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.