She and Amris might not be ahead of the threat after all.
Part II
The barbarians of the north were the first to fall to Thyran and his god. Some went to him willingly, lured by the promises of power or plunder. Others bowed to superior force. Few stood against his allies, and those that did died, or worse, in large part. A handful survived to flee south with warnings. We mostly ignored them. That is our shame, and it was our undoing.
—The Letters of Farathen
Call:What are the enemies of mortals?
Response:The dead that walk. The Twisted, once humans and once beasts. The mortal servants of Gizath, who would reorder the world in his name.
Call:How may they be fought?
Response:With fire, with magic, with faith, with steel. Most of all with caution and will.
—The Catechism of Letar’s Blades, Part III, Revised
Chapter 12
“Three horses, plus Ironhide,” she said, straightening up and turning to Amris. “Two big beasts, ten legs each. Do you know those? I’ve never seen that sort of thing with raiders, or heard of them either.”
“Korvin,”he said, and his mouth tightened. Darya heard the next word in advance, though she was praying inwardly not to. “A kind of Twisted. Scouts ride them. Probably one on each, though they can carry two. Human blood at close range excites the creatures too much for even the twistedmen who ride them to control them, and they don’t carry deadweight well. Raiders would find them of little use.”
“Scouts,” Darya repeated. “Oh.”
He could be wrong. Korvin could have changed since his time. Even if they were scouts, they could be from a small band. The Order and the various militant priesthoods had suspected, ever since the storms had died down enough for people to start suspecting things at all, that a few of Thyran’s lieutenants had survived and gathered their own little fiefdoms, out where no mortal ventured. The Twisted, korvin and twistedmen both, could have come from one of them.
That would have been a hell of a coincidence.
“In the histories,” she said, “Thyran wasn’t much for simply getting the lay of the land when he sent his forces out, was he? And if he’s been around for a month or two, he’d have been able to do that already, right?”
Amris sympathized, she felt, but he didn’t waste time trying to soften his answer. “No, I fear, and yes. He may have changed since he’s awakened, but in my day, the korvin riders always went in advance of his army, but never very far.”
The muscles just below Darya’s windpipe clamped down, and her own breath echoed like the sea in her ears. She looked back at the tracks, using facts to build a wall between her and panic. None of the facts werereassuring, but concentrating on them broke the cycle ofoh shit oh gods oh no we’re dead oh shit oh gods oh nothat kept wanting to repeat at the back of her mind.
She’d known it had been bad. She’d thought they’d havetime.
Thyran probably hadn’t had a chance to raise all the forces he’d ended up with a hundred years back. He’d probably just gotten a bunch of his old chief minions to bring their separate packs together. It wasn’t as though the mortal lands could field as many soldiers as they once had either. Oakford sure as hell didn’t have more than a hundred, if that, the vast majority of them normal humans with maybe a year of actual fighting under their belts—and that was where any army going south would have to strike first.
“They’re not long ahead of us,” she said, glancing back at the tracks. Her voice was flat. Everything was flat. The world seemed to have lost a dimension in the last few moments. “Five, six hours. If I hadn’t decided to sleep—”
If we’d known then what we know now, we’d be gods, or prophets at any rate, and there are reasons most mortals don’t have such gifts,Gerant cut in sharply.
Amris nodded. “He’s right, as he always was when he said as much to me.” He didn’t touch her, but stepped closer, and the earth became more solid beneath Darya’s feet. His voice, low and calm, with the words slower and more lilting than Darya was used to hearing from modern speakers, smoothed the worst of the guilt out of her mind. “And consider—if we’d come earlier, we’d likely have stumbled into at least five of Thyran’s troops and their mounts, which were trained for war when I fought them. I think well of your skill, Sentinel, and likely too well of my own, but I suspect we’d have fared ill and left none to bring back warning.”
“Point to you both,” said Darya. “You know his armies. How far behind the scouts is the main force likely to be?”
“From what I recall, and given the land, I’d think three or four days at least. More, should he plan to attack in any great strength.”
“All right.” She thought of the terrain herself, planning for horses because she didn’t know how the korvin coped with mole holes and tree roots, and made some quick calculations. “We can push ourselves and make it back in two, maybe three.”
“Give it three, with some time for sleep and eating,” said Amris. “The problem with scouts is that they’re all too apt to return to their forces.”
“I should’ve thought of that,” said Darya, because it beatOh, good, and I didn’t think this could get any worse.
* * *
There wasn’t much left of the road from Klaishil, just a flatter space between two hills where wide stones occasionally interjected themselves among the grass and the shrubs. Once in a while, four or five of those stones still lay side by side. Mostly, a traveler would have had to know in advance that the road was there.
