"Hunh," Keln commented, stumbling away from where The Masked and Tantaerra lay motionless. "Wouldn't it be tactics, now? Or not …I never could keep those two straight."
"Don't bother. For us, it's simple enough: Molthuni invade, and we kill them. If we don't, we lose our country. They have all the coin-thus all the soldiers-and so we keep hidden and strike when we can get away again alive."
"Except here at the river."
"Except here. We can't let 'em cross the Inkwater too easily, or they'll arrive in force without us knowing about it. There're Molthuni armies marauding around due west of here right now, you know."
"What? Why?"
"Because they want to, that's why."
"No, I mean: why do we let them maraud?"
"Because if we stand forth in bold battle lines to stop them, they'll carve us to frymeat, that's why! Now climb back up into the watch-tree, master strategist, and stop prating. You'll have all the invading Molthuni around here awake and listening."
"Hunh!" Keln said scornfully. "There aren't any invaders this side of the riverbank, or anywhere near here. We'd hear them."
"Not over your chatter, we wouldn't. Climb."
Smiling silently in the dark, Tantaerra followed The Masked, who'd started crawling purposefully west along the edge of the bushes as Keln noisily and grumblingly strode right past them and started to climb the watch-tree, still complaining about stew.
The Masked set a brisk pace. The last they heard from Keln, as his voice faded into the distance behind them, was undoubtedly a sarcastic comment on his arrival at his post high in the tree-yet it still made Tantaerra freeze, for a startled moment.
"Welcome to Nirmathas."
∗ ∗ ∗
Before dawn, The Masked managed to club a sleepy Nirmathi camp cook from behind, leaving the man draped dazedly over his pots never knowing who'd hit him. The masked man then stole two half-cooked rabbits and a fistful of pickles.
He'd handed half to Tantaerra as they'd slipped out of the camp-all the other Nirmathi were out somewhere in the night, hunting Molthuni-and they'd eaten as they crept on into the fading night. Looking now not for any road to Hurlandrun, but rather for a good hiding place where they could sleep through the day. Preferably near one of the many small, noisy creeks that seemed to tumble everywhere in this forested, trail-crisscrossed country. The din of racing waters might mask their snoring.
Across the river behind them, westernmost Molthune was all rolling grasslands, home to scattered ranches and farms, but this part of Nirmathas was a tangled, overgrown warzone of burned and abandoned villages and farms fast being reclaimed by the forest.
Tantaerra had no idea how far from the Inkwater they'd come-it was hard to travel for more than a few strides in a straight path, for one thing-but they were certainly deep in a war-torn countryside of unburied corpses, tangled scrub forest, and scavenging beasts, where Molthuni troops encamped amid much torchlight and Nirmathi warbands crept through the trees in the concealing darkness.
She doubted matters changed much for the Nirmathi by day. The trees were their cloaks and allies. More than once, she and The Masked had come across great charred scars through the forest, the open aftermaths of recent fires where a Molthuni commander had tried to burn out lurking foes.
The dozen or so wagon-roads they'd crossed weren't much different. They were all thrice as wide as most roads Tantaerra had seen, or wider, where bordering trees had been hewn down or burned away by the invaders from Molthune, to rob attacking Nirmathi of cover. It hadn't taken long to learn these roads were the deadliest part of their night journey. Molthuni patrols with no lanterns but ready crossbows lurked-and so did Nirmathi in the nearby forest, with their own bows. If they crawled with slow, agonizing care and Desna's blessing was with them, they might make it across one without attracting anyone's attention, but even their fastest, boldest dashes were chased by bolts or arrows-or hails of both.
Which meant, as the night sky grew lighter and lighter behind them, their progress had become a wearying sequence of hiding, rushing for short swift periods, then hiding again to pant and cower as warriors of either Nirmathas or Molthune stalked suspiciously about.
By then The Masked was wearing an arrow sunk deep in his right shoulder, while Tantaerra was bleeding freely from two deep furrows across her back where crossbow bolts had just missed taking her life.
"If we get through this, why don't we just keep going, and leave Nirmathas and Molthune behind?" Tantaerra gasped. They sagged against the same tree and peered grimly out through thick foliage at the sound of a stream flowing somewhere in front of and a long way below them, at the bottom of a narrow, breakneck-deep little gorge in the forest. "That Telcanor had to be lying about the spells!"
"He was," The Masked muttered, ducking back into the dark tangle of leafy branches and drawing her close, "but there's a little matter of a mountain range ahead of us-not to mention what lies the other side of it. The corpseland of Nidal. And then there's me."
"What about Varisia? We could head north along the mountains until-"
"They were high and cold enough we'd be climbing to our doom to try to cross them?"
Tantaerra gave the dark, half-seen face looming above hers her best glare. "You could at least try to be helpful, Tarram Armistrade. And just what do you mean, 'then there's me'? What is it you're not telling me? You've been keeping secrets from me, I know you have, and-"
The sword that burst through the twigs and leaves then to pass right between their noses was daubed with something to kill its shine, but they both saw it well enough.
With a shout of pain The Masked twisted and lunged, driving his own blade back along the intruder's into something solid. He was rewarded with a sob-and the dulled blade sagging as a convulsing hand let it fall.
The unseen Nirmathi's body crashed down through bushes growing in the gorge, landing with a thud and a splash.
"Jeressan?" a voice hissed from nearby. "Jeressan?"
The Masked listened intently, and when the faintest of cracklings marked a movement on the other side of the tree they'd been leaning against, he thrust past it, hard.
There was a startled curse and a much louder fall down into the gorge, thuddings that ended with a grunt of pain and then a flurry of curses, as the Nirmathi who'd fallen discovered he'd landed on a very dead Jeressan.
A light was kindled, flint struck into a pouchload of carried kindling that flared up long enough to show a shocked Nirmathi that a gape-mouthed, unseeing Jeressan was impaled on two broken saplings-and show The Masked and Tantaerra, above, just whom they faced. In addition to the Nirmathi who'd landed on Jeressan and made the flame, two more armed Nirmathi had hold of trees on the lip of the gorge, barely an arm's reach from Tantaerra and The Masked.
Tantaerra reacted first, springing to launch herself feet-first into the started face of the nearest Nirmathi-a woman with dark hair-before she could do more than gape. That drove the woman, flailing for balance, back into her companion.
The Masked calmly slid his sword through the throat of one and into the other, then stepped forward, got a good grip on a stout tree bough, and shoved the gurgling, throat-clutching soldier down into the gorge-onto the head of the man with the flame, below.
The second wounded Nirmathi was still fighting for balance when Tantaerra, who'd landed with a crash at his feet in what had once been a formidable thornbush and was still a prickly ruin, spun herself around on her side, heedless of the pain, kicking his ankles out from under him.
His landing in the gorge below was loudly and messily rocky.
The Masked looked down at Tantaerra, and she looked back up at him.