Egrin’s own remarks to his men were very brief. Lifting his dagger high, he invoked the bison-headed god of battle, declaring, “May Corij ride with you all!”
The elves of Silvanost were known to sing as they marched, and the dwarves of Thorin went to battle blowing horns and beating enormous brazen gongs. It was traditional for the hordes of Ergoth to ride in silence. They spread out across the land like a flood, and the wordless, inexorable block of saber-wielding horsemen brought great fear to its enemies. The countryside ahead of an advancing horde emptied of travelers, traders, bandits, and brigands. Game animals fled the massive onrush of metal and men. For leagues in advance of an Ergothian army, all was still and empty. Farmers abandoned their fields and bolted themselves in their huts. Even insatiably curious kender stayed clear of the army’s leading elements, but they were drawn to the long, winding baggage train behind it as ants are drawn to a trail of honey.
Juramona was located ten leagues north of the headwaters of the Caer River’s twin branches. Working from maps drawn in the Silvanesti style, Egrin chose as his line of march a trail that arrowed south, toward the confluence of the two branches. The other two segments of Juramona’s army swung east, a longer but easier route. They would skirt the tip of the river’s eastern fork, then angle south-southwest for Caergoth. Egrin’s route required fording the river, but it cut a full day off the journey, insuring his men would arrive at the crown prince’s camp before the other two columns.
The land between Juramona and the great confluence was friendly territory, though devoid of settlements and nearly empty of people. Fine weather favored their advance. Towering masses of white clouds rose up like fortresses in the air, separated by clear blue. Gently rolling grasslands provided plenty of fodder for their animals, and Egrin sent his shilder ahead of the main body to scout the line of march.
After two days’ travel, Tol found himself nearing the confluence in a group of six shilder under the command of Relfas. The red-haired youth was the youngest son of the noble and wealthy house of Dirinmor. Relfas’s patrol was charged with finding a likely fording place. Relfas had split up his small band, ordering the shilder to reconnoiter singly.
Tol rode over a stony hilltop and saw the meeting of the two river branches below. Converging from either side of the bluff, the western and eastern streams formed the mighty Caer, which flowed by the walls of Caergoth. Cattle were watering on the western bank. Herders moved among them, swatting slow beasts with long willow switches.
Tol’s presence did not go unnoticed. Dogs barked an alarm. The herders spotted Tol silhouetted against the sky and took fright. They drove their animals from the water, hurrying the beasts west over the next hill, and were out of sight in a trice. They knew warriors of any allegiance meant danger. Under imperial law, hordes could confiscate any provisions they needed from the local population. They were supposed to pay for what they took, but in practice few did so.
Though the herders couldn’t know it, their cattle were in no danger from Egrin’s men. The herd was on the west side of the river, and Egrin’s force was riding east. It was fortunate they didn’t need to ford the western branch. The West Caer was narrow here but deep and very swift. Huge square boulders, gray as beaten iron, dotted the surface of the water and broke the flow into foam. The sound of rushing water was loud.
Tol was about to descend the hill on the east side when something caught his eye. It was a ruin of some sort. He could see worked stone protruding from a tangle of ivy: cut blocks still layered one atop the other, and the stumps of massive columns, all of the same dark gray stone as the boulders in the river. Curious, he directed Smoke off the well-worn trail for a closer look.
As he drew nearer, Tol saw the ruins were very old indeed. The stonework was extremely weathered and had lain undisturbed for countless centuries.
The vines soon grew too thick for him to proceed further on horseback, so he dismounted and tied Smoke to a convenient sapling, slashing his way through the undergrowth with broad swipes of his saber.
What he’d taken for a foundation stone turned out to be the stump of an enormous column, so wide he could have lain across it and still had room to spare at head and heels. The waist-high column had a spiral groove as wide as his hand cut into it. Up close he could see it was made of bluestone. Farm boy that he was, Tol despised the pale blue rock. Turned up in a field, the hard stone could easily break a hoe blade or plow. Old Kinzen, the root-doctor in Tol’s neck of the woods, called the blue rock Irdasen-stone of the Irda.
Those long ago masters of the world, called “the beautiful Irda” by storytellers, had supposedly been kin to the gods. Yet they had fallen into evil ways and been destroyed by their own corruption and black desires.
Tol circled the broken column. Tumbled among the choking weeds were more fragments of bluestone. Great blocks as big as a tall horse were cut with dovetail mortises and tenons of impossible size. These Irda must have been giants, or else had giants to do their building for them.
A piercing whistle signaled Relfas’s recall. As Tol turned to go, the glint of metal halted him. The reflection came from a circular hole in the underside of an upturned block. Thinking he might find an ancient coin, he probed the hole with the tip of his saber. It was only elbow-deep, and seemed snake- and spider-free. He pushed back the sleeve of his ring mail shirt and eased his gloved hand inside. He found what he sought-metal, hard to the touch-and withdrew it from its stony hiding place.
It was a circlet made of three kinds of metal braided together like a woman’s hair-a dark reddish metal intertwined with silver and gold. As thick as his smallest finger, it fit easily in the palm of his hand. The circlet’s two free ends were joined by a spherical bead of the odd red metal. On the bead was etched a complex pattern of angular lines and curving whorls. Completely filling the center of the circlet was a piece of black crystal.
If this was a relic of the Irda, it had to be uncounted generations old. Yet it was completely unblemished by tarnish or corrosion. Its strange markings flashed in the sun like the facets of a gemstone. It was surprisingly lightweight, not heavy as might be expected of gold or bronze.
Tol held the circlet up to the sun and squinted through the center. The crystal did not blot out the bright orb of the sun, merely darkened the distant fire to a bearable level. Tol thought the crystal must be glass rather than a black gem like jet or night jade, because it was flat and dull, not shiny at all.
The whistle sounded again, and Tol slipped the ancient artifact into his belt pouch. He untied Smoke’s reins from the slender elm tree, mounted, and galloped up the hill to meet his comrades.
Relfas, his freckled face red from heat and sheened with sweat, grumpily asked why Tol had taken so long to return. Tol pleaded the noise of the river’s rush as the reason he hadn’t heard the recall at first.
“Well, we found a crossing,” Relfas told him. “The warden’s sent word we’re to join up, right away!”
The Rooks and Eagles rejoined at the ford Relfas’s scouts had located. Everyone made it safely across, and the quick splash through cold water was welcomed by men and horses alike.
Because their wing of the army was so far ahead of the others, Egrin called an early halt to the march, well before sundown. They pitched camp and fortified it with a ring of sharpened palings to prevent surprise cavalry attacks. When the hedge was finished, Egrin ordered more riding drill for the shield-bearers. Groaning and complaining after a full day in the saddle, the youths went off to practice formation riding and mounted sword fighting until well past dark.