himself through four unbalanced strides, then fell against the near gelding’s neck, desperate to pinch shut its nostrils.
The horse jerked up its nose. Arithon muffled its muzzle scarcely in time, then grabbed the bay and noosed its jaw before it could blast out a full-throated whinny. Wrestling the animals’ headshaking resistance, he crooned a masterbard’s phrase that would quell agitation and quiet them. Shortly, he shared what their keen equine ears had thankfully detected before him. Up the Baiyen Gap from the low country came a soprano jingle of metal. Then the grate of shod hooves clipped a wind-scoured rock. A male voice bellowed a testy command, hailing a party of townborn companions to close a gap between stragglers.
Arithon shut his eyes in distress. The impossible had overtaken him as he slept: Jaelot’s patrols had fared through the throat of the storm in pursuit of the Spinner of Darkness. Such relentless dedication bespoke a more sinister motive than the hatred of Jaelot’s mayor. Luhaine’s dire warning had proved true with a vengeance: Koriani sigils no doubt were at play, driving men to the chase past the bounds of practical sense.
Their approach was too close for flight or defense. Shaken to clammy sweat, Arithon had no choice but trust to hope that the banked snowdrift would obscure the rock cranny which sheltered him.
His first hope languished as the lead rider rounded the flank of the hillside. ‘There’s a crook in this corrie. Best check it out, if only to see if there’s game we can flush for the stewpot.’
The snort of a horse ripped the glen’s pristine quiet. In the cave’s recessed dimness, Arithon kept his tight grip on the restive geldings. The bard’s tricks that silenced them would scarcely serve, now. He had to force the animals to stay quiet as the small column of men turned off the Baiyen and wound their way up the gulch toward the spring.
‘After five fruitless days scouring the back sides of snowdrifts, hell, it’s high time we found something,’ one man complained to his fellows.
Someone else cracked a jibe to coarse laughter.
‘Praise fate we’ve seen nothing,’ called another. ‘Me, I’d far rather an empty trail, than stumbling across a pack o’ queer lights and strange haunts.’
‘No more loose talk!’ reprimanded the captain. ‘Next clown who so much as mentions a ghost gets dragged butt side down from his saddle.’
‘Why not just press on?’ someone else said, disheartened. ‘Old storm’s whisked away any sign of a track.’
‘Demons don’t leave tracks,’ a companion groused back.
‘Well, their horses do.’ A purposeful creak of leather punched through the dell as someone else in authority dismounted.
Arithon picked up the thin chink of a sword scabbard, then recognized the coastal twang of the mayor’s skilled huntsman, apparently signed on as a tracker. An interval passed, filled in by the wind, while the masterful woodsman whisked off the new snow. He took thorough care, and finally encountered a hoof-trodden patch of bared ice. ‘Uncanny creatures don’t leave behind frozen piles of horse dung, now do they? And look here. That’s broken ice. At least two beasts paused and drank at this spring. They stayed for some time. The twigs on those aspens are browsed back to stubs.’
The burred bass of Jaelot’s guard captain held a ring of unnatural excitement. ‘How long since he left?’
Through the hiss of a gust, the considered reply, ‘I’d say the demon sorcerer moved on at least two days ahead of us.’ The tracker slapped snow from wet gloves and stood up. ‘Press hard, we could overtake him.’
The guard captain responded with a shouted command for the men by the spring to ride on. ‘This trail threads the pass across Baiyen Gap. Once through to the barrens, the Spinner of Darkness could go nowhere else but the haunted towers that still stand at Ithamon.’
‘We don’t get to camp here?’ the whiner said, hopeful, while his mount guzzled water. ‘Just once, we could sleep out of the Ath-forsaken wind. Why not take advantage of shelter?’
‘No camp!’ snapped the captain before the suggestion started a pleading chorus. ‘We’ve got maybe six hours left before sundown, and no cause to waste a clear day. Too soon, we’ll be facing the teeth of the next storm.’
‘Send a messenger back to guide the supply train,’ the huntsman suggested, too pragmatic to waste opportunity. ‘They can make good use of this campsite, and chop a few logs to bolster our store of firewood.’
‘Carlis!’ barked the captain above the descant jingle of bits, and the thuds as the horses were wheeled about in departure. ‘Carry the word back, and warn the supply sergeant I don’t want to run short of fodder!’
The noise of the retreating company diminished, combed through by the sigh of the wind. In the cave, wrung to shaking, Arithon released the noses of his two geldings. He sat, faint and dizzied, his first rush of relief accompanied by tearing anxiety. The rock lair had hidden him, just barely. Saved by the fact he was too ill to move, and sheltered behind an ephemeral veiling of snowdrift, he knew his bolt-hole could never withstand the close presence of an encamped supply train. He needed to move, and far worse than that: he dared not allow the precarious position of being caught between two hostile companies.
‘Damn and damn, as Dakar would say.’ His straits had gone from bad to untenable. Baiyen Gap offered the only fast route through the Skyshiels, and his pursuit, now ahead, blocked the way to his haven at Ithamon. Their armed numbers posed an unknown impediment. He could not fight through them, however few; not by himself with his sword hand crippled. Nor could he hope to outmatch their pace if he left the known gap and tried the rough passage through the storm-whipped peaks of the Skyshiels.
That problem a looming, insoluble impasse, he confronted the immediate danger of the supply company due to arrive in his lap before nightfall.
His promise to Luhaine seemed an act of blind folly. Wretched and shivering and weak at the knees, Arithon rested his forehead against his crossed wrists and fought back crushing disheartenment. Each step led him on to more bitter setback. The taint of fresh blood on his hand informed that his stopgap handling of the geldings had undone his fresh job of bandaging. A clench of nausea roiled his gut. He suppressed it, his will fueled by savage, deep rage. The prospect of what lay ahead of him sickened him more than the pain of his mangled hand. Nor would he weep, though regret burned bone deep for the words he had spoken before Asandir, years past on the desolate sands of Athir.
‘To stay alive, to survive by any expedient …’ he had whispered over the sting of the knife that bound him to irreversible blood-bonded surety.
The cost of Athera’s need must be paid, yet again, in an untold number of lives. Rathain’s prince railed at fate. His rage had no target. His heart could but cry, hagridden by the royal gift of compassion bred into the breath and the bone of him.
‘Forgive,’ he whispered to the stolid pair of geldings, who asked nothing more than grain and animal comfort. For there was no kind turning, no gentle release. Once again, s’Ffalenn cleverness must spin deadly traps, ever condemned to a curse-fated dance with the fervor of Alliance hatred.
‘Ath, oh Ath Creator, forgive!’ Racked by a despair beyond words or expression, Arithon forced himself to his feet. In aching sorrow, he turned his mind and scant resources to master the most ugly expedient.
The strategy he designed was disarmingly simple; and sickened him, body and mind through each step required in advance preparation.
The supply train labored, beasts mired to the hocks in fresh drifts, while their drovers startled and cursed. The Baiyen Gap was no place for the townborn. Even the wind through the firs seemed ill set, moaning in voices against them. The high peaks laddered with ice frowned and brooded, standing sentinel over the ledged ribbon of road laid by the great centaur masons. Words seemed an intrusion the gusts whisked away, and the clangor of shod hooves upon uncanny stone rang with ill-omened warning.
Nerve