Rapid hoofbeats brought Inskor to his feet. The door was flung open, and a scout burst into the room. Behind him, his lathery horse stood snorting and panting.
“The Lantiff,” the scout gasped. “They are coming through Low Pass.”
“Another reconaissance group?” Inskor asked calmly.
“Bigger than the last. Bernal thinks two hundred, at least.”
“Very well. I will come at once. Everyone knows what to do. Look to your horse.”
Inskor turned to Arne. “You are right about the danger of leaving Egarn too close to Lant. The peer has allowed her personal feelings to override her military judgment. She is impatient to know what has happened to her sons and her prince. I suppose she will probe with heavier and heavier forces until the losses become too costly. The sooner you take Egarn out of Easlon, the better.”
“She may already suspect that we have Egarn’s weapon— or something like it,” Arne said. “I wonder what she will do when she is certain.”
They paused just inside the door. Beyond it lay the future with all of its enormous uncertainty. Both were accustomed to exercising responsibility and authority, to making far-reaching decisions, but they felt totally unprepared for this reckless plunge into the unknown. Egarn’s quest pointed beyond their vision and even beyond their imagining. The two of them— young first server and old chief scout—only knew that humanity was in desperate straights and a venture aimed at saving it was worth setting out on.
7. ARNE
Lashers raided Midd Village at dawn.
Arne heard shouts and the neighing of horses long before the winding dirt road took the final, downward curve that would bring the village into view. He turned abruptly and fought his way through thick undergrowth to the top of the wooded hill, leaving old Marof gaping after him bewilderedly.
At the crest, an ancient lookout gave him a sweeping view of Midd Valley. The rushing river that cleft it was lined with stone buildings where it passed the village: saw mill, flour mill, tannery, various craft factories. The village lay directly below him at the valley’s edge—three long cobbled streets of neat stone houses of two or three stories built on the terraced hillside. Scattered among the dark roofs were several new thatches that gleamed yellow in the early sunlight. The badly cracked and weathered red tiles that roofed a small shed stood out starkly. Farlon the potter had been trying for sikes to fire durable roof tiles.
The mills were already in operation, and a sudden, rasping whine announced the saw mill’s first cut of the day. All was normal there. The workers were unaware of what was happening to the homes they had left only moments before.
The village was a turmoil, and Arne studied the scene unfolding there with sickening apprehension. The Great Secret had been in his trust for more than three sikes without a breach of any kind, and he found it difficult to believe this was happening. It meant the collapse of all their plans. He had known from the beginning that a mere whiff of suspicion might be ruinous. All of Egarn’s equipment would have to be moved and his machines taken apart and rebuilt in new quarters, and that might set his work back fatally. And where could a secure workroom be found for him if the present one failed?
Stirring events had occurred on the Ten Peerdoms’ frontiers since Egarn’s arrival. The Peer of Lant sent force after force into Easlon, increasing the size of the invasion each time. All had been annihilated, though of course it was impossible to say whether every last Lantiff had been killed. A few might have escaped. If any did, what they told their peer had no affect on her tactics. After a series of defeats, she should have known—or at least suspected—that Easlon had Egarn’s weapon. Either she refused to believe, or she thought the weight of numbers must ultimately triumph.
Finally Easlon scouts sent back word that the peer had lost patience and was about to invade Easlon with two armies, moving one through High Pass and the other through Low Pass. Inskor led his scouts on a bold raid that pushed the Lantiff back from the passes, and Egarn’s weapon was applied in a new way: rocks, dirt, trees, entire mountain sides were sliced off to pour down into those critically important gaps. The water that had fed High Pass Falls was diverted westward into Easlon—whose dry eastern province needed it—and both passes were blocked permanently. Enterprising Lantian scouts might find high, hazardous ways through the mountains like those the Easlon scouts used, but no army could make the crossing until time or the weapon cut a passage for it.
The Peer of Lant accepted the inevitable and turned her armies southward. Their onslaught had long been expected there, and they no longer had Egarn’s weapon to terrorize their victims. The southern peerdoms were making the invasion a costly one, and it seemed likely to occupy Lant for sikes to come.
On the opposite frontier, the Peerdom of Weslon had been overrun by marauding lashers out of the far west, and its rotten nobility fled in panic—as did the cowardly peeragers of neighboring peerdoms. Fortunately Arne and Inskor had prepared for such an emergency. With the help of the League of One-Namers, they had formed a one-name defense force with Arne as the commander. A select group of one-namers from all of the Ten Peerdoms, both men and women, secretly trained as scouts and received lessons in warfare. From time to time a few one-namers who could absent themselves for a few monts without being missed went east to train with the scouts of Easlon or west to train with the scouts of Weslon, who likewise had a long border to guard.
This small army numbered only two hundred at the time of the Weslon crisis. It was pathetic force compared with the hordes of Lant but a respectable one for dealing with renegade lashers—especially since half the volunteer warriors were armed with Egarn’s weapon. Arne led his tiny force to battle and quickly cut the invaders to pieces.
The peeragers returned, Arne received commendations from all ten peers—who of course had no notion of how such a resounding victory had been accomplished—and with the critical eastern frontier sealed off and the western threat dispelled, an attitude of complacency, even somnolence, settled on the Ten Peerdoms—so much so that the Peer of Easlon gave up her agitation for a common army.
Through all of the turmoil, Egarn’s work had quietly gone forward, protected against every contingency except one— treachery by someone they trusted. Now it had happened.
The raid was meticulously organized. Lasher captains had taken up central positions on the three village streets, and their lieutenants patrolled on foot, looking into the houses and calling orders. Squads of lashers were searching each dwelling systematically and reporting to the lieutenants when they finished. Even the waiting horses had a role. They were held in readiness outside the houses their riders were searching in case there was a need to remount quickly.
The lashers wore uniforms Arne had not seen before: black cloaks with a slash of white, leather jackets, high boots, and red overs. For generations, Midd Village had made uniforms for the peeragers’ servers, whether for ceremonial or common use. This clothing, too, should have been designed and sewn by the village’s crafters from cloth woven in the mill below and leather from the tannery, but no part of that absurd dress had come from Midd.
Arne grimly turned this riddle over in his mind as he watched. The answer probably involved several loads of grain that were mysteriously unaccounted for and prentices the prince insisted on sending to the Prince of Chang in an exchange she worked out herself. The prentices she received in return vanished like the grain—probably into the prince’s own household. If they were seamster and leatherer prentices, that accounted for the uniforms. The vanished grain had gone to Chang to pay for the cloth and leather.