His vision cleared, the past fading back into memory, the present a steady and certain conviction of what was needed. He stared out at the wagon and the horsemen and listened to the whisper in his mind. He knew what he must do.
He moved quickly then, the decision made. He left everything behind but the Sword of Leah. Stripped of his pack and great cloak, the Sword strapped securely across his back, he slipped down through the trees on the bluff’s north slope, keeping his goal in sight as he went. He reached the hills below and raced through them, pointing north to the narrows through which the wagon and horsemen must pass to reach Southwatch, thinking to himself that he could still change his mind once he got there if it seemed wrong then, thinking as well that he needed a plan if he was to have any chance of surviving a fight against so many. The ground was hard and hollow feeling beneath his feet, but the grasses were damp with morning dew and made a wet, slapping sound as he passed through them. He smelled the earth and the trees in the windless air, their scents thick and pungent. The haze deepened as he wound ahead, reaching out to enfold him one moment, slipping free again the next. He would have to be quick, he thought to himself—as swift as thought and as certain as fate. He would have to kill most of them before they knew he was there. He would have to be darker than they were. He would have to be more deadly.
He came out of a hollow into a stand of black walnut shot through with cherry, bent heavy with dewy leaves, and he stared out across the hills, listening. He could hear the wagon, its creak and groan soft in the mist. He was well ahead of it, close to where he would make his intercept, and the night’s gloom lingered on against the coming dawn. He glanced east and found the sun still down within the trees, its light no more than a faint brightening against the sky. Time enough remained for him to act before the sunrise revealed him. He would have his chance.
He started out again, keeping to cover where he could, staying silent in his passage. He had hunted the Highlands for years before coming north, rising before dawn to set out with his ash bow, alone in a world in which he was an intruder, learning to make himself one with the animals he hunted. Sometimes he shot them for food; more often, he simply stalked them, not needing to kill them to teach himself their ways, to discover their secrets. He became good at it; he was good now. But the Shadowen were hunters, too. They could sense what was out there better than he. He would have to remember that. He would have to be careful.
Because if they found him first...
He breathed deeply through his mouth, steadying the pounding of his heart as he moved ahead. What was his plan? What was it that he intended to do? Stop them, kill them, have a look at what was in the wagon? What if nothing was in the wagon? Did it matter? How much would he give away if this was all for nothing?
But it wasn’t for nothing. He knew it wasn’t. The wagon wasn’t empty. There was no reason for Seekers to escort an empty wagon to Southwatch. The wagon would carry something. The voice inside, the voice that urged him on, promised him so.
This is what you have been waiting for.
For an instant it occurred to him that it might be Quickening’s voice he heard, that spoke to him from out of some netherworld or perhaps out of the earth into which she had returned, guiding him, shepherding him, leading him on to what she alone could see. But the idea seemed wishful and somehow dangerous, and he discarded it immediately. The voice was his own and no one else’s, he told himself. The decision and its consequences must be his.
He reached the draw through which the horsemen and their wagon would pass, the place where he would stop them, and he drew up sharply in the stillness to listen. Distantly, from somewhere back in the haze, came the sounds of their approach. He stood in the center of the draw and tried to judge the time that remained to him. Then he walked its length, staying in the shadows to one side so that his damp footprints would not be visible against the light, breathing the hazy coolness to clear his head. Plans came and went in a flurry, sorted out and cast aside as quickly as dreams upon waking. None suited him; none seemed right. He reached the end of the draw and started back, then stopped.
He stood at the entrance to the narrowest part of the draw.
Here, he told himself. This is where it would begin, after the wagon was within the draw, after the lead horsemen were trapped in front and could not get back to help those behind.
That would give him precious moments to dispatch at least two riders and perhaps those who drove the wagon as well, reaching whoever or whatever lay within. If he found nothing, he could be gone again swiftly...
Yet he knew even as he thought it that he could not, for the others would track him. No, he would have to stand and fight, whatever he found within the wagon... He would have to kill them or be killed. There would be no running, no escape.
He felt as if the pounding in his chest would explode his heart within him, and there was a hollow place in his stomach that lurched and heaved. He was dizzy with the thought of what he was planning, terrified and excited both at once, unable to contain any of the dozen emotions that ripped through him.
But still the voice whispered. This is what you have been waiting for. This.
The sound of the Shadowen approach grew louder. East, the light remained faint and distant. Here, the haze hung thick and unmoving in the draw. He would have cover enough, he decided. He moved back into the trees, unsheathed the Sword of Leah, and crouched down.
Please, be right. Please, don’t be wrong. Let it be Par in that wagon. Let this be for something good.
The words repeated themselves, a litany in his mind, mixing with the whisper that held him bound to his course of action, to the certainty that it was right. He could not explain the feeling, could not justify it beyond the belief that sometimes you did not question, you simply accepted. He was torn by the truth he sensed in it and the possibility of its fraud. Reason advised caution, but passion insisted on blind commitment. The feelings warred within him as he waited, pulling and twisting into knots.
Abruptly he sprang up again and sped back through the trees and up the hill behind, keeping to the deepest shadows as he went, breathing through his mouth to take in quick gulps of air. At the summit he crept to where he could see west, his body heated and tensed. The riders and their wagon appeared out of a curtain of white frost, slow and steady in their coming, strung out along the divide. They showed no hesitation or concern; they did not glance about or ride alert. Too close to home to worry, Morgan thought. He wished he could tell what was in the wagon. He peered down at it as if by doing so he might penetrate the canvas that wrapped its bed, but nothing revealed itself. He felt a fire burn inside, the struggle between doubt and certainty continuing.
He slid back into the shadows and hunched down there, sweating. What was he to do? It was his last chance to change his mind, to reconsider the wisdom of his decision. How true was the voice that whispered to him? What were the chances that it deceived?