When Tol, Lord Enkian, and his entourage returned to the wagons on the Ackal Path, they found everyone there also awake and unharmed. Kiya and Miya, Narren and the foot guards, and the wagoners and their beasts were all well. Whatever spell Morthur had used, it seemed to have no lasting ill effect.
Lord Enkian ordered the body of Morthur Dermount put in a keg of vinegar to preserve it. The marshal intended to present the corpse to the emperor, as proof the long-hunted traitor was at last dead.
Tol’s rescue of the marshal had a profound affect on Enkian’s view of him. The marshal had always regarded Tol as a peasant favored above his station-good fodder for the city guards, but hardly the equal of warriors born to ride with the Great Horde. His successes in the Great Green, Enkian felt, should be attributed to luck, nothing more. A caprice of the gods had allowed him to capture the Silvanesti agent, Kirstalothan, and the Dom-shu chief. He was nothing special.
However, his own rescue and the death of Morthur Dermount changed all that. During the rest of the journey to the imperial capital, Lord Enkian turned the incident over and over in his nimble mind. He kept arriving at the same conclusion.
Tol of Juramona was a very dangerous man.
Chapter 12
A cold drizzle had been falling all night and day. The paved road made traveling easier, but there was no shelter for those on foot. Tol tramped along at the head of his men, cloaked to the eyes, his whole body soaked. There seemed little prospect of getting dry short of Daltigoth.
The Juramona delegation reached an enormous stone bridge spanning the eastern tributary of the Dalti River. Twice the width of the road, the bridge was nonetheless clogged with anxious and irritated travelers. Horses, mules, oxen, and people struggled in the chill rain, trying to force (in both directions) three hundred carts and wagons through a space meant for a third that number. On the walls along both edges of the bridge, men of high rank stood, shouting orders at the teeming mob at their feet. They might as well have tried to command a cloudburst; no one paid them the slightest heed.
Lord Enkian was losing his temper. Normally cool-headed, his impatience at the delay was exacerbated as he was pressed on all sides by soldiers, traders, emigrants, and foreigners of every race. He was about to order his riders to draw swords and force their way through when he spied Tol and waved him over.
“The whole world comes to Daltigoth!” Tol had to shout above the melee.
The marshal was not amused. “The doings of peasants and riff-raff do not concern me. I must enter the city before nightfall. I may have come the furthest distance, but the emperor will not be told Enkian Tumult was the last of his lords to arrive!”
“Perhaps if you took only a few retainers you could work your way through.”
“The Marshal of the Eastern Hundred does not enter the imperial capital like a Caergoth clerk, with only a handful of lackeys at his heels! I will enter with my full escort!” Enkian fixed him with a hard, unfriendly eye and added, “See to it, Tol. Disperse the mob.”
Tol knew better than to ask how he was to cleave through a crowd of harmless, quarrelsome folk without causing dangerous panic or bloodshed. “I shall do my best, my lord.”
He wended his way back to his motionless men. Miya and Kiya, in grass capes and hats, offered him a steaming cup of cider. The resourceful sisters had found someone in the supply wagons with a charcoal burner. Tol sipped the warm brew gratefully.
“What are our orders?” Narren asked.
Tol regarded his friend over the rim of the cider cup. “Lord Enkian says we must part the crowd for him, but how? We can’t go through with leveled spears!”
“Too bad that Morthur Grane fellow is dead,” Miya said. “He could magic these folk asleep, like he did us.”
Her words sparked an idea. Tol dug in his belt pouch and fished out Morthur’s sapphire ring. He was about to slide it on his finger when Kiya stopped him.
“Don’t. It is an evil ring.”
“How evil can it be? You only slept. Truly evil magic would have killed you.”
Kiya was adamant. “There are worse things than death.”
He ignored her and pushed the ring onto his finger. Holding out his hand, as he’d seen Morthur do, he waited. Nothing happened.
“Maybe there must be words spoken,” Narren suggested.
The crowd rippled, forcing Tol’s group to step lively to keep their balance on the wet pavement. Kiya climbed on a wagon wheel and peered over the heads of the mob.
“More warriors arrive,” she reported. “Their banner has two blues-one dark, one sky.”
“The Marshal of the Northern Hundred,” said Tol, removing the ring from his finger. Lord Enkian would be pleased to know he was at least ahead of them.
Miya took the ring from him, and Kiya barked, “Sister! Beware!”
The younger Dom-shu grinned, saying dismissively, “Faw, grasslander magic. This ring is as lifeless as its former owner. And it’s pretty!”
She slid the ring on over her gloved finger. It was a loose fit.
“A very fine stone,” she said smugly, and brought her hand up to admire the jewelry. She had to clench her fingers into a fist to keep the ring from sliding off and being lost in the mud underfoot.
Without a sound, Narren and Kiya collapsed, along with fifty or sixty of the nearest people. Tol caught Kiya, staggering under her weight. He propped her back against the wagon, as the ox team sighed and laid down in their traces.
A momentary hush fell over the crowd, then a woman screamed. In a circle twenty paces across centered on Miya, every living thing had dropped unconscious. Men and women, a cart full of gnomes, two kender (their hands still in others’ pockets), horses, oxen, a poulterer’s caged chickens-all lay inert. Only Tol and Miya remained upright.
Cries of “A curse!” “Poison!” “Plague!” began, low at first, then rising in volume. Panic erupted as those not stricken struggled to escape whatever baleful influence had struck so swiftly. Carters lashed their beasts, turning away from the bridge. Ahead, terrified folk trapped on the bridge leaped into the Dalti. Fortunately, though the river here was deep, it was also placid.
“Put your hand down!” Tol said sharply to Miya.
Startled by the efficacy of the magic ring, she complied immediately.
A shout went up from the west bank as the bottleneck broke open. People on horseback, in wagons or carts, and on foot burst off the end of the bridge and fanned out across the riverbank. Over the heads of the stampeding crowd, Tol could see Lord Enkian, vainly shouting orders at his mounted escort. No discipline could be maintained in such a rout. The marshal and his retainers were swept away by the rushing tide of people and wagons.
Tol took Morthur’s ring from Miya and put it away. Once the ring was safely tucked into his pouch, his comrades began to stir.
Miya squatted down by her groggy sister. “I hexed you!” she announced happily. “You went down like a rotten elm!”
“Shut up,” Kiya growled.
The others roused too. By the time they had collected themselves and shaken the wagon drivers awake, the great bridge was temporarily clear of traffic.
Tol looked back at the eastern shore. The men of the later-arriving marshal of the Northern Hundred were scattered to the horizon. It would take them half a day to regroup. To the west, toward Daltigoth, Lord Enkian had vanished from view. At least the stampede had driven them in the right direction. Despite the strangeness of their success, Tol couldn’t help but grin.