“I’m sorry” was the first thing Sindérian could think of to say.
The man-at-arms shrugged. “I’ve seen men taken worse after a first kill—and with less reason than you, maybe.”
Embarrassed by her own weakness, she struggled to her feet. “There must be men who were hurt, men who need healing,” she whispered hoarsely.
Prince Ruan did not withdraw his support—which was fortunate, for when she caught a glimpse of her hand and arm, bloody to the elbow, the world turned as transparent as water for a moment, and she could neither see nor stand. “It doesn’t look as if any of the injured men are in immediate peril of dying,”
he said, helping her to sit again. “Let their comrades look after them until you are feeling more like yourself.”
Sindérian nodded wordlessly. It did not appear she had any choice in the matter, as wave after wave of dizziness passed over her.
Over by the horses, she could hear Orri and one of the other scouts reproaching themselves. “It shouldn’t have happened that way. We should have noticed the woods were too quiet. We should have seen something—”
“No,” she said from her place on the ground. “There was a spell on the wood—they had someone with them, a warlock or a hedge-wizard, but I sensed him too late.”
Footsteps crunched on dry leaves as Prince Kivik came up beside her. “One of their barbarian shamans?
But that isn’t one of their usual tricks. They call down curses and other mischief; they don’t bother with illusions.”
“We’ve all been changed by the war and its aftermath—the Eisenlonders no less than ourselves,” said Skerry. There was a bloody cloth wrapped around his hand where someone had inexpertly bandaged it.
“The world we knew doesn’t exist anymore.”
They buried their dead and continued on the next morning, more warily than before, some of the men riding double to support injured comrades. Within a few more days they left the Haestfilke and came into marshy lowlands: a vast wilderness of reeds, cattails, and queer spiky grasses, stretching as far as the eye could see.
It was a wild, unfriendly, and nearly uninhabited region where the war had never come. And even though it fell within the boundaries of King Ristil’s realm, it was unknown country. It did, however, give promise of abundant game—duck and heron and blackbird and otter—a welcome prospect to empty bellies, since the provisions they brought with them from the mountains were now so low that meals were few and meager. Some of the riders carried bows with them, and Orri in particular had never been known to miss his shot, so everyone began to look forward to meat for supper.
While two men dismounted and went stalking game, Kivik, Skerry, Ruan, and Sindérian held a brief consultation. The two Skyrran princes searched through their memories, hoping to dredge up vague recollections of maps they had seen.
“The rivers Nisse and Sark converge somewhere to the east of here,” Skerry remembered, “so the land in that direction will only get lower and wetter. Going around would take many days. But men do live here, so there must be a road or trails to take us through. I suggest that we look for one.”
This seemed sensible, and after the hunters came back (with their bag of four fat ducks and an unidentified waterfowl), the company turned their faces west. After a few hours riding along the outskirts of the marsh, they came upon a trail, or something very like one, which seemed to promise a way through the fens.
It had now been so long since they parted with the King—and they had no way of knowing how close he and his army followed behind, or whether his scouts had been able to track their course so far—there was a strong possibility that once they entered the fens he would never be able to find and catch up with them at all. The only remedy seemed to be to send Faolein winging along their backtrail until he met the King—after which it ought to be easy, from his aerial viewpoint, to locate the Prince’s company again and bring both parties together.
The wizard consented to this plan—rather more readily than Sindérian, though why she should feel such a pang of misgiving she did not know. She watched him so long as he remained in sight, then gathered up the reins and followed the rest of the company as they headed deeper into the marsh.
For several hours, the trail took them through acres of sedge, willow, and osiers, and if it never quite failed them, neither did it entirely win their confidence. For just when they thought they had lost it in a mire, it reappeared on the other side. And as soon as they began to feel sure of it, it ended on the banks of a muddy stream. One of the scouts waded gingerly across, expecting at every step to be swallowed by quicksand or drowned by bog monsters, but on reaching the other side he motioned to the others that it was safe to follow him. They splashed through the water, and there on the opposite bank, hidden by a clump of cattails, was their wayward little trail again.
Sometimes, as the day wore on, they saw puffs of smoke rising in the distance, which Sindérian took to be evidence of hearth fires and the haunts of men, though the track never brought them within sight of any houses, and the marshlanders continued to be purely conjectural.
Toward evening, the path wandered into a maze of watercourses and murky-looking pools. The ground became unstable; in places, to their horror, the riders could feel it moving under them. Mud sucked greedily at the horses’ hooves, and one of the extra mounts managed to stumble into quicksand. It took four of the men more than an hour to pull the poor, panicky beast out again.
Sunset had turned all the dark pools into melted gold and deepened the shadows within the reeds and sedges when Sindérian chanced to catch a flash of bright color, so far distant and so swiftly gone she could not even be certain what she had seen. She twisted around in the saddle to ask if Prince Ruan had spotted it, too.
He nodded his head, urged his sorrel stallion to a faster walk until he came abreast of her leggy bay gelding. “There are riders up ahead: men in black and men in scarlet. But the way that this trail meanders back and forth, we are probably hours and miles behind them.”
It took a moment for Sindérian to truly take it in—that Winloki and her captors could actually, finally, be so near. Her heart gave a great leap, battering against her ribs, then resumed its ordinary rhythm. “And do you think they have seen us?”
“Our own colors are not so showy, and the light is fading. Even if they’re keeping an eye on their backtrail, I doubt they have spotted us.” He leaned a little closer. “If we should overtake them, what will you do? Delay them, that is what you said before, until King Ristil and his army could finally catch up to us. But how do you mean to accomplish anything of the sort—and without Faolein?”
Sindérian shook her head, having no answer to give him. After a fortnight on the road, and every day of it living toward this moment, she was still caught unprepared. But then, she had been depending all along on the hour and the place to show her what she must do.
And so it will, she told herself. When we have closed the distance a little more.
In the meantime, it seemed advisable to tell the others what she and the Prince had seen. A thrill went through the entire company as the word spread. Men loosened their swords in their scabbards; all signs of weariness fell away. Even the horses caught some of the excitement and began to dance and shake their heads.
It now seemed imperative to press on as long as they were able, which unfortunately meant putting off the meal everyone had been anticipating—a small consideration, but difficult not to think about as night fell and stomachs began to rumble.
It was a clear sky, with the moon an almost perfect circle of incandescent silver, casting a light so bright they could see their shadows moving on ahead of them. To Sindérian’s heightened senses, the night was touched with mystery and wonder. Owls swooped overhead; frogs sang shrill, insistent songs in the rushes; every pool reflected back a galaxy of stars.