of light ripped the invaders, and terrifying claps of sound crashed about them. The Lantiff knew those horrors only too well. They had used them with delight on the foes of Lant; now the same forces of death and destruction were unexpectedly turned on them, and they succumbed to a frenzy of terror. The reek of burned flesh filled the peaceful valley and terrified the horses. Easlon scouts plied Egarn’s weapon with an accuracy the armies of Lant had not