A warrior's joyrney

Chapter 17

Without fuss or fanfare, Tol’s expedition departed Daltigoth at dawn. They passed through the Old City and out the main north gate, known as the Dermount Portal, for Emperor Ackal II Dermount was entombed there directly under the gate. As an old man, he’d prepared for one last campaign against his lifelong enemies, the Wak-shu tribe. Moments after declaring he would return victorious or be buried where he fell, he dropped dead from his horse as he rode out the north gate of his own capital. His loyal retainers honored his word and buried the doughty old warrior exactly where he died.

For the first time, Tol led his three hundred men from horseback, riding Cloud, a fine dappled-gray stallion and the son of his old mount Smoke. Egrin had brought the horse with him from Juramona.

The bulk of the men given to Tol were city guardsmen, hired commoners like the foot guards he’d once led in Juramona. They were tough and competent fighters, but few had seen any campaigning outside the city. Some had never been out of Daltigoth in their lives. To guide and instruct them in foot soldier tactics, Tol appointed each man of his personal retinue, as well as Egrin, to command a company of thirty men. Each commander was also mounted.

Unlike a typical Ergothian army, Tol’s demi-horde boasted no cumbersome baggage train. Each man carried ten days’ supplies, his arms, and a bedroll. If more was needed, they would have to forage. Once his band left the imperial road, Tol wanted the soldiers to be able to move fast, unencumbered by slow-moving wagons or gaggles of camp followers.

Kiya and Miya walked with the soldiers. Horses weren’t used in their dense forest homeland, and both women disliked the animals. They trusted their own two feet to get them where they needed to go.

Flanked by Egrin and Narren, Tol surveyed his men as they marched past. Alongside him as well were the two kender mounted on their own ponies. Forry was still clad in fringed buckskin, but Rufus had exchanged his oversized turban for a pointed cap with a sweeping plume as long as Tol’s arm. Both cap and feather were a startling shade of yellow-green.

Tol found his eyes drawn away from his passing troops to the walls of the Inner City, tinted rose by the rising sun. It was ridiculous to think he might spot Valaran on the palace battlements from this distance, but he cherished the hope.

Leaving Daltigoth behind, the demi-horde marched due north, along the unfinished Kanira Path. This broad paved road, begun by the Empress Kanira over one hundred years ago, was supposed to connect Daltigoth with Hylo by way of a new city, Kaniragoth. Neither road nor city was ever completed, however. Sixteen years after deposing her husband, Emperor Mordirin, Kanira was in turn overthrown and imprisoned by Ergothas II, a fine ruler much revered in the provinces. Kanira’s extravagant building schemes were quietly forgotten, and the erstwhile empress finished out her life imprisoned on a rocky pinnacle overlooking Sancrist Bay.

The distance from Daltigoth to Hylo was ninety-three leagues. At a foot soldiers’ pace, it would be an eighteen-day journey, and even without the paved road, this early part of their trip would have been an easy one. The land north of Daltigoth was all flat floodplain, watered by several tributaries of the Dalti. On both sides of the elevated Kanira Path enormous fields of green wheat and barley stretched to the horizon. Walnut and burltop trees lined the road as well. Planted by Kanira’s builders, they were lofty, mature giants now.

Raised in hill country, Tol found the utterly flat, ordered vista and open bowl of sky a revelation. All day he gazed ahead as clouds built from small, white streaks on the afternoon’s eastern horizon into vast towers of vapor by evening. The open terrain allowed them to view some spectacular sunsets, but offered little respite from the torrential downpours.

Leaving the river bottoms behind, they entered the wooded foothills of the mountain range that encircled Daltigoth on the south, west, and north. A dozen leagues from the capital, the paved road ended, and the Kanira Path shrank from four wagons wide to a scant two. Trees and thick undergrowth encroached on the edges of the old road. Decades of freezing and thawing had crisscrossed it with ruts and exposed tree roots. This was still the chief land route to Hylo, but these days most heavy trade goods went by sea. Only peddlers, pilgrims, and plunderers used the old track. For their part, the Dom-shu sisters were happy to be done with stone under their feet. They joyfully discarded their city sandals and resumed going barefoot.

In five days, they reached the mountains proper. Camping below the ridge that evening, Tol continued the letter to Valaran he’d begun his first night away from Daltigoth. As a result of her tutelage, writing was less difficult for him than it once had been, but he still found it a tedious chore. However, he was determined to include a letter to Val with the regular dispatches.that he would send off before they crossed the mountains in the morning. When dawn arrived, he would give the courier two silver crowns to deliver the sealed and folded parchment to Draymon, captain of the Inner City Guard. And Draymon in turn would pass it to a trusted servant, who would leave it in a certain alcove in the palace from which Valaran would retrieve it. The precautions seemed clumsy to Tol, but the safety of his lover was worth any amount of trouble.

Once they crested the ridge, the great western plain of the Western Hundred lay before Tol and his men. Removed from the direct influence of Daltigoth, it was a patchwork of rugged frontier towns, vineyards, and vast herds of cattle. The natural abundance of the land made it easy for them to buy victuals along the way.

On the evening of the sixth day, they reached Ropunt, the forest of central Ergoth. Nowhere near as forbidding as the Great Green, Ropunt was riddled with logging trails and dotted with woodcutters’ camps.

Even so, Tol halted his men at the edge of the wood. Though there was plenty of daylight left, the forest was silent. No axes thudded into tree trunks, no shouts rang out warning of falling trees. When the Dom-shu sisters scouted ahead and saw no one at work, Tol ordered his soldiers to take up a defensive position in a field of scattered boulders. They were a long way from the coast, but Kharland pirates were known to make land raids now and then.

Preparing to ride forth with Narren, Egrin, and the two kender, Tol left Darpo in command. A steady, imperturbable warrior, Darpo had served for a time on a merchant ship. The scar that bisected his left eyebrow and ran down to his left ear was the result of that service; a line had snapped, whipping across the deck and lashing his face.

Tol’s small party proceeded down a crude logging road, listening hard and watching for signs of trouble. Their kender guides had not passed this way before; they explained that they had come through a little further north.

A quarter-league along the logging trail they found a clearing. At its center sat a blockhouse, a stout, two-story log structure surrounded by a shoulder-high stockade of sharpened timbers. The upper story overhung the lower and was pierced with narrow window slits. No door was visible in the lower level. A thin ribbon of smoke oozed from the center of the roof.

Around the blockhouse, cut logs were piled, ready for shipment south. Axes and adzes lay about, many with blades pointing dangerously skyward. Egrin examined several blades. Bare metal rusted in a day, sometimes even quicker if it rained. These tools were still shiny; they hadn’t been idle long.

Tol rode straight to the stockade gate. When he was twenty paces away, someone inside the blockhouse lofted an arrow at him from a window slit in the upper story. The missile stuck, quivering, in the dirt ahead of his horse.

“Who goes there?” called a muffled voice.

“We’re from Daltigoth, on imperial business.”

“Daltigoth? Then what are them kender doing with you?”

“They’re our guides.”

After a short delay, a trapdoor opened in the upper story. Five women and four children emerged.

“Our men went to cut oak two days ago and never come back,” explained a rawboned redhead who gave her name as Shancy. She held a stout bow with an arrow nocked. “All the game in the woods has been scared off, so we’ve had no meat for eight days. There’s plague about, too, so we can’t be too careful.”

“What sort of plague?”

“The Red Wrack.”

This was the same sickness that had eroded Lord Urakan’s army, and its dreaded name caused the kender to shift uneasily on their mounts. Although usually fearless when it came to confronting danger, kender had a dread of disease.

“Anyone sick here?” Tol asked. The women and children shook their heads.

Shancy said their men had gone northwest, to log a shallow valley. The Oaken Bowl, as it was known, was filled with some of the oldest oak trees in the forest.

Tol had Egrin get the names of the missing men and sent Narren back to fetch the rest of the demi-horde. Before long, they came marching down the trail.

“We’ll camp here tonight,” Tol announced. He set sentries to walk a line fifty paces from the blockhouse, and another line to patrol twenty-five paces in from them.

A garden of woolen bedrolls blossomed around the squat blockhouse. Campfires were built, and the men ate their rations under a dazzling aerial river of stars. For soldiers accustomed to walls, roofs, and the lights of the capital, the open blackness of the clearing was unsettling. Wolves howled in the distance. Owls, foxes, crickets, and other creatures of the night made their own noises. The Juramona men moved among the restless city soldiers, calming them with jokes.

Narren returned to the fire where Tol and Egrin were seated with Kiya, Miya, and the former Karad-shu in Tol’s retinue, Valvorn and Sanksa.

“The kender are gone,” he announced, and held up two kender-sized bedrolls. “They stuffed these with leaves and straw.” He wondered aloud why the kender would run away. Did they know something the Ergothians didn’t?

“Rotten little peckerwoods!” said Miya. “I always said you can’t trust short people.” Tol had to smile. Almost everyone present was shorter than the Dom-shu women.

“What do we do without our guides?” Narren asked.

“Push on,” Tol replied. To Kiya and Miya: “Will you scout ahead with Valvorn and Sanksa? We need to know what’s in front of us as we go along.”

“These woods smell bad,” said Miya, “but I’ll go if Sister does.”

“I’d rather scout ahead than walk behind these filthy horses. I had to wash my feet four times today,” Kiya said.

Sentinels were posted, and the camp settled into a watchful rest. Tol sat with his back against an elm stump, bare saber on his lap.

His eyes snapped open. Tol listened, wondering what had interrupted his doze.

A pre-dawn mist filled the clearing. All seemed normal, save a fetid smell, like decaying leather, which hung in the air.

Sword in hand, he stood up. “Narren! Egrin! On your feet!”

The men did not respond. Tol shook them, and they rolled limply under his hand. Both men still breathed, but would not wake.

Cursing silently, Tol ran along the circle of sleeping soldiers, trying to rouse them. He had no luck. Realizing it must be magic, he cast about for Miya and Kiya, but the women were gone, as were Sanksa and Valvorn. He wondered if they’d departed on their scouting mission before this unnatural lethargy had claimed the rest of his command.

Horses, tied to a picket line, snorted and pawed the ground. Tol was relieved. At least they were awake, unlike the animals stricken by the power of Morthur’s ring. He freed Cloud and mounted.

On the north side of the clearing, dark shapes were moving through the fog. There were eight or ten of them, strung out in a line. Whoever they were, they were armed. The clatter of metal and squeak of tanned leather was unmistakable.

On horseback, Tol could see over the low mist. He slid his shield onto his left arm and seated his helmet on his head. The clearing was a mess of tree stumps, limbs, and sawdust, all waiting to snag an unwary foot or hoof, so he rode with care.

Twenty paces beyond his insensible troops, Tol raised his saber and called out, “Halt! In the name of Pakin III, emperor of Ergoth!”

The prowling figures did halt-then dived down into the thick mist. The sound of twigs snapping revealed the figures were drawing closer, creeping toward him.

He sheathed his sword and drew one of the two spears from the quiver on his saddle. Cloud chivvied and pranced. Trained from birth as a war-horse, he was not usually skittish. Now he flared his nostrils, unhappy with the strange noises and odors assailing him. Tol tried to steady him, but the animal churned in small circles, stirring the thick mist.

All at once a figure leaped up out of the fog. In one hand wielding a broad, curved sword, he was completely covered in strange gray-green armor made of small, jointed plates. Hissing, he chopped at Tol.

Cloud sidestepped, and Tol thrust hard with his long spear. It struck his armored antagonist in the chest, and the iron tip went in. To his shock, Tol realized the green scales weren’t painted armor, but the creature’s own skin!

Yowling in pain, the nightmarish apparition jumped back and swiped at the spear. Answering its cry, more scaly foes erupted from the fog.

Tol rapped his heels against Cloud’s sides, and the charger lunged forward. Bending low, Tol drove the bloodied spear into the injured creature’s gut. Dark fluid welled from the fresh wound.

Grasping the spear with webbed claws, the creature tried to unseat Tol by yanking on the weapon. Tol let go in time. The impaled creature fell heavily to the ground and was swallowed by the fog. Tol whipped a second spear out and turned to face his other scaly opponents.

They were armed with a mix of weapons-falchions, battle-axes, and even a morning-star flail. Tol held them off with his longer-reaching spear, jabbing at their faces and chests. One of the creatures dodged a little too slowly, and the iron head of Tol’s spear raked over its shoulder. The monster let out a tremendous hiss while simultaneously spreading a wide, leathery frill that had been furled around its neck. The frill of skin filled with blood, turning bright scarlet.

The sight was too much for Cloud. The terrified horse began to rear and buck.

Tol dropped his spear and clutched at the reins, but to no avail. With a clang, he landed on his back in the mist. Cloud cantered away, eyes rolling wildly.

Shaken by the fall, Tol could hear his enemies padding toward him through the fog. He rolled onto one knee and started to draw his saber, then thought better of it. They couldn’t see him under the veil of vapor, but the scrape of iron would give him away. Quietly he took out his war dagger, kept in a suede sheath under his left arm. Two spans of cold iron would have to do.

Sweeping the mist in front of him with his flail, the nearest creature grunted and squawked to his comrades. Tol heard the studded flail swish over his head. He sprang forward, driving his dagger between the creature’s ribs. He aim must have been true, because his hand and arm were promptly drenched with blood. Gravely wounded though it was, the creature cracked Tol on the jaw with the handle of his flail. Tol reeled to the ground and spit out two of his back teeth. His strength spent, the creature collapsed with no more than a grunt.

Up close, the monsters were even more fearsome. Two paces tall, they were built like well-muscled humans, but their faces and scales spoiled any human resemblance. Dish-like eyes with vertical pupils, slit nostrils and thin gashes of mouths, and small ear holes made the creatures resemble oversized lizards rather than men.

Another lizard-man came pounding out of the mist, sword upraised. Tol flung the dead creature’s flail at him, then stood, reaching for the pommel of his saber. He got it out just in time to parry his foe’s powerful overhand attack. Tol’s hand stung from the force of the blow. When he forced the lizard-man back with a riposte, he saw his iron blade was deeply nicked.

The sun was up now, brightening the sky, but the encircling trees kept the clearing in shadow. The remaining creatures closed in. Tol traded cuts with two of them, then three. Parrying a chop, he thrust home, his saber biting hard flesh. Hissing, the monster spun away, clutching its armpit. Tol followed, impaling his wounded opponent through the back. It had enough life left to backslash at Tol, the heavy falchion scoring a line of hot blood from Tol’s ear to his chin.

Tol gasped, feeling like a blazing brand had been pressed to his face. He drew back, wiping blood from his jaw. Shock quickly gave way to deep fury. They would pay for this!

He faced seven lizard-men now. The surviving foes surrounded him.

Parrying overhand, he twisted to his left and slashed sideways at one, burying his battered blade in the creature’s ribs. Fighting with his dagger in his left hand, Tol fended off another pair of axe-wielding monsters. The shield on his arm slowed him, so he slung it off.

“Juramona!” he cried, in case there was anyone who could rally to his side. “Juramona!”

No one came to his aid. His only hope was to end the battle sooner rather than later, before the lizards wore him down.

The fourth lizard-man succumbed to a feint with the saber, followed by a close-in thrust of the dagger into its belly. Tol made sure of his kill, finishing his dagger thrust with a hard twist. Spine severed, the lizard-man went down and did not twitch.

A tremendous blow caught Tol on the side of the head. The iron helmet saved his skull, but he went sprawling in the mist, stunned. Fortunately, the sun had finally topped the tree line. As it shone down on the fog in the clearing, it reflected enough light to make the mist seem opaque. Flat on his belly below the surface, Tol was momentarily invisible.

He finally shook off the blow and hauled himself up to a crouch. He could see the legs of his enemies as they prowled the fog for him. With a bow he could have picked them off easily, but he had no bow. Instead, he located the spear he had dropped.

The ground around him was littered with stumps and tree limbs. With the butt end of the spear braced against a stump, he raised the point to waist height and supported it with a forked hardwood branch.

Rising suddenly out of the fog, he shouted, “Scaleface! Here I am!”

They came at him helter-skelter. Tol leaped sideways onto a stump. The blade of an axe snagged his tunic, and he whacked the passing lizard-man on the back of his blunt head. A second attacker spitted himself neatly on the spear, running full tilt into the iron tip hidden by the fog. He howled and fell, thrashing out his life as the mist at last began to thin.

Panting and aching from his accumulated hurts, Tol was still outnumbered five to one, though one of the lizards was staggering from Tol’s blow to his head. Spying a gleam of metal at his feet, Tol took up a lizard-man’s axe. He used it to block the sword of one of his charging foes, then brought his saber down in full swing on his opponent’s bare shoulder. Split from neck nearly to breastbone, the lizard-man fell back screeching, tripping his oncoming comrades. Tol backed away, whirling the axe in wide circles to clear fighting room.

Shaken by the skill of the lone warrior, the remaining lizard-men turned tail. Grateful to see the last of them, Tol let them go.

The mist was almost clear when he staggered to his camp. All around the blockhouse his men were stirring, blinking in the sunshine, coughing from their long sleep on the damp ground. Tol found Egrin standing on shaky legs, clinging to the iron tripod over the cold campfire.

“My lord!” Egrin said. “How do you come to be hurt?”

Tol related the story of his morning battle as Narren and the rest pulled themselves together. Egrin professed shame at having slept through his commander’s struggle.

“It’s no fault of yours,” Tol answered. “You all were laid low by a spell of some kind, a magical mist that made you sleep like the dead.”

Darpo and Narren cleaned their commander’s wounds, applying pungent salve to the long cut on his face. When they were done, Tol led them to where the fallen lizard-men lay. Egrin’s strained face paled further.

“Bakali!” he said. “Draco Paladin preserve us! There haven’t been bakali in the empire since Pakin Zan conquered their last stronghold in the Western Hundred a century ago!”

Tol stood over one of the slain creatures. He’d heard tales of the bakali. It was said that during the Great Dragon War, fought a century before Ackal Ergot founded the empire, a swarm of bakali had appeared in the east, doing the bidding of an alliance of evil dragons. They invaded the Silvanesti realm, inflicting many casualties. The elves used magic to defeat them, but the spells went out of control. In the resulting chaos, thousands died in earthquakes and lightning storms that lasted days at a stretch. Later, isolated colonies of bakali were discovered in the west, where they’d fled to escape the power that had overcome their dragon masters. The early emperors crusaded long and hard against the bakali, finally wiping them out, as Egrin said, during the reign of the vigorous usurper, Pakin Zan.

Narren asked Tol why he hadn’t been affected by the unnatural sleep. Unwilling to reveal the existence of his Irda artifact, Tol shrugged off the question, saying that since he’d slept sitting up, the soporific vapors must not have reached him.

As he told the others of the disappearance of Kiya, Miya, and the Karad-shu men, Tol realized Egrin was still coughing, as were fully half his men. The magical sleep had dissipated with the fog, but the coughing persisted. Oddly, the older warrior’s face was no longer pale, and small red blotches had begun to appear all over his skin. Narren and the others were showing the same strange coloration on face and hands.

Shancy emerged from the blockhouse to fetch a pail of water. When she saw the stricken Ergothians, she gasped, covering her mouth with the hem of her apron.

“The Red Wrack!” she cried, retreating.

Tol felt the pit of his stomach fall away. His men had the plague! Since they’d not encountered any contagion directly, he realized it must be spread by the fog. Neither he nor Egrin could believe the bakali clever enough in sorcery to manufacture the mist themselves, which meant a wizard must be involved.

Five bakali lay lifeless in the clearing, the final wisps of fog clinging to their bodies. The city guardsmen looked over the slain lizard-men and regarded their commander with new respect. Tol brushed aside their admiration.

Shancy and the other woodcutter women were terrified by the sight of the dead lizard-men. They wondered if their men had met the same fate the bakali had obviously intended for Tol’s troop. Tol promised them he would look out for their missing loggers as his troop made its way north.

The soldiers’ coughing was growing worse, and many complained of severe headaches. Although they were obviously suffering, Tol ordered them to prepare to move on. They had to find the missing scouts.

They headed deeper into the wood. Although they called periodically to their missing comrades, their cries attracted no answers. Stealth was out of the question anyway, what with half the men or more coughing ceaselessly. The tiny red splotches were growing, covering the men’s faces with a crimson stain. The Red Wrack was upon them, and Tol didn’t know what to do. Lord Urakan’s army was served by an entire train of healers, yet they were said to have barely held out against the disease.

He contrived to touch both Narren and Egrin with the Irda nullstone, thinking its power might transfer, but their symptoms did not abate.

Tarthan and the thirty men under his command had been farther from the clearing than the rest and seemed less affected by the plague mist. Tol sent them ahead as a vanguard. Before midday Tarthan sent back word they’d found a recent trail.

When the main body caught up with Tarthan, Tol found the warrior standing in a dry creekbed that wound through the woods. A grim expression on his dark face, Tarthan pointed to several bare footprints, surrounded by three-toed bakali prints.

Tol knew those long, narrow footprints. One of the Dom-shu sisters had been abducted by the lizard-men.

Taking the lead himself, he drove his men relentlessly onward. The tracks continued, following the old stream bed.

Near dusk, they found Sanksa and Kiya hiding in a tree. With happy shouts, the two swung down, and for the first time in their “marriage,” Kiya threw her arms around Tol and embraced him with real ardor.

“I knew you would come!” she said. “Hurry! They have Miya!”

As they moved out, Kiya explained that she, her sister, and the two men had risen well before dawn and gone out to reconnoiter as planned. When the mist first formed, they climbed trees to see over the fog. Then the bakali appeared. Communicating by hand signals, the scouts decided Valvorn and Miya would warn Tol, while Kiya and Sanksa stayed aloft to keep an eye on the lizard-men. Once Miya and Valvorn were in the fog, they lost consciousness, however, and the bakali fell on them. Valvorn was slain immediately and Miya taken captive. Sanksa and Kiya had been following the lizard-men all day. Tol had caught up with them as they rested briefly in the treetops.

“Miya is in their camp, two hills away,” explained Sanksa. The plainsman’s copper-colored face was grim. “I counted twenty-eight lizard-men.”

Tol drew his saber. “Let’s rush them!”

“Wait,” Egrin said, struggling to draw breath. “Why not work around the camp and take them one by one?”

“There’s no time. Besides, the way everyone’s coughing, the bakali will surely hear us coming.”

Tol sent Tarthan’s healthy men straight on, while four companies under Narren, Wellax, Allacath, and Lestan followed as closely as they could. Egrin’s band would swing wide on the right, while Frez’s men took the left. The remainder, under steady Darpo, would wait in reserve, moving up where and when the situation warranted.

Tol followed Tarthan’s men through the widely spaced trees. Light was failing fast, and he didn’t want the bakali to elude them in the coming darkness.

From the top of the hill, they plunged down the slope, slipping and falling in the loose leaves. Deaf oldsters could have heard them coming, and as they advanced up the facing slope arrows flickered through the trees. A few men were hit, and the first wave of Ergothians faltered.

Rallying his men, Tol hacked through a wall of briars and kept going. Arrows thudded into trees and turf around him. Gasping and coughing, but still slogging forward, Narren’s company topped the hill and started down behind Tarthan’s. Tol heard crashing in the underbrush, punctuated by hacking and wheezing, and knew Egrin’s men were on their way as well. He saw the dark silhouettes of several bakali as they stepped out from behind trees to loose their missiles. More of his men toppled, arrows in their chests.

“Long live the emperor!” shouted Tarthan, raising his sword high.

The soldiers answered in ragged fashion and charged uphill the last twenty paces. Confidently, the small group of bakali waited, thinking the line of sharpened stakes around their camp would halt the humans, who could then be punished by a rain of arrows. Tol reached the stakes first, and wormed between them without much trouble. The lizard-men had bungled. They had spaced their stakes to stop enemies as bulky as themselves, not such slender humans.

The bakali were poorly equipped with plundered weapons. Although they fought tenaciously, by the time Egrin’s men closed in from the opposite side, the lizard-men were all dead. Tol searched the camp for Miya, finding her under a flimsy lean-to of willow leaves and moss. She was staked out on the ground, hands and feet bound with thick rawhide straps. Tol was shocked to see her at first because she’d been stripped of her clothing and her skin was covered with bloody red streaks.

“Husband!” she shouted. “Glad to see you. Get me loose, will you?”

Egrin and Narren arrived at the lean-to, and Miya managed a surprising yelp of modesty. Startled, the two men withdrew.

Tol sawed at her bonds with his dagger. “What happened? Did they hurt you?”

“Nay, I’m not harmed.” She stared in the direction where Narren and Egrin had come and gone, making sure they did not return.

“What are all these marks?” He rubbed a finger down her arm. The red streaks smeared at his touch.

She explained the bakali had been in the process of marking her for butchering when Tol and his men arrived.

“These lizards eat humans!” she said. “Lucky for me, they like certain cuts better than others. They took too long, arguing over who would get what part of me.”

The image she conjured up was horrible, but Tol found himself grinning with her.

“What part did they consider the choicest?” he asked, thinking thigh or calf, but Miya pinched the ball of her left thumb.

“Two of the lizards were going to fight to the death over who got this part of my hands,” she said with a shrug.

Miya recovered her discarded clothing, using a scrap of hide to scrub away the bakali’s butcher marks.

Tol said, “I’m glad you’re well. Kiya would never forgive me if anything happened to you.”

“Huh! She stayed safe in a tree. Next time, she gets to run from lizards.”

Shouts from the bakali camp sent Tol dashing out of the lean-to. Tarthan was waving to him.

“We found another prisoner, my lord,” Tarthan called.

Tol followed him into a crude bark hut, expecting to find one of the woodcutters. It was dark inside, but he could see a man sitting in the dirt, legs crossed.

“Someone bring me a light,” Tol said.

“No need,” said the stranger. “I have one.”

A glowing yellow ball formed, hovering over the stranger’s outstretched hand. By its light, Tol saw that the man was somewhere past thirty years of age, with thinning brown hair and a high forehead. He wore a belted gray robe, striped on the sleeve and hem in blue satin. The linen was much-mended, yet the garment was still far too fine for the forest. His fleshy face was drawn and haggard, the countenance of one accustomed to easy living, but who hadn’t experienced much lately.

He uncrossed his legs, standing awkwardly. “I am Mandes,” he said, pronouncing his name as though it were recognizable and important. “At your service, sir. And to whom do I owe my deliverance?”

“I am Tolandruth of Juramona.”

“Ergothian, aren’t you?” Tol nodded. Mandes gave a slight bow, saying, “Thank you for rescuing me, my lord. I thought my days were truly numbered!”

In response to Tol’s original call for light, Allacath arrived, bearing a blazing brand. Kiya and Narren were close on his heels. Mandes drew his outstretched fingers together, and the globe of light he had created flared and died.

“How long have you been a prisoner of the lizard-men?” Tol asked.

“Many days. I’ve not eaten in so long. Can you spare a crust or two?” Narren gave Mandes what rations he had on him. The former captive devoured the stale bread and smoked beef strips.

They left the tiny hut, Mandes wincing with every step. He had large, soft feet, and was obviously unused to being barefoot. He looked around the camp, counting the dead bakali.

“Five are missing,” he said.

Tol waved a hand. “Don’t worry. They’re all dead. I killed the others this morning.”

Mandes’s thin brows arched. “You? Alone?”

“Yes. My warriors were paralyzed by a sorcerous mist.”

“And you weren’t affected?”

Tol let the question fade, as the answer was obvious. He was watching the reunion of the Dom-shu sisters. Kiya and Miya did little more than grunt and nod at each other, but he could tell they were delighted to be together again.

The bakali camp yielded little else of value-a handful of coins, a woman’s silver torque, and a hodgepodge of weapons, most in poor condition. Tol set a party of his healthiest soldiers to work building a pyre for the lizard-men’s bodies. There was enough disease abroad in the land without adding rotting corpses to the mix. Six men in Tol’s band had died in the fight, and they would be buried more traditionally, as befitted Ergothian warriors.

Tol sat on a log while this activity whirled around him. He had a quiet word with Narren and Egrin and they herded Mandes over to him.

“Tell us your tale, wizard,” Tol said, poking a small fire on the ground in front of him. “Who are you, and how did you get here?”

Mandes drew a deep breath, throwing out his chest and striking a pose. “I am from Tarsis, as my manner of speech no doubt told you,” he began. “I was once a respected exponent of the theurgical arts in the city of my birth. That changed, however, as the guilds took over, forcing independent practitioners like myself to conform or face summary punishment.”

“Guilds? You mean the White and Red Robes?” said Tol.

“Yes! May they stew forever in the belly of Chaos! I, Mandes the skillful, Mandes the learned, was hounded to join the Order of the Red Robes. I refused.”

“So they ran you out of town?”

Mandes’s proud posture deflated, the firelight playing over his dejected expression. “Aias, yes. I fled one step ahead of their ghostly enforcers, vile wraiths raised to steal my wits as punishment for defying their orders!” He stamped his foot, grimacing when his heel struck a sharp stone. “The guilds would reduce the noble art of magic to a trade, with apprentices, journeymen, and masters who decide who can practice and where. Mandes the proud, Mandes the free, will not submit to such coercion!”

“Hmm.” Tol flexed his fingers, nicked and scarred from the day’s battles. “What happened after you left Tarsis?”

“My self-imposed exile was precipitous,” Mandes said, face flushing. “I departed without food or proper clothing. I wandered the countryside for many, many days, coming at last to the shores of the sea. There I chanced upon a Kharland trader stranded on a bar. In exchange for my help freeing their vessel, they conveyed me to their destination.”

“Ergoth?”

The sorcerer shook his head. “The Gulf of Hylo. Specifically, a kender town on the eastern shore called Free Point. There I remained for half a year, selling my services to those magically deprived folk. It was a miserable place, I must say. No culture, no real stimulation for a man of intellect like myself.” He grimaced. “That, and the kender stole back almost every fee I collected. I resolved to leave, but the bakali descended on the port before I could do so.”

Mandes described how a fleet of six ships, disguised as merchant vessels, landed bakali warriors on the Free Point waterfront. Before the day was out, the town was theirs. All non-kender were rounded up. Some were killed immediately and eaten by the lizard-men. Others were made to work as slaves. Mandes would have suffered one or the other fate had he not demonstrated his magical talents to the bakali commander.

“What happened to the kender of the town?” asked Tol.

“Oh, a few were caught and killed,” said Manes. “But most got away. Kender have a way of making themselves scarce.”

“Why didn’t you use your spells to escape?” Egrin said.

“I was preparing a conjuration that would have transformed the entire scaly mob into pillars of sawdust, but one of them hit me on the head before I could finish the third incantation-”

“Why did you create the stupefying mist for them?” Tol asked, rising to his feet.

Mandes blinked once, slowly. “If I had not, they would’ve killed me.”

“And the plague that goes with it?”

“The illness is not my doing. I know nothing about it!” the wizard proclaimed, throwing out his chest.

“Can you cure the sickness?”

“I shall do my best for your gallant men,” Mandes said. “After all, you saved me from those awful lizards, and for that I am deeply grateful.”

Tol did not readily trust the mage. He might be nothing more than an innocent prisoner, or he might have been in league with the bakali. Regardless, if he could cure the plague, Tol would use him, trustworthy or not. He appointed four men to watch over Mandes while he prepared a cure for the Red Wrack. Once his men were well, Tol would take the wizard to Lord Urakan, so he could work his cure on the imperial army. After that, Mandes’s fate would lie in Urakan’s hands.

Using an old brass cauldron salvaged from the bakali camp, Mandes made a decoction of roots, bark, and herbs, gathered skillfully despite the dark night. Two sips of the hot potion, and the sick men could immediately breathe freely. In short order their red splotches faded, and their coughs ceased.

The wizard’s swift success only made Tol more suspicious. How would Mandes know exactly how to cure the illness unless he’d created it in the first place? It was enough to make Tol extremely wary of the wayward sorcerer.

Tol had doses of the cure sent back to the blockhouse for the woodcutters and their families. The same two riders were charged with carrying to Daltigoth Tol’s report on the bakali and the plague, as well as another missive to Valaran.

When they were ready to move, Tol had Mandes placed on a horse and led the animal himself, so he could keep an eye on the strange fellow. Lord Urakan was camped above the headwaters of the West Caer River, twenty-two leagues away. Tol tried not think of how many Ergothian soldiers might die of the Red Wrack in the five days it would take for them to reach the camp.