Tol had imagined war as a grim business, with hard-faced warriors gazing at the horizon, watchful for a cunning enemy. In truth, the preparations seemed more suited to a festival or fair. He saw his friend Narren among the footmen and Crake among the sutlers. Tall and lean, his heavy scale hauberk hanging from his shoulders, Narren looked calm as he leaned on his spear and listened to Durazen, mounted on a sturdy cob, rasp out marching orders. Crake, reclining on a canvas tarp covering a wagonload of beer, played dreamy airs on his flute. Tol knew Crake’s hunting bow would be stowed in the cart as well. Although he liked his ease and his pleasures, Crake never took chances. He wouldn’t dream of going into harm’s way unarmed.
Lord Odovar appeared on the back of a black charger. Sleek and powerful as he was, the animal looked strained by the massive burden he had to bear. Rumor had it the marshal weighed twenty stone-without his arms or armor.
“Poor beast,” Egrin said tersely, echoing Tol’s thoughts. “He won’t last five leagues. Odovar will be in a wagon before we reach the river Caer.”
Tol gave his own horse an affectionate pat. He still rode Smoke, the horse left behind by Spannuth Grane at Tol’s family farm. Smoke had proved to be a strong, clever beast, and Tol valued him greatly.
The whole of the army mustered outside the walls of Juramona, covering the pastures and road. Drovers lashed at unruly bullocks, and competing carters shouted and shook fists at each other as they jockeyed for position. Children and dogs ran among the files of stolid footmen who sweated in their mail jerkins. It was a sultry morning, heavy with the promise of more heat.
Odovar made a short speech that few heard, and even fewer remembered. He rode forth with his private bodyguard to the front of the three columns of horsemen. The center column was the horde known as the Plains Panthers, veterans of the civil war between Ackal and Pakin. The left wing, the Firebrand Horde, included the landed gentry and men of rank and wealth in the province. The right wing, the honor wing, was led by Egrin. Behind him rode eight hundred twenty-seven horse, including Tol and his shilder comrades. Though not a properly constituted horde, the right wing was given the name Rooks and Eagles, signifying their mixed nature-which combined youth and vigor with age and experience.
“Ho, you men!” Manzo called. “Bring out the standard!”
Two veteran warriors pushed their way on foot to the head of the column. Between them they carried the Eagle of Juramona, carved from the trunk of an ancient oak and painted in lifelike colors. It was twice the size of a normal bird, and as the men held it, a large pole was inserted into the base between its clawed feet.
“Too bad there’s no rook to go with him,” a shilder remarked.
Egrin waved his hand in a circle like a conjurer. Grinning, the warriors turned the eagle around. Rather than the same brown and gold coloring, the bird staring out from the reverse had been painted black. It was cleverly done. Viewed from one side, the figure was a soot-black rook; from the opposite side, a noble eagle.
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.