The company must have made, he guessed, an impressive sight as they rode, sunlight flashing on armor, the banners worn by the soldiers snapping. The trade road was flat and straight as it emerged from the foothills, and they let Tariic’s magebred horses run. The speed that the animals’ walking gait had hinted at was no false promise. Under a cloudless sky so bright that its blue seemed almost white, the horses raced along the road, necks outstretched and hooves drumming like music, as if running were all they had been born to do.
Away from the mountains, the land became as flat as the road, broken only by the occasional gentle hill and by streambeds that were cracked and dry with the beginning of late summer. They passed ruins frequently, not Dhakaani but human, the skeletons of farms and hamlets destroyed by Haruuc’s armies thirty years before. Fields and orchards ran wild, offering a bountiful but neglected harvest. “Where are your people?” Geth asked Chetiin. “I thought I’d see more of them.”
“Not here. Most live away from the mountains where rain falls more frequently and life is easier.”
His voice was strangely muffled and Geth glanced over his shoulder to look at him. Chetiin was facing backward, looking back the way they had come. “What is it?” Geth asked.
The shaarat’khesh elder turned to face him again. “We’re being followed.”
The road behind them was empty except for the thinning dust of their own passage. The Seawall Mountains receded in the distance, but Geth thought he could see all the way back to the pass. No one was on the road. “Where? And if we are being followed, how are they keeping up with us?”
Chetiin shook his head. “I don’t know where, but I can feel it.” His ears twitched. “And maybe they won’t keep up, but I’ll talk to Tariic anyway. We should set a double guard tonight.”
Tariic listened when Chetiin told him of his concerns, and that night they made camp with the road on one side of them and the steep gullies of a dry forking streambed on two others. They drew straws for watches, Vounn and Ashi excluded because of their inability to see in the dark. Geth drew second watch opposite Aruget. When he climbed from his bedroll, shaken awake by Midian as the gnome retired from his turn on watch, Aruget pointed him roughly to the side of the camp that faced southeast. He had already claimed the northwest side of the camp. Geth shrugged, adjusted his great gauntlet, and went where he was told. The view from either side of the camp was equally empty under the combined lights of the risen moons.
In fact, Geth had no objection to sitting watch on his own. He appreciated being alone for the first time that day. As Midian and the soldier Krakuul, who had drawn first watch, found their bedrolls and their breathing faded into the same easy rhythm as those already asleep, Geth touched the collar of rune-etched black stones he wore around his neck and looked up at the hazy brightness of the Ring of Siberys.
It was the fourth day of Barrakas. Exactly one year ago, the Bonetree hunters and their monstrous dolgrim allies had attacked Bull Hollow, the little hamlet on the remote edge of the Eldeen Reaches that had become his haven after the Last War. They had been pursuing Dandra, and they’d destroyed much of Bull Hollow in their attempt to draw her out. In the process, they had killed Adolan, the hamlet’s defender and Geth’s friend.
Geth squeezed the stones of the collar. With his last breath, Adolan had told him to take it. The collar was a relic of the sect of druids, the Gatekeepers, to which Adolan had belonged. Through his adventures in the months that followed, the ancient magic of the collar had given him protection and guidance, turning icy cold whenever he’d been threatened by the sanity-twisting forces behind the tainted dragon Dah’mir’s power.
Now it was no cooler than the night air, but it seemed to Geth that the stones were very, very heavy. He sighed and let them go. The collar fell back against his neck.
There was a rustling behind him, and he looked over his shoulder to see Ashi silhouetted against the dim glow of the banked campfire. “Can I join you?” she asked softly.
He patted the ground beside him, and she sat. “A year ago,” she said.
Get looked back up at the Ring of Siberys, at the stars and the moons. “You remembered.” She’d been among the hunters who had attacked Bull Hollow.
“How could I forget? I’m sorry, Geth.”
“You’re a friend now, Ashi. You turned your back on the Bone-tree clan. There’s nothing to apologize for. Anyway, you’ve said sorry before.” He watched the sky for a little longer, then asked, “The hunter who killed Adolan-really big, fought with an axe- what was his name?”
Ashi looked at him sideways. “You killed him.”
“I know.” The memory of that kill, of driving his sword-not Wrath then, but a plain sword from his days as a mercenary-up through the hunter’s belly and into his chest, would stay with him for a long, long time. “I still want to know his name.”
“He was Hand-wit,” said Ashi. “He wasn’t smart, but he had a steady hand for tattooing and piercing.” She tapped the rings in her lip. “He did this for me.”
“Ah,” said Geth.
Ashi was silent for a moment, then added, “It will be a year tomorrow since Medala killed my father for failing to capture Dandra at Bull Hollow. She burned his mind out while he was talking to her.”
“I know,” Geth said. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. Do you ever think about going back to Bull Hollow?”
He thought about it, then leaned back. “There’s nothing for me there but questions. Maybe I’m some kind of hero out here, but I don’t want to be a hero there-” His words were cut off by a bellow from the other side of the camp.
“Toh!” Beware!
A wet thump ended the cry, but Geth and Ashi were already on their feet. “Aruget!” shouted Geth, drawing Wrath from its scabbard. “Up! Everyone up!”
The sleeping forms by the fire thrashed and rolled from their blankets to grab for weapons, but dark figures were already rushing in on the camp. With screams of “Itaa!”-Wrath in hand, Geth heard “Attack!”-hobgoblins dressed in ragged clothing and armor came bursting out of the dry gully on his side of the camp.
“Grandfather Rat!” he snarled. The streambeds they’d chosen for protection of their campsite had become a path to lead their attackers closer. They still had to claw their way up the steep sides of the gullies, but that wouldn’t slow them much. Some of the hobgoblins were already helping to hoist others higher, and even more attackers were sprinting down the streambed, any attempt at stealth abandoned.
Geth jumped forward and swung Wrath at the first hobgoblin out of the gully. The heavy blade of the sword bit deep into his neck, nearly severing his head, before he even had a chance to rise up from his knees. The blow had nothing honorable about it, but Geth wasn’t an honorable fighter. He kicked the body before it could collapse, and it toppled back into the gully, knocking down two more climbers.
But attackers were swarming up the bank everywhere. Another crawling hobgoblin stabbed at his calf with a dagger. Ashi’s sword darted out, piercing the hobgoblin’s arm, then flicking high to slash across his face. He cried out and rolled away.
His thrashing almost brought Ashi down as well. She stepped back and nearly fell a second time as her foot caught on a root. “Ashi, get back to the fire!” Geth ordered. “Fight where you can see!” He swung Wrath again.
“I can see just fine!” Ashi protested.
Geth swept her feet out from under her and snapped his right arm up into the space where her shoulders had been. A hobgoblin’s sword crashed into his great gauntlet and went skittering along the black steel. Geth twisted, sweeping the sword aside and hacking upward with Wrath in the same motion. The twilight purple blade cut through leather armor and into the flesh beneath. The hobgoblin fell back. Ashi pushed herself to her feet and sprinted back to the fire without another word.