Shadowen.
He scooted back into the deep cover, his mind made up for him. He began to double back, working his way higher into the rocks. He would look for a pass through the Runne and take his chances with the river. If he failed to find a way through, he would retrace his steps under cover of darkness. He did not like the thought of being out there at night with the Shadowen still searching for him, but his choices were being stripped from him with alarming rapidity. He forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly as he slipped back through the trees, trying to stay calm. There were too many Shadowen hunting about for it to be anything but a deliberate search. Somehow they had found out where he was and were closing in. He felt his throat tighten. He had survived one battle this day, but he did not feel comfortable with the prospect of having to survive another.
Sunset was approaching, and the mountain forest was cloaked in a windless hush. He kept his movements methodical and noiseless, knowing that any small sound could give him away. He felt the weight of the Sword of Leah pressing into his back, and resisted the temptation to reach back for it. It was there if he needed it, he told himself—and he’d better hope the need didn’t arise.
He was crossing a ridgeline when he saw the shadow shift in the trees far ahead across a scrub-choked ravine. The shadow was there and gone again in an instant’s time, and he had the impression that he had sensed it more than seen it. But there was no mistaking what it was, and he went into a low crouch and wormed his way into the deep brush to his right, angling higher into the rocks. One of them, he concluded—only one. A solitary hunter. The sweat on his face and neck left his skin warm and sticky, and the muscles of his back were knotted so tight they hurt. He felt his wound throb with fresh pain and wished he had a drink of ale to soothe his parched throat. He found the way up blocked by a cliff wall, and he turned back reluctantly. He had the sense of being herded, and he was beginning to think that eventually he would find walls everywhere he looked.
He paused at the edge of a low precipice and looked back into the velvet-cloaked trees. Nothing moved, but something was there anyway, coming on with steady deliberation. Morgan considered lying in wait for it. But any sort of struggle would bring every Shadowen in the forest down on him. Better to go on; he could always fight later.
The trees ahead were thinning as the rocks broke through in ragged clusters and the slopes steepened into cliffs. He was as high as he could go without leaving the cover of the trees and still there was no pass to take him through the mountains.
He thought he could hear the sound of the river churning along its banks somewhere beyond the wall of rock, but it might have been his imagination. He found a stand of heavy spruce and took cover, listening to the forest about him. There was movement ahead and below now as well. The Shadowen were all about him. They must have found his trail. It was still light enough to track, and they were coming for him. They might not catch up to him before it grew too dark to follow his footprints, but he did not think it would matter if they were this close. They were more at home in the dark than he, and it would just be a matter of time before they snared him.
For the first time he let himself consider the possibility that he was not going to escape.
He reached back and drew out his Sword. The obsidian blade gleamed faintly in the dusky twilight and felt comfortable in his hand. He imagined he could feel its magic responding to him with whispered assurances that it would be there when he called for it. His talisman against the dark. He lowered his head and closed his eyes. All come to this? Another fight in an endless series of fights to stay alive? He was growing tired of it all. He couldn’t help thinking it. He was tired, and he was sick at heart.
Let it go!
He opened his eyes, rose, and glided ahead through the trees, south again toward the plains that led down to Southwatch, changing his mind about staying hidden. He felt better moving, as if movement was more natural, more protective in some way. He slipped down through the forest, picking his way cautiously, listening for those who sought to trap him. Shadows shifted about him, small changes in the light, little movements that kept his heart pumping. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted softly. The forest was a night river in slow, constant flux that shimmered and spun.
He glanced back repeatedly searching for the solitary hunter behind him and saw nothing. The Shadowen ahead were equally invisible, but he thought they might not know his whereabouts quite so surely as the other. He hoped they could not communicate by thought, but he would not have bet against it. There seemed to be few limitations to the magic they wielded. Ah, but that was wrongheaded thinking, he chided. There were always limitations. The trick was in finding out what they were.
He reached a clump of cedar backed up against a cliff and turned into it, dropping again into a crouch to listen. He remained as still as the stone behind him for long minutes and heard nothing. But the Shadowen were still out there, he knew. They were still searching, still scouring...
And then he saw them, two close at hand, easing through the trees less than a hundred yards below, black-cloaked shadows, advancing on his concealment. He felt his heart drop. If he moved now, they would see him. If he stayed where he was, they would find him. A great set of choices, he thought bitterly. He still held the Sword of Leah, and his hands tightened on the grip. He would have to stand and fight. He would have to, and he knew how it was likely to end.
He thought back to the Jut, Tyrsis, Eldwist, Culhaven, and all the other places he’d been trapped and brought to bay when trying to escape, and he thought in despair and anger, You would think that just once...
And then the hand closed over his mouth like an iron clamp, and he was yanked backward into the trees.
Chapter Thirty
Dusk came to the country south of the Rainbow Lake in a purple and silver haze that crept like a cat out of the Anar to chase a fiery sunset west into the Black Oaks and the lands beyond. Twilight was smooth and silky as it eased the day’s swelter with a breeze out of the deep forest, soothing and cool. Farms dotting the lands above the Battlemound were bathed in a mixture of shadows and light and assumed the look of paintings. Animals stood with their faces pointed into the breeze, motionless against the darkening green pastures. Tenders and hands came in from their work, and there was the sound of water splashing in basins and the smell of food cooking on stoves. There was a serenity in the lengthening shadows and a relief in the cooling of the air. There was a hush that gathered and comforted and promised rest for those who had completed another day.
In a stand of hardwood on a low rise close against the fringe of the Anar just north of the Battlemound, smoke rose from the crumbling chimney of an old hunter’s cabin. The cabin consisted of four timbered walls splintered and aged by weather and time, a shingled roof patched and worn, a covered porch that sagged at one end, and a stone well set back into the deepest shadows in the trees behind. A wagon was pulled up close to one side of the cabin, and the team of mules that pulled it was staked out on a picket line at the edge of the trees. The men who owned both were clustered inside, seated on benches at a table with their dinner, all save one who kept watch from the stone porch steps, looking off into the valley south and east. They were five in number, counting the one outside, and they were shabby and dirty and hard-eyed men. They wore swords and knives and bore the scars of many battles. When they spoke, their voices were coarse and loud; and when they laughed, there was no mirth.
They did not look to Damson Rhee and Matty Roh like anyone who could be reasoned with.
The women crouched in a wash west where a covering of brush screened their movements, and stared at each other.