Lewin did not remember how or whether Sir Esthazas accepted the apology. He was too busy mounting up, and as he did, examining the trail before him. Some of the rougher parts seemed to have been worked at with hammer and chisel. To make an impossible passage merely difficult, or to slow what might have been a quick march, to keep enemies within ambush range longer? Dwarven work, either way, in this part of the Khalkist Mountains.
Sir Lewin prodded his mount into movement, and took his place in the rear of the column.
“Have we a clear road home?” Rynthala asked.
“To Belkuthas?” Darin said, meeting question with question.
“Of course.”
“Never think ‘of course’ when leading warriors,” Darin said. “Seldom will all your band see a matter the same way. Always say exactly what you mean.”
“Well, then I will say that you seem to have appointed yourself my teacher in war. You also address me as a child.”
“Which offends you more?”
If Rynthala had thought this splendid warrior capable of a jest, she would have taxed him with making a rather foolish one. However, it had become her firm conviction that Sir Darin Waydolson had no vestige of humor in his composition.
“If you have eyes, you can see that I am no child. It might be harder to tell what experience I have in war.”
“By your own words, you ride at the head of a war band for the first time in your life.”
Rynthala wanted to shake some of the literalness out of that splendid head. However, shaking Sir Darin would be a task somewhat akin to shaking a full-grown pine tree. Rynthala knew herself to be no weakling, but not adequate to such a job.
“Very well. I say you give advice whether I ask or not.”
“Also, I give it when you are uneasy about something that has nothing to do with today’s battle. This makes you less willing to listen gracefully.
“Is the matter that concerns you the elven embassy coming to Belkuthas? The council of war did speak of it in confidence, but they spoke of it at all only because you mentioned it. So I think I violate no confidence by asking you.”
Darin had used about five words for every two he had really needed, and remained unsmiling and sober the while. However, he had also gone to some lengths to be polite. Rynthala decided she would repay him in the same coin.
“I had not thought I was so uneasy as that, but yes, the embassy is much on my mind. If anything happens to it to give Lauthin a grievance, that grievance will be against my parents. Never mind if it happens three days’ travel from Belkuthas; he will say that somehow they ought to have prevented it.
“Then the Silvanesti will have their excuse to move against my parents. They hate half-elves, those who rule in the south now do. They hate them more than they hate humans or Kagonesti, or even the kingpriest!”
Darin’s massive hands twitched. In another man, Rynthala would have said he was about to try taking her in his arms. She had a full quiver of ways to deal with unwanted attentions, but wondered if any of them would work against a man of Darin’s size. On the other hand, he seemed very unlikely to offer such attentions, and, if he did, she was of two minds about whether to take offense.
Darin instead put his hands behind his back. Then he looked at her with an intensity that held no hint of desire, but appealed far more than if it had.
“Your family’s honor stands in the balance, then?”
“Yes, against enemies where in justice one might have hoped for friends. Can you help?”
“Your family’s honor will be as sacred to us as our own, if we become their guests.” Rynthala tried to keep her face still, and Darin rewarded her by going on. “Even before we are guests, we all wish peace in this land, and therefore no harm to the elves.
“Of course, they may feel we are more likely to do them harm than give them protection. I have yet to hear of Silvanesti admitting they could not deal with any and all foes. But if we can protect them without their noticing, I am sure we shall do as much good as necessary without having to waste time arguing.”
Rynthala heard indignation in Darin’s voice, and thought she saw a hint of a wry smile on his face. Perhaps he was not altogether without feelings-or even humor.
Weariness and an unease that was not quite yet fear ate at High Captain Zephros, from within and without. He felt as if he were infested with both worms and fleas.
Nothing about this journey into the sun-blasted wilderness had been agreeable. He had ceased to be surprised by bad luck; if he had not, he would have ceased to be leader even of this motley array of mutineers, deserters, and street scourings.
That might still come about, as a result of this day’s fighting. His men counted fourteen dead and more than forty hurt, some of whom would need burial rather than healing before the last moon set. They had needed to ask for a truce to remove his losses, which by law and custom gave the victory to the enemy.
An enemy, moreover, consisting of flea-ridden desert barbarians without civilized leadership, and Solamnics under Pirvan the Thief, called a knight, but in truth the worst enemy the kingpriest had. Zephros had had a chance to remove that thorn in Istar’s side, and all he had to show for it was a casualty list of the kind that had driven stouter warriors into desertion or flight.
Zephros’s hearing was acute, and the desert night was silent, with even the normal camp noises subdued. So he heard the footsteps outside his tent and the sentry’s challenge, then a sudden silence. At that silence he drew his sword, remembered in time to save his dignity that a tent wall offered no protection for a man’s back, and met the visitors standing beside his camp table.
There were two of them. One was a Captain Luferinus, of an old Solamnic family that had curiously never produced a knight of any order. He was outspoken in his praise of the kingpriest’s goals and power; whether this had been rewarded in Istar, no one knew. Rumors did run that he knew more about the Servants of Silence than it had been safe to say aloud these past ten years.
The other was a figure in a brown robe with a hood, of almost elven slenderness but otherwise ambiguous as to race, sex, and much else that distinguished one person from another. Zephros decided to call him “he,” and feigning politeness, lit a second candle from the one already on his table.
That only showed him that the face within the cowl was still in shadow. It had to be a trick of the light or his fatigue, but Zephros thought there might be only shadow where the face ought to be.
“Greetings. Forgive my poor hospitality, but the wine is all gone to the hurt, and the hour is late. I will listen if you are brief.” His servant unfolded two camp stools, then at a nod from Zephros departed, with a cautious backward look at the hooded man.
Luferinus was the first to speak. “Zephros, I do not believe those we both serve will be happy with today’s events.”
“Not unless they are fools, which I think we all agree they are not.”
“They are, if they leave you in sole command here,” rasped the shadow face. Zephros would have made a gesture of aversion if he had not been too angry to think of one.
“Oh, and you can do better?”
“You shall do better, guided by myself and Captain Luferinus.” Again the voice had the quality of a rusty file grating across crumbling stone. After listening to only those few words, Zephros already had the beginning of a headache.
“Who are you?”
Both visitors were silent.
Zephros’s headache grew worse.
Emboldened and angered at once, he stepped forward and attempted to push the brown cowl back from the shadow face. Instead, he stopped with his hands in midair as the cowl fell back of its own will.
The face staring at Zephros had once been human. Now the skin was ridged and leathery, the eyes narrow with the slit pupils of some thoroughly unwholesome reptile, and the scalp quite hairless, with a faintly oily sheen to it. There were no external ears, only silver discs where they should have been, and the few teeth revealed in a ghastly parody of a smile were also silver.