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his head. "Let's give it a little while, and head on down." He jerked his chin
at the road below. "We'll not only avoid some of the dust, but we'll miss
having to explain ourselves to any stragglers."
Ian frowned. "We've got something to hide?"
Ivar del Hival's smile was a trifle too broad for Ian's taste. "Well, truth to
tell, I don't feel like explaining what a minor noble from the House of Flame
is doing in Vandescard with three strange-looking folks no offense intended.
If I'm on a trade mission, where are my trade goods? And if I'm after a word
with, say, the local margrave, where are my letters-of-commission?" The big
man pulled a flask from his rucksack and took a measured swig, offering one to
Ian with a quick raising of the eyebrows; Ian declined.
"So," Ivar del Hival said, "that might make me a spy, and while I could likely
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be ransomed or just pardoned, there are those soldiers... and even possible
spies can be hoisted on the all-too-certain end of a lance, apologies to come
later, if ever."
Ian nodded, and turned to go back down the ridge, toward Hosea, rising to his
feet only when he was sure that the crest of the ridge hid him.
His breathing had slowed, and Hosea had gained enough strength to turn on his
side; he had taken the canteen strapped to the rucksack Ian had dropped next
to him.
"Are we winning?" Hosea asked, his smile crooked.
"So far, so good. Arnie spotted some local cavalry, and Ivar del Hival seems
to think mat's strange."
Hosea rose to one elbow. "Cavalry?" He nodded. "He's right. That is strange.
Horse-borne soldiers are usually minor nobility
and there's little glory and less gold to be won hereabouts, near the Dominion
border." His face was somber. "These days, that is."
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"It's perhaps worse than that, although it's hard to say." Ivar del Hival
pursed his lips. "For a moment, I thought the foremost of the lancers was
wearing an enameled armored glove, but "
Hosea's brow furrowed. "Enameled?"
"Which couldn't be. That would be pretentious, and in Vandescard, pretension
is dangerous."
Ian didn't understand any of this. "So one of them was wearing a decorated
metal glove why is that important?"
"It means that the patrol is being led by a Tyr's Son. It's the elite
Vandestish military society, and they tend to delegate the routine to others."
"And they're the only ones allowed to wear decorated gloves?"
"It's not a glove. It's a... prosthetic hand, I guess you'd call it." Hosea
pursed his lips. "It could be worse; at least it wasn't an argenten."
"Small benefit." Ivar del Hival straightened. "Well, we'd best be on our way.
The sooner we make Harbard's Landing, the sooner I
can bring word to His Warmth that there's something curious going on in
Vandescard."
Ian grunted. "You seem to be making a lot of one troop of cavalry, and one guy
missing a hand."
Ivar del Hival shrugged. "Perhaps."
The stretcher was getting heavier, but that wasn't the worst part of it: Ian's
nose itched, and he could hardly stop every few moments to scratch at it.
Twitching it didn't help, and neither did screwing up his face.
Arnie had insisted on taking a shift at the stretcher, and was bringing up the
rear while Ian carried the front and Ivar del Hival took the lead, ranging
anywhere from twenty to fifty yards or so in front of them, often disappearing
around a bend for a few moments.
Hosea was clearly feeling stronger; he was talking about walking, although
that was, at best, premature.
What had appeared to be a trail along the edge of the forest had turned out to
be a stone road. An ancient road, at that only the stones along the side near
showed any bulge at all; the rest had been worn flat in their beds of mortar.
Ian frowned. That didn't make sense. The mortar should wear out much more
quickly than the stones. He said as much.
Arnie chuckled. "I was thinking about that, too. Next time we take a break,
take out a piece of metal what don't owe you no money and try and scratch at
that mortar bet you dollars to doughnuts all you'll get is a scratched piece
of metal."
Ian's brow wrinkled. " 'What don't owe me no money?'"
"Old expression. From World War Two Bill Mauldin did a cartoon of a sergeant
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saying something like 'I need a coupla guys what don't owe me no money for a
little routine patrol.' "
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Ivar del Hival's face split in a grin. "It should be worn away by now,
shouldn't it? Mortar being such a weak thing, and all." He produced a short
piece of metal: a wire tent peg. "Give it a try," he said. "It's my turn to
carry."
Gratefully, Ian set his end of the stretcher down and scratched at the mortar
between a pair of flattened stones. Nothing.
It wasn't the hardest metal, granted, but it should have left some mark. He
scratched harder, and the point of the peg came away blunt, leaving a dark
streak behind that lay on top of the mortar. Ian tried stabbing down at it,
but only succeeded in bending the peg.
"The ancients knew how to build, eh?" Ivar del Hival had taken Arnie's place
at the rear of the stretcher, while Arnie squatted in front and gripped the
poles before counting to three and standing.
A man Arnie's age shouldn't have been able to do that so easily, but Ian was
getting used to things not being the way they were supposed to be. Shit, he'd
had years of practice with it his father had been a good teacher of how things
weren't as they should be
but he was used to it being a curse, not a blessing.
Ivar del Hival nodded. "Your turn on point. We take this road for most of the
rest of the day." He looked down at Hosea. "I'd rather stay clear of Bóinn's
Hill, Orfindel, but if you insist..."
"I do."
The sun lay on the horizon, the darkling western sky splattered with apricot
and crimson, a casual finger painting by a baby god.
Ian sat, leaning back against an upthrust column of rock. He shivered, and
gathered his cloak about himself, not sure whether the shivering was caused by
the cold or the oncoming dark.
Or misgivings.
The trail had exited the forest a couple of miles back, and ran up a shallow
saddle between two hills. At Hosea's direction, they had left the trail, and
made their way up the tall grassy side of the larger hill, up to the summit,
where a row of four ancient stone pillars poked their way out of the grass and
the brush. They reminded him of an ancient British menhir, a megalith he had
seen in some book, a long time ago, but these seemed too irregular to be
carved, perhaps too regular to be natural.
From a distance they had looked like the fingers of some fossilized giant
reaching out of the bowels of the earth. Close up, they were just big rocks.
It was cold on the top of the hill, but a fire would have been a bad idea
while they were still in Vandescard.
"Tomorrow," Hosea said, huddled in his own cloak and blankets. "Tomorrow night
we may well make Harbard's Landing. If not, we'll be close. Close enough to
risk a fire."
Arnie Selmo had already turned in. He lay sleeping on a bed of grass sheaves
he'd cut.
Ivar del Hival coughed politely off in the distance, announcing his return. He
had a small shovel in one hand, and a roll of toilet paper in a ziplock bag in
the other.
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