A few moments later, Naraka's scout gave the alarm cry. The patrol leader started barking orders, and the rest of his men clattered down into the willows, their ponies whinnying at the freezing water.
"They will certainly turn back soon," Rishi whispered. "These Edenvale Mar have no determination."
Rishi steered the yaks down a meandering labyrinth of narrow tunnel-like passages, always working to keep a screen of thickets between them and their pursuers. They passed a snow-covered hummock, and the yaks stopped and started to nose for grass. Rishi cursed the lead animal softly and slapped its neck. The reluctant beast finally turned away and continued forward.
Naraka's patrol stayed close behind, splashing through the swamp in a long, evenly spaced line. Rishi kept looking back over his shoulder and scowling, then turning to Atreus to reassure him that their pursuers would soon give up. Instead, the ponies drew ever nearer, whinnying and snorting with every step. Atreus could well understand their displeasure. He could not keep his own feet from dragging in the frigid swamp, and they had become little more than frozen weights. Only Yago, with his thick layer of ogre fat, seemed as unaffected by the cold as the shaggy yaks.
After a time, the sky started to gray with oncoming dusk. A chill breeze rose from the east and wafted across the swamp. Atreus and Rishi fell to shivering, and even Yago commented once or twice on the cold. Behind them, the ponies grew quiet, save for an occasional splash when one stumbled and spilled its rider into the water.
At last, Naraka began to shout orders in Maran, his voice echoing through the swamp first in one direction, then the other. Rishi sighed in relief, as he guided the yaks into the heart of the willow thicket and stopped.
"Naraka is calling his men to him," the Mar explained. "They will certainly turn back now."
As the ponies splashed toward Naraka's voice, Atreus allowed himself the luxury of lifting his sodden boots out of the water. Though his feet felt as heavy and dead as stones, his lower legs were throbbing stumps of cold pain. His thighs ached from squeezing his mount, and the effort of balancing the heavy coffer had numbed his shoulders with fatigue. He could not imagine passing the night in this cold swamp, and yet he did not see how they could spend it anywhere else.
The splashing slowly faded as the last of Naraka's men rejoined the patrol, and the swamp fell ominously silent. After a few moments, the sound of murmuring voices began to filter through the willows, occasionally punctuated by the soft crackle of snapping sticks.
"The fiend," Rishi hissed. "Does he care nothing for his men and his ponies?"
"What's he doing?" Yago asked.
"Preparing a camp." Rishi shook his head sadly, then cast an accusatory glance in Atreus's direction. "How unfortunate the good sir did not kill him when he had the chance. His mercy will cost us many hours of cold misery and perhaps a few toes as well."
Rishi urged the yaks onto a small hummock in the heart of the thicket. The hungry beasts immediately pawed through the snow and began to tear at the mossy grass beneath. The Mar slid off his mount, freeing the rucksack with a single tug on the rope.
"Hurry. We must make camp before dark." Rishi turned to Yago. "The marsh is full of good things to eat. If you go down by the water, I am sure you will catch something."
"Eels?" Yago licked his lips. Whole raw eels were an ogre delicacy, second only to bear brains. "I could swallow a dozen of them at once!"
"Fish," Rishi said. "I fear the water is too cold for eels."
The ogre's face fell, but he went to kneel at the water's edge. Atreus dropped his treasure coffer into the snow, then swung an aching leg over the yak's shoulders and slid to the ground. The impact sent waves of agony shooting up his cold legs, but he felt no sensation at all in his feet.
"There is no need for concern," Rishi said, eyeing Atreus's clumsy limp. "The feeling will come back when you start to move."
Rishi passed him an extra cloak from the rucksack and set to work stomping down a place to sleep. Atreus took the sword and began to cut willows for insulation. As promised, the feeling soon returned to Atreus's feet, and he wished it had not. The flesh felt as if it were on fire, and the bones underneath ached with the cold. He hacked all the harder.
The light was just starting to fade when a sporadic series of screeches and agonized whinnies echoed across the swamp. Hardly able to believe the awful sound was being made by ponies, Atreus stopped work and looked up. In the twilight sky, he could barely make out three distant columns of smoke.
"In the name of Sune," Atreus gasped. "What's Naraka doing? Burning his ponies alive?"
"That is no doubt what the poor beasts fear, but we are not to be so lucky," said Rishi. "The ponies must be warmed and dried before the night turns cold, or ice will form on their legs and perhaps cripple them before morning."
Atreus glanced at the grazing yaks, who seemed quite content with the snowy ice balls hanging from their shaggy legs.
"Oh no, do not worry about the yaks," laughed Rishi. "For them, cold is better. If not for us, they could keep going all night."
This turned Atreus's thoughts to his own soggy feet. He cleared a place for a fire and gathered several handfuls of brown grass from under the hummock's heavy thatch. Rishi looked increasingly distressed as Atreus began to stack dead willow stalks next to the fire pit. When he withdrew his flint and steel from the rucksack, the Mar could contain his alarm no longer.
"Excuse me, but surely the good sir is not thinking of making a fire."
"He is doing more than thinking of it," Atreus replied. "His feet are wet and cold, and he wants to be able walk when he gets out of this swamp."
Rishi paled. "Perhaps the good sir is unaccustomed to the trials of being a fugitive. Even if the patrol cannot see the fire's light, we are upwind. They will smell the smoke and follow it to us."
Atreus turned toward the frigid channel, where Yago was kneeling on the shore with his arm thrust into the swamp up to the elbow. "Through that water? Impossible!"
Rishi calmly removed his boots and trousers, stepped past Yago, and waded out into the icy swamp. He turned to face Atreus. "How l-long would you like me to stay?"
Yago raised his brow at the Mar's strange behavior, then gasped and looked back into the water. There was a brief splash, and he flipped an odd two-foot fish up onto the hummock. With a bulldog jaw and a long round body striped with brown and yellow scales, the thing looked like a hybrid of catfish and grayling. As soon as it hit the snow, it began to flop about, working its way back toward the water.
Yago lunged up the hill to pin down his catch, and Atreus turned back to Rishi.
"All right, no fire." He waved the Mar out of the water. "But I thought you said Edenvale Mar had no determination?"
"I do not think Naraka is from Edenvale." Rishi climbed ashore and began drying his legs with grass. "But he will certainly turn back in the morning. He is only hoping we will be foolish enough to make a fire tonight and lead him to us."
Yago looked at his catch. "No fire?"
Atreus put the flint and steel away. "Afraid not."
"Great," the ogre grumbled. "As if eatin' fish wasn't bad enough."
He killed the swamp fish with a bite to the back of the neck, then began to devour it, scales and all. Atreus and Rishi made do with a dinner of raw barley in warm yak milk, and the sun vanished, plunging the camp into chilling darkness. Rishi brought the yaks over to the bed he had prepared, forcing them to lie down about three feet apart, with their backs toward each other and their heads at opposite ends. He tethered them in place by tying each beast's lead to the tail of the other one.