He knew Horace couldn't be thinking of this as an escape route for the entire party. There were over four hundred Kikori with them now, many of them women and children. It would take weeks to get everyone down this steep path to the mountain plateau below. And even if you could get everyone down, they would be seen almost as soon as they tried to escape across the open ground at the bottom.
Horace shrugged and didn't answer. It was just a vague idea stirring in his mind. Everything he had done so far had been purely defensive. Rebuild the palisade. Find this track, which instinct had told him must be here, and set up defences. But it was in Horace's nature to attack, to take the fight to the enemy, to surprise them. This track could make that possible. Although how he was going to mount an attack against professional warriors with only hastily trained timber workers, he had no idea. Not for the first time, he recognised the fact that he wasn't a planner or an innovator. He knew how to organise defences. He could study a position, assess its potential weaknesses and move to strengthen and reinforce them. But when it came to devising an unexpected or unorthodox method of attack, he simply didn't know where to begin.
'I need Halt or Will for that,' he muttered to himself.
Reito looked at him curiously. 'What was that, Kurokuma?'
Horace shook his head. 'Nothing important, Reito-san. Let's follow this goat track down to the bottom.' He set out after Mikeru. As usual, the young man had forged ahead of them, leaping like a mountain goat from one rock to another.
At the bottom, the narrow track let out onto level ground. The entrance was well concealed. After a few metres, the gully made a sharp turn to the right. To a casual glance, it appeared to be a blind rock wall ending in a shallow indent in the face of the mountain. Shrubs and trees had grown over the entrance as well and larger rocks were piled across it. Horace was willing to bet that hadn't happened by chance. The main entrance to the valley that led up to Ran-Koshi was around a bluff, about three hundred metres away and hidden from sight.
Horace studied the ground.
'Say you brought a hundred men down. Single file. No packs. Just weapons. It would take the best part of a day. You could keep them concealed here while they formed up. Maybe do that in the dark so there was less chance of being seen.'
Once again he didn't realise he had spoken his thoughts aloud. He was a little surprised when Reito answered him.
'You could do it,' he agreed. 'But who are these hundred men you're talking about? We have barely forty Senshi fit and ready to fight now and Arisaka will have ten times that many.'
Horace nodded wearily. 'I know. I know,' he said. 'I just can't help thinking. If we had a decent fighting force, we might be able to give Arisaka a nasty jolt.'
'And if we had wings, we might be able to fly safely over the top of his army,' Reito replied.
Horace shrugged. 'Yes. I know. If, if and if. Well. We've seen the back door. Let's get back up to the valley.'
Climbing back up took even longer. It was near dusk when Reito and Horace emerged from the tumble of rocks. Their clothes were torn in several places and Horace was bleeding from a long scrape on his right hand, where he had unsuccessfully tried to stop himself sliding back down a steep pile of gravel and shale.
'You were right,' Horace told his companion. 'It would be impossible to climb up there and fight a determined defender at the same time.'
'Let's just make sure we've got defenders in place,' Reito said.
Horace nodded. Another detail to take care of tomorrow, he thought.
As they stumbled down the last of the slope leading to the gully, voices began calling out to them. Horace narrowed his eyes against the gathering dark. There seemed to be a large group of people assembled by the open-sided hut that had been constructed as a communal eating house. He led the way towards them but one of the Kikori detached himself from the group and ran to meet them.
'Kurokuma! Come quickly. We've caught five spies!'
The assembled group of Kikori and Senshi parted before them as Horace and Reito pushed their way through. The young warrior saw the captives, surrounded by an escort of armed Kikori, and his heart lifted with indescribable joy. For the moment, the five newcomers were facing away from him and hadn't noticed his arrival.
'Kurokuma!' called the escort leader, shoving through the small crowd to greet Horace. 'A patrol caught them on the lowlands, near the coast. They won't say why they're here. We think they're spies. They're foreigners,' he added, as an afterthought.
'So they are,' Horace replied. 'Perhaps we should have them flogged. That might loosen their tongues.'
At the sound of his voice, the prisoners turned and saw him. There was a moment of non-recognition, due to the fact that he was wearing Nihon-Jan clothing – trousers and a thigh-length Kikori robe over his shirt, held in place by a sash. A fur cap, low down on his head and with side flaps to protect his ears from the cold, completed the outfit.
Then Evanlyn let out a rising shriek of delight.
'Horace!' Before the startled Kikori could stop her, she bounded to him and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him so fiercely that he found it difficult to breathe properly. Two of the men who had been guarding the group moved to drag her away but Horace stopped them with a hand gesture. He was quite enjoying having Evanlyn hug him.
'It's fine,' he said. 'They're friends of mine.' A little reluctantly, he disengaged from Evanlyn's hug, although he was pleased that she remained close by him, her arm possessively around his waist. He grinned at Halt, Will and Alyss as they, too, recognised their old friend in the guise of a shabbily dressed, unkempt Nihon-Jan lumberjack.
'I have no idea how you all got here,' he said. 'But thank god you did!'
The Kikori, still puzzled but now realising the foreigners posed no threat, stood aside as the three Araluans surged forward to greet Horace, slapping his back – in the case of Will and Halt – and hugging him again in the case of Alyss. Evanlyn didn't relinquish her hold around Horace's waist and, when she deemed the hug had gone on long enough, she moved him subtly away from the Courier's embrace.
For a few garbled moments, they all spoke at once, in a mad babble of unanswered questions and declarations of relief. Then Horace noticed an unfamiliar figure, hanging back from the others. He looked more closely.
'Selethen?' he said, surprise in his voice. 'Where did you spring from?'
The tall Arridi stepped forward then and, in the manner of his people, embraced Horace, then made the graceful hand gesture to mouth, brow and mouth.
'Horace,' he said, a broad smile on his face. 'How good to see you alive and well. We've all been worried about you.'
'But…' Horace looked from one familiar face to another. 'How did you come to…?'
Before he could finish the question, Will interrupted, thinking to clarify matters but only making them more puzzling – as so often happens.
'We were all in Toscana for the treaty signing,' he began, then corrected himself. 'Well, Evanlyn wasn't. She came later. But, when she did, she told us you were missing, so we all boarded Gundar's ship – you should see it. It's a new design that can sail into the wind. But anyway, that's not important. And just before we left, Selethen decided to join us – what with you being an old comrade in arms and all – and…'
He got no further. Halt, seeing the confusion growing on Horace's face, held up a hand to stop his babbling former apprentice.
'Whoa! Whoa! Let's take it one fact at a time, shall we? Horace, is there anywhere we can talk? Perhaps we should sit down quietly and catch up with what's been going on.'
'Good idea, Halt,' said Horace, relief evident in his tone.
Will stopped, a little embarrassed as he realised that he had been running off at the mouth.
'Anyway, we're here,' he said. Then the embarrassment faded and he couldn't stop a broad grin breaking out on his face at the sight of his best friend. Horace responded in kind. He instinctively understood that Will's outburst was the result of intense relief that he, Horace, was safe and well.