The vast level plain where the enemy waited-the Awl called it Pradegar, Old Salt-was not magically dead. Redmask’s shamans had made use of the residual magic there to track the movements of the enemy army, after all.
Redmask, have you lost your mind?
The Awl rode on.
More than swords unsheathed this day, 1 fear. He scratched again at his gaping socket, then kicked his horse into motion.
Orbyn Truthfinder disliked the feel of soft ground beneath him. Earth, loam, sand, anything that seemed uneasy beneath his weight. He would suffer a ride in a carriage, since the wheels were solid enough, the side to side lurching above the rocky trail serving to reassure him whenever he thought of that uncertainty below. He stood now on firm stone, a bulge of scraped bedrock just up from the trail that wound the length of the valley floor.
The air’s breath was sun-warmed, smelling of cold water and pine. Midges wandered in swarms along the streams of ice-melt threading down the mountainsides, slanting this way and that whenever a dragonfly darted into their midst.
The sky was cloudless, the blue so sharp and clean compared to the dusty atmosphere of Drene-or any other city for that matter-that Orbyn found himself glancing upward again and again, struggling with something like disbelief.
When not looking skyward, the Patriotist’s eyes were fixed on the three riders descending from the pass ahead. They had moved well in advance of his company, climbing the heights, then traversing the spine of the mountains to the far pass, where a garrison had been slaughtered. Where, more importantly, a certain shipment of weapons had not arrived. In the grander scheme, such a loss meant little, but Factor Letur Anict was not a man of grand schemes. His motivations were truncated, parsed into a language of precision, intolerant of deviation, almost neurotic when faced with anything messy. And this, indeed, was messy. In short, Letur Anict, for all his wealth and power, was a bureaucrat in the truest sense of the word.
The advance riders were returning, at long last, but Orbyn was not particularly pleased by that. They would have nothing good to say, he knew. Tales of rotting corpses, charred wood, squalling ravens and mice among mouldering bones. At the very least, he could force himself once again into the Factor’s carriage to sit opposite that obnoxious number-chewer, and counsel-with greater veracity this time-that they turn their column round and head back to Drene.
Not that he would succeed, he knew. For Letur Anict, every insult was grievous, and every failure was an insult. Someone would pay. Someone always did.
Some instinct made Orbyn glance back at the camp and he saw the Factor emerging from his carriage. Well, that was a relief, since Orbyn was in the habit of sweating pro-fusely in Letur’s cramped contrivance. He watched as the washed-out man picked a delicate path up to where stood Orbyn. Overdressed for the mild air, his lank, white hair covered by a broad-rimmed hat to keep the sun from pallid skin, his strangely round face already flushed with exertion.
Truthfinder,’ he said as soon as he reached the bulge of bedrock, ‘we both know what our scouts will tell us.’
‘Indeed, Factor.’
‘So… where are they?’
Orbyn’s thin brows rose, and he blinked to clear the sudden sweat stinging his eyes. ‘As you know, they never descended farther than this-where we are camped right now. Leaving three possibilities. One, they turned round, back up and through the pass-’
‘They were not seen to do that.’
‘No. Two, they left the trail here and went south, perhaps seeking the Pearls Pass into south Bluerose.’
‘Travelling the spine of the mountains? That seems unlikely, Truthfinder.’
‘Three, they went north from here.’
The Factor licked his lips, as if considering something. Inflectionless, he asked, ‘Why would they do that?’
Orbyn shrugged. ‘One could, if one so desired, skirt the range until one reached the coast, then hire a craft to take one to virtually any coastal village or port of the Bluerose Sea.’
‘Months.’
‘Fear Sengar and his companions are well used to that, Factor. No fugitive party has ever fled for as long within the confines of the empire as have they.’
‘Not through skill alone, Truthfinder. We both know that the Edur could have taken them a hundred times, in a hundred different places… And further, we both know why they have not done so. The question you and I have danced round for a long, long time is what, if anything, are we going to do regarding all of that.’
‘That question, alas,’ said Orbyn, ‘is one that can only be addressed by our masters, back in Letheras.’
‘Masters?’ Letur Anict snorted. ‘They have other, more pressing concerns. We must act independently, in keeping with the responsibilities granted us; indeed, in keeping with the very expectation that we will meet those responsibilities.
