“We have blankets!” Kiya retorted. She was shouting, too, of course.
“It’s for the horse!”
“What horse?”
Miya, flushed from her exertions, paused in the open doorway. “You don’t intend to walk all the way to Daltigoth, do you?”
“I’ve done it before!”
Tol dragged the blanket off his back. “We’re not going to Daltigoth,” he said, waving away the clouds of dust. “And if we buy horses, we’ll buy blankets for them, too.”
“Then give it back!”
Kiya snatched the heavy cloth and flung it at Miya. The latter stood aside and let it go winging into the hut’s interior. From within came Eli’s howl of protest. The boy stomped out and threw the blanket at Miya’s feet.
“How do you stand it?” Egrin asked, his mouth close to Tol’s ear.
Tol smiled. “You get used to it. If they didn’t shout at each other every day, I’d think I’d gone deaf.”
By midday Tol had worked the “take” pile down to three bundles of manageable size, one for each of them to carry. The chosen equipment was spare indeed-a water bottle each, a bedroll, dried and smoked rations for the road.
Egrin asked about weapons, and Tol went inside. He stood on a block of firewood and reached up into the rafters, halfway between the chimney vent and eaves. Visibly alarmed, Miya asked what he was doing.
“Fetching Number Six.” This was the remarkable steel saber he’d been given by a dwarf merchant, after Tol’s party saved the dwarves from bandits in the Harrow Sky hill country.
Miya hurried over. “I’ll get it for you!”
Before she reached him, the tip of Tol’s buckskin-wrapped bundle snagged on something further down the rafter. A small leather box fell to the dirt floor.
Miya tried to pick up the box, but Tol’s hand closed over it first. He opened the box. For the first time in six years he beheld the millstone, the ancient Irda artifact that possessed the ability to absorb any magic directed at the one who possessed it. After gazing at it for a silent moment, he tugged a small leather bag from under his sash belt. After dumping out its contents-four silver coins-Tol put the millstone in and tucked the bag inside his pack.
Miya’s eyes were screwed shut, her body braced to receive his fury, but it never came. Instead, he patted her cheek. Her eyes flew open in shock. At that moment Egrin and Kiya entered.
“What’s this?” Kiya sputtered.
“Just thanking Miya for keeping my weapons safe and sound,” he said, winking. Miya’s face was bright red. “You know me, I don’t always take proper care of these things.”
He handed the leather-wrapped sword to Egrin. The old marshal had seen the box overturned on the floor and recognized it as the one Eli had been playing with. He said nothing, only freed the saber from the oily buckskin. The iron hilt was frosted with tiny flecks of rust, which oil and sand would soon remove. Number Six’s blade still had the slight bend it had acquired in a battle with Mandes’s mercenaries, six and a half years ago.
Egrin presented the hilt to his friend. “Your sword, Lord Tolandruth.”
Tol took Number Six. “Thank you, Lord Egrin,” he said wryly.
By midafternoon the trio was nearly ready to depart. Egrin was alone in the sod hut with the Dom-shu sisters, as Tol said his farewells to Eli outside. Once more, Egrin found himself the unwitting cause of an argument between members of Tol’s family.
The old warrior was nearly ready to join Tol outside, when he noticed Kiya holding a piece of jewelry. Crouched by her pack, she was wrapping a beaded headband in soft leather before packing it. The headband was very fine: multicolored beads worked in an intricate pattern, with a fringe of tiny, carved ivory animals on its lower edge. Its ties were as long as Egrin’s forearm, and were decorated with more carved beads and ivory animals. When he commented on its beauty, Kiya’s reaction-and Miya’s-took him by surprise.
“Jewelry?” Miya exclaimed, hurrying over to investigate: “Sister owns no jewelry, except-”
“Shut up!” Kiya snapped.
Miya demanded, “Why are you taking your burial beads?”
Although Egrin didn’t know the particulars, the term “burial beads” certainly had a gloomy ring to it. However, Kiya brushed aside Miya’s question, reminding her that they were going off to fight, after all.
“Besides,” the elder Dom-shu added, directing a glare first at Miya and then Egrin, “it is my concern and no one else’s.”
Egrin nodded quickly, embarrassed to have intruded on such a private matter. Miya gave her sister glare for glare, but said nothing more.
Outside, they found Tol kneeling by Eli. The boy was trying not to cry but he was failing. When his mother appeared, he hurried to her and held her hand tightly.
Chief Voyarunta and his senior warriors had come to see the travelers off. The crow’s feet had vanished from the chief’s eyes. His hair was now yellow streaked with white. Yellow stubble sprouting from his chin.
“Son of My Life, it pains me to see you go,” Voyarunta declared. He embraced Tol Dom-shu fashion, clapping a hand on the Ergothian’s broad back.
Tol nodded. “I thank you, Father of My Life. Your kindness has been boundless.” He waited, prepared to receive whatever wisdom the forester chief felt appropriate, but Voyarunta’s next words caught him by surprise.
Dark blue eyes agleam with ancient ferocity, the chief said, “Take back what is yours, Son of My Life. You are a warrior of warriors, a bear among dogs. Do not let a few curs steal your glory. Your land was made by the sword-by the sword it can be saved, and you with it.”
Egrin wanted to shout agreement, but solemn silence seemed more suitable to the moment. Tol’s thoughts were unreadable. He stood back from the chief and saluted him, open handed.
Voyarunta embraced Kiya, too, adding an affectionate chuck on the chin.
“No wise words for me, Father?”
“What can I tell one wiser and braver than me?”
The praise was so unexpected that Kiya stared open-mouthed at him. Grinning, he added, “The gods walk at this man’s heels. Stay by him, and some of their favor may fall upon you, too.”
Without further ado, Voyarunta departed.
Eli fled into the hut, unable to watch his aunt and uncle leave, and only Miya remained to watch the three shoulder their packs and walk away. Tol waved good-bye to her, as he had many times since coming to the forest. Always before he’d been going hunting or fishing, or just roaming the woodland. Now he was traveling much farther, heading deliberately into harm’s way.
Miya waved back. In her other hand, she held the empty leather box.
Chapter 5
Like a stone falling into a quiet pool, the conquest of Juramona sent ripples of fear and excitement across the empire and beyond. Fear filled the hearts of ordinary Ergothians.
The nomad army was an army in only the loosest sense of the word. The disparate tribes were held together by a common desire for victory against the empire that had taken lands across which nomads once had roamed freely-that, and a desire for plunder. Their heady success induced many nomads to dream of taking the greater cities of the south and west, such as Caergoth and Thorngoth. The imperial army, hammered by the bakali at the bend of the Solvin River, was nowhere to be found in the Eastern Hundred.
Spring gave way to summer’s heat. The vast open country of the Eastern and Mountain hundreds baked under the remorseless sun. Towering fortresses of cloud, sculpted white against the steamy blue sky, sailed overhead but yielded no rain. The dry season was upon the land, the time of dust and fire.
Tol and his two friends emerged from the Great Green into the midday glare of the sun. They stepped out of the trees and into the great open field known to the Dom-shu as the Lake of Flowers, and to the Ergothians as-