Once, Aedan recalled, during their first excursion into the Shadow World, a sentry had fallen asleep on watch. The others had been alerted by his frenzied screaming. The nearest sentries to his post were merely a score of yards away, but by the time they reached his picket, there was no sign of him. They never found him. He had simply disappeared without a trace, dragged off somewhere into the darkness. No one knew by what. After that, there were never fewer than three sentries at any one picket, and the memory of what happened to that poor soul who had disappeared kept a fine edge on their alertness. No one ever fell asleep at his post again.
This time, however, the Army of Anuire, the famous Ghost Rangers of Emperor Roele, did not make camp. They kept marching through the night, lighting their way with torches. They would be visible for miles in the darkness, but that was less cause for concern than the inability to see whatever was around them. A good number of them had seen the ominous figure of the horseman on the ridge, and it had not taken long before word of the Cold Rider spread throughout the ranks. Many of the troops had become friendly with the halflings that marched with them, and by nightfall, there wasn’t one of them who did not know what the Cold Rider represented. Aedan supposed there was nothing that could have been done about that. Though it was cause for unrest among the troops, at the same time, if would keep them on their toes. With men that were as tired and dispirited as they were, that was perhaps only for the best. They could not afford to relax their vigilance until they had passed back through the portal and reached Diemed.
They kept moving at a steady pace, with the emperor and his retinue leading the formation on their mounts, Aedan bearing Michael’s standard, and Sylvanna riding by his side just a few yards behind them. The advance guard had been strengthened and pulled back, so that they were only a short distance in front of the main body, their torches clearly visible. The archers marched with arrows nocked in their drawn crossbows, and almost every man had his hand upon his sword hilt. The tension in the air was palpable.
How much farther? Aedan could not be sure. He did not know this territory as well as did the halfling scouts, but by the first gray light of morning—if one could truly call it light—he felt they should have covered enough distance to be able to emerge just beyond the borders of the Spiderfell. Morning could not come soon enough.
As he rode at a slow walk, Aedan kept thinking about the apparition they had seen upon the ridge. Just who or what was the Cold Rider? Could he be human, demihuman, or something else entirely? How much of what the halfling said was literally true and how much was merely his belief?
Halflings were a strange lot. Over the past eight years, Aedan had come to know the halflings who marched with them, but there was still a great deal about them that he did not fully understand. Their beliefs, for one thing. They swore by the gods—or at least Futhark and his scouts did—but Aedan had never seen halflings attend services at any of the temples. For that matter, there were many humans who never took part in religious services, but still had faith in the gods. With the natural tendency that halflings had to assimilate themselves into whatever culture was predominant in the places where they lived, it was difficult to tell what they really believed. And the halflings never spoke about it.
They were willing to answer certain questions about themselves, but only to a point. They had a way of turning aside unwanted questions by speaking in circles, appearing to give replies when in fact they were engaged in loquacious obfuscation. Talking to a halfling could sometimes be like trying to catch a will-o’-the-wisp, thought Aedan. They seemed outgoing enough and friendly, but there was still much that they kept to themselves.
For all the times that Futhark had guided them on expeditions through the Shadow Word, this was the first time he had ever made mention of the Cold Rider, and if they had not seen him—or it—Aedan was sure Futhark would not have volunteered the information.
If he was so afraid of this mysterious apparition, why keep coming back to this place? Why agree to guide them through the Shadow World? Why not simply stay in Cerilia, in the comparative safety of the world of daylight, and never return to this place that he and his people fled? Was it truly only a question of money, or necessity, as Futhark had put it? Halflings needed to live, like anybody else, but there were many halflings—the vast majority of them, so far as Aedan knew—who had found vocations for themselves as craftsmen, traders, merchants or entertainers in Cerilia and never went back to the world from which they had come. What made Futhark and his scouts so different?
Of course, they were paid extremely well. But could that have been enough? If the Cold Rider filled them with such fear that they had fled their world, why return and risk encountering him? Aedan tried to put himself in Futhark’s place as he considered possibilities, the way his father taught him. Suppose something had made him flee his own world, the home that he had always known? Might there still not be, despite the dangers, a desire to go back? Perhaps. He could not imagine leaving Anuire permanently. It was the place of his birth, the city where he had grown up. He knew every street and alleyway like the back of his own hand. It would be difficult to leave, never to return. Always, he felt certain, there would be a pull back to his own homeland—and if something had happened to blight Anuire the way this world had been blighted, he had no doubt he would nurture a desire to see it returned to the way it once had been.
Here he was now, out of time, riding through a cold and misty world that always seemed more nightmare than reality, and he felt a desperate longing to be back in his own world, on familiar ground. Might not, then, the halflings feel the same?
Back home, he would visit the grave of his father every time he returned from a campaign or felt the weight of his responsibilities pulling him down. He would go early in the morning, when the cemetery was still deserted, and sit down on the ground beside the mound of earth that marked his father’s resting place, and he would speak to him, unburdening himself and asking for advice and guidance. It was not the same, of course, as when his father had still been alive, though Aedan liked to think somewhere in the heavens his father could still hear him and send him strength and wisdom. He took great comfort in it. Perhaps it was like that for Futhark and the other halflings who periodically returned to the world from which they fled. It was no longer the same, but they still took some comfort in returning.
“Of all the humans I have ever known,” Sylvanna said, breaking into his thoughts, “your silences speak loudest.”
Aedan looked at her and smiled wanly. “Forgive me. I am not being a very good traveling companion on this journey.”
“That was not what I meant,” she said as she rode beside him. “I was not complaining. I was merely remarking on the fact that I can always tell when you are troubled.”
“Have I become so obvious? That is a bad trait in an imperial minister. I shall have to correct it.”
“We shall make it back; don’t worry.”
“It is my job to worry. The emperor has neither time nor the inclination. I must do his worrying for him.”
“And who worries for you?”
“I worry for us both. It can be quite exhausting.”
“If you like, I can worry for you. Then that would relieve you of at least some of your burden.”
He glanced at her and saw that she was smiling. He grinned despite himself. “You know, sometimes I think you’re actually beginning to act human.”
She sniffed disdainfully “Well, you don’t have to be insulting.”