Before the Mask

Chapter 4

It would be the first hunt of a cold, difficult spring, and the first centi-core hunt for either lad. Ancient custom had ordained, since both Verminaard and Aglaca had turned twenty in the snows of the previous winter, they must both hunt this spring. Yoked together by age, education, and rivalry, the two had passed from boyhood to the edge of manhood- to the time of testing in the wilds.

Since Aglaca's arrival at Castle Nidus, Verminaard felt he had come to know him well. Their eight years together had bound them, though the bonds were neither warm nor comfortable. Neither lad thought now of friendship: They had realized that possibility had come and gone even before they met. After all, Verminaard was too cautious and suspicious for friendship, especially with someone whose presence reminded him constantly of his absent brother Abelaard. And Aglaca was a hostage, all but imprisoned, quartered in Castle Nidus against his wishes. But the lads had become well acquainted, like weathered, familiar rivals in the shaky truce of the gebo-naud, and with that acquaintance, outright hostility had become as difficult as friendship.

During long hours of instruction, when Verminaard sat on his stool in the northwest tower and nodded at Cer-estes' lectures on spellcraft and alchemy, he had seen out the window where Aglaca wandered through the gardens north of the walls. The gardens were still immaculate despite the ten years' absence of Mort, the gardener who had left this spot when Daeghrefn's temper turned. In this sanctuary, Aglaca would stoop to examine a sprig of cedar, to smell a flower, then vanish altogether behind a blue stand of evergreens.

Why, the boy is only a gardener at heart, Verminaard thought scornfully. A floral fool.

And Verminaard would return to his lessons, delighted when the smoke rose from the palm of his hand, or when a brief, clumsy incantation drew water from the dark wall of the castle.

He did not realize that, from the gardens, Aglaca had also glimpsed his hulking shadow at the window of the tower. Nor did he suspect that Aglaca knew of his secret envy, the envy any prisoner of scholarship feels toward those who are free. Whenever Verminaard watched, Aglaca ducked behind the big stand of aeterna to practice his other studies. There he would mimic the movements of the mantis, standing with his arms poised above him in a grotesque, almost silly position, then bringing his hands down suddenly, repeatedly, tirelessly, in deadly accurate blows.

The months passed, and his reflexes quickened.

Once the mantis had taught him speed, he picked up the sword he had hidden amid the blue-needled branches. And in what remained of Verminaard's mother's rose garden, he would wheel and dance, his feet stepping lightly and harmlessly between the roses, his deft hands whirling the sword above his head. Then suddenly, violently, as though taught by nature and blood for a thousand years, he would bring the blade whistling down to the tip of a rose petal. The metal edge would shear in precise halves an iridescent, predatory beetle, but leave the blossom intact, untouched even by the wind from the blade.

Verminaard never saw Aglaca's private schooling, but the Solamnic lad did not go unobserved. Under orders from Daeghrefn, the seneschal Robert would watch from behind a blue topiary, marveling as the youth grew in wisdom and stature and grace.

Nor did Aglaca always study alone. Since a month after he took up residence in Castle Nidus, a cloaked woman would meet him in the garden's seclusion. There she taught him herb lore, self-defense, and a muted, rudimentary magic. Robert would crane through the blue branches to overhear the both of them, and the woman's voice, tantalizing at the edge of hearing, charmed him with its music and lilt.

And its familiarity. The seneschal had heard that music before. On one sunlit day in midspring, the woman had turned toward him, looked right at him through the network of branches… Auburn-haired and tall and dark-eyed. He remembered the face at once. L'Indasha Yman smiled and winked at Robert. For a week afterward, the seneschal slept fitfully. The druidess was somehow spiriting herself onto castle grounds, and he wondered if she were treacherous enough to betray him or reckless enough to risk her life and his by these visits in broad daylight. Yet daily he saw her, and there was yet no alarm from the keep, no midnight summons from the Lord of Nidus.

Robert breathed more easily, until the day he saw Daeghrefn himself in the garden.

Aglaca and L'Indasha were bowed over a rose, and the druidess was lecturing the Solamnic youth about Mort the gardener. He was a sturdy, warmhearted man from Est-wilde who had weathered the surliness of Daeghrefn while planting lilies and roses throughout the keep. But in Verminaard's second year, the patience of the gardener had vanished, and soon afterward Mort himself had disappeared.

But not before he had planted ten thousand sunflowers, which sprouted and bloomed both in and out of season, rising overnight everywhere from the bailey to the midden, taunting the brooding Daeghrefn with their bright, outrageous colors.

"He was a prankster, Mort the gardener," L'Indasha whispered with a chuckle. "Had some magic and a wondrous sense of humor. I miss him terribly."

Aglaca smiled, but at that moment, Daeghrefn walked into the garden. Robert had not seen him coming, and the seneschal held his breath as the Lord of Nidus halted beside the druidess and the lad.

"What are you laughing at, Aglaca?" Daeghrefn asked, and the boy looked up at him calmly. The druidess stood, brushed the dirt from her robes, and stepped back into the topiary.

It was then plain to Robert that L'Indasha was invisible to Daeghrefn. The druidess looked straight at the seneschal and winked and smiled in an odd conspiracy.

Robert's sleep was troubled no longer by fear of disclosure.

And so both lads received different instruction, different comings of age. Verminaard learned by the book, by mages, by laborious study. His companion-his hostage- learned by invisible druidry and a silent and natural grace. Their schoolings taught them of their many differences, but nothing of common ground.

On the morning of the hunt, at the windswept gate of Castle Nidus, Verminaard served in a place of honor. He assisted Cerestes the mage in the ritual. According to ancient tradition, the likeness of the centicore was drawn upon the thick wooden gate with madder root and woad, the red and blue lines swirling in an intricate pattern that drew and focused the gaze of the hunter into the painted image.

It was said that in the Age of Light, the artists drew the prey-centicore, wyvern, perhaps even dragons themselves-in a fashion so lifelike that the paintings had shrieked when the spears entered them.

Verminaard himself held the brushes for Cerestes as the mage painted the first and boldest designs. The young man chanted the old words along with his mentor. When the hunters lined up to cast spears at the effigy, the mage handed Verminaard the cherished third spear, which followed after Daeghrefn and Robert had cast their weapons.

It had been perfect-the ceremony, the intoned words from the black-robed mage, Verminaard's own spear finding the heart of the whirling red and blue. Verminaard stood back proudly, breathing a prayer to the Queen of Darkness, as Cerestes had taught him. Meanwhile, the rest of the hunters, fifty in all, each offered his spear to the image, each with a shout, a boast, a prayer, as the hunt assembled and the grooms readied the horses… all perfect until Aglaca refused to join.

The smug Solamnic had declined, claiming Paladine governed his spear, and Mishakal, and Branchala-the old gods of creation and reconciliation and inspiration. He would not do this, he said, and then said no more.

But Verminaard did not let this high-handedness spoil the day-his day. Had not his spear alone found the heart of the painted beast? One last confirmation of his trophy kill was all he needed.

Daeghrefn stood by his horse, preoccupied with saddle and gear, with securing the arsons that would brace him in the saddle if he used his lance. Lost in his own calculations, he was no more interested in Aglaca's refusal than he had been in the ritual itself. When the last man had hurled his spear, the Lord of Nidus was already mounted. He had ignored the painting, the incantation, the fellowship of the casting. He had fulfilled his own role in the ritual solely because the men expected it.

Verminaard knelt by the horses and cast the Amarach, the rune stones. The runes today were cloudy in the reading, as they often were. The Giant. The Chariot. Hail. Something about breaking resistance, the path of power, destruction… though he couldn't piece it together.

But the runes were prophetic surely, despite Cerestes' laughter when his promising student spoke of their power. For the stones were ancient and venerated, were they not? Only his skills were lacking. His father's words, soft at the edge of his revery, confirmed for Verminaard that all he believed of rune and augury was true.

"Verminaard will ride at the head of the hunt," Daeghrefn announced, rising in the stirrups and shielding his eyes as he gazed north across the plain. He scanned the horizon to the distant lift of the mountains, where the cloud descended and all paths led across Taman Busuk to the mystical, uncharted heart of the Khalkists. "He will ride at the point of Nidus's spear, and he will ride alone."

That was all. With a sullen silence, his gaze averted, the Lord of Nidus fell in beside Robert.

A fierce joy gripped Verminaard. Fumbling the runes to a pouch at his belt, he vaulted into the saddle. The boar lance shivered and vibrated in its rest beside his right knee, and he clutched it eagerly.

Daeghrefn had noticed! He was sure of it. This place at the vanguard was a sign of esteem, of Daeghrefn's respect for his bravery and wits.

Not a season past his twentieth birthday, and he would ride at the front of a veteran army.

Aglaca, on the other hand, had often heard his father's tales of the centicore hunt. The creature was deadly, surprisingly cunning. It led hunters an exhausting chase and then turned and charged when the lancers had outpaced the hunting party, when the odds were narrowed to one or two tired hunters against a huge, well-armored monster. At East Borders, whatever man rode in the vanguard on a centicore hunt did so only after bequeathing his belongings to family and friends, saying the Nine Prayers to Pala-dine and Mishakal and Kiri-Jolith of the hunt, and singing over himself the time-honored Solamnic funeral song.

Aglaca's eyes narrowed as he watched the jubilant Verminaard tying himself to the saddle, bracing his back, trying to hide a boyish grin beneath a mask of feigned calm. Daeghrefn knew better than this: He was a skilled huntsman and swordsman, and though a renegade, he had not forgotten his Solamnic training in strategy and field command.

Of all people, Daeghrefn would know…

And he did know. Of course he did.

"I beg your pardon, sir," the Solamnic youth ventured. He set his foot to the stirrup of a horse readied for him as Daeghrefn turned in the saddle to regard him distantly, indifferently. "I would that you might… let me ride with Verminaard."

Robert looked nervously at his lord.

It had to work, Aglaca thought. Regardless of this strange disregard for his son, Daeghrefn would not risk Aglaca in a foolish gamble. Were Laca to receive word that his son had fallen in the hunt, Abelaard's life would be forfeit to the gebo-naud.

Aglaca was the best protection Verminaard could have.

Daeghrefn did not flinch at the boy's request. Directly, his face unreadable, he regarded the upstart as though appraising terrain or a suit of tournament armor.

"Do not forget, Master Aglaca," the Lord of Nidus replied, his scolding mild and quiet, "that you are not as much a guest in our midst as you are… captive to an agreement between Nidus and East Borders. I cannot let you ride in the vanguard, for you might use the occasion to escape. Worse still, you might suffer an injury."

"I am twenty, sir," Aglaca persisted. "Twenty, and skilled with weaponry you, in your kindness, have allowed me to practice."

"True enough," Daeghrefn conceded. "Better than your burly lump of a companion, by all accounts."

Verminaard winced, but his face returned swiftly to its impassive, unreadable mask.

"As for your misgivings regarding escape, Lord Daeghrefn…" Aglaca continued. "If I gave you my word, sir? As the son of a Solamnic Knight?"

Daeghrefn sneered. "You could not imagine how little such promises mean to me, boy. But if you must ride at the point, Osman rides with you, and a squadron of twelve men. In case the call of East Borders becomes too strong."

Aglaca hid a satisfied smile. The game was his for now. Daeghrefn had conceded on the fear that spies, who he suspected were constantly in his garrison, might relay Aglaca's disappointment to his father. Had Verminaard alone been placed in the vanguard, no escort would accompany him. By riding at the front of the column,

Aglaca had assured Verminaard's protection: Osman was a veteran huntsman and a loyal sort, and his dozen troopers would protect them both.

As the young men and their escort rode forth at the head of the hunt, the castle and its settlement dwindled to a scattering of tents and standards in the southern fields. Cerestes raised his hands in the Litany of Farewells. Then a red mist rose about him, and he vanished in a flurry of faded banners and fragmented light. Back to Castle Nidus, they supposed.

Taciturn, windburnt Osman rode between the two young men, his face as dark as weathered oak. His eyes, black and brilliant, scanned the terrain for spoor and hoofprints.

Verminaard, at the huntsman's right, fumed and crouched in the saddle as though he rode into a powerful, icy head wind. He had been betrayed by this soft western lad who rode to Osman's left-faithless Aglaca, who had refused the comradeship of the casting, then demanded the glory of the hunt.

His hunt-his place of honor, his chance to be noble and courageous, to distinguish himself before Daeghrefn. Aglaca and these nursemaids! They didn't belong here beside him. For a moment, he wished that Aglaca alone accompanied him. The plateaus of Taman Busuk were treacherous country, filled with crevasses and cul-de-sacs, where a horse could stumble, a young man could fall…

Verminaard pulled himself from the bloody revery. In the passing months, the murderous thoughts had come more often, more wildly. There were a thousand mishaps waiting for a Solamnic, a thousand deceptions and enemies. Verminaard dreamed of those awful moments, savored them until the dream dissolved before the cold truth of the gebo-naud-any misfortune that befell Aglaca could be visited on Abelaard in Solamnia.

And he would not let misfortune befall his brother.

In a heedless gloom, Verminaard kept his big black stallion in steady stride with Osman's roan. The landscape passed by him in a featureless, angry fog.

Aglaca, on the other side, prayed long and silently to Paladine, to Mishakal, and to Kiri-Jolith of the hunt, as his father Laca had taught him before he was old enough to hold a spear. Let the hunting be good, he beseeched the gods, and the kill clean and noble. And let each huntsman return to his hearth and his family, at the close of the day.

Smiling ruefully at the Solamnic, Verminaard eyed the massive company. They'll just be in my way, he thought, visions of the centicore entering his mind. The beast was slow-witted, ill-tempered, and nearsighted, but if it turned, grunting and lowering its tusks and gathering speed for a headlong and witless charge, the hunt changed radically. Then his companions would be a hindrance, his armor inadequate, his horse too slow, and all that remained between him and the gigantic, thick-skinned boar and its three-foot tusks was his couched lance, strong arm, and nerve.

It was an encounter Verminaard awaited eagerly. He spurred his horse to ride ahead of Aglaca, ahead of Osman. At twenty, Verminaard was burly and strong, and physical courage came easily for him. And, apparently recognizing it, his father had put him in a place of honorin the vanguard of the hunt, where he would most likely see the first action.

An icy rain pummeled the column of horsemen as they rode north across the browned, awakening plains toward Taman Busuk. The tips of their long, barbed spears dipped and rose with the swell and fall of the trail. When they reached the high plains, the horsemen fanned out and rode four or five abreast, separating into squadrons carefully assigned by Lord Daeghrefn.

Riding in the foremost and smallest squadron, Verminaard leaned back on the iron arson of his saddle and inhaled the moist, chilly air. It was lowland breathing here-thicker, more nourishing than the air at the timber-line where Castle Nidus kept its formidable watch. Aglaca, riding beside him, seemed suddenly more animate, suddenly more at home in the saddle and the journey.

They rested the horses in a narrow notch between two cliff faces-a glittering passage where the noonday sun flickered on black obsidian, porous volcanic rubble, and a little mountain pool still crusted with the winter's ice. Dismounting, Verminaard drank deeply of the drus flask at his belt-the visionary's potion that Cerestes said was the door to prophecy for servants of the Dragon Queen.

Then he drew forth again the bag of runes, rankling at the mage's insistence that auguring one's own future was impossible. He was sure self-augury could be done, some way, somehow. Especially now, vitalized by the drus potion: The carvings on the stones seemed to shimmer like veins of light.

"Osman," he called, and the huntsman, whetting his knife by a fallen log, looked up with a frown.

"Not the runes, if you please, young master. I don't take to auguries, nor to that mage of yours."

"They have nothing to do with him," Verminaard lied. The mage had given him the stones when he saw that the lad was curious. "They're fostered under the red moon- under Lunitari. All oracles are, because they're all neutral."

That much was true. Prophecy was a neutral thing. What you made of it was good or evil. And when you read the stones for someone else… well, sometimes you discovered the things that really concern you. The things that pertain directly to you.

Reluctantly Osman approached the young man. He mistrusted Verminaard's superstition, his preoccupation with dark ritual and ceremony. Being a bluff, commonsen-sical man, Osman had little love for the confusing auguries Verminaard constantly and eagerly placed in front of him.

Better the father, who believed in nothing, than this hex of a lad before him.

"Ask about the hunt, Osman," Verminaard urged. "Ask how your company will fare."

Osman cleared his throat, looking at Aglaca for rescue. The other lad knelt by his horse, smiled, and shook his head as he tightened the flank cinch of the saddle. He was not about to enter the fuss over symbol and omen.

"I expect we'll find out shortly enough, Master Verminaard," the huntsman replied, turning coolly back to the log.

Angrily Verminaard cast the runes himself. The flat, irregular stones scattered from his hands. It was an old Nerakan reading he tried-three stones in a sequence, determining the present, the immediate future, and the outcome of the event. The cryptic silver lines seemed to scatter, to flicker on the ground like edged fire.

Aglaca, meanwhile, rose and led one of the horses to the little pool. Leaning to break the ice so that the animal might drink, the youth was astonished to see another face, dark and serene, staring back at him from the glazed surface of the water.

"Great Paladine!" he breathed in astonishment.

It was the dark-eyed woman, regarding him serenely. Leaves hung in her auburn hair, and a curious amber light played over her forehead, as though she stared into the setting sun.

Her eyes widened. She smiled in brief recognition, then vanished into the smoky whirl of the ice. Now Aglaca saw an image of himself, sword drawn amid an alcove of granite and rubble. Verminaard stood behind him in the vision, his weapon sheathed and idle.

Aglaca stepped back and gasped, trying to make sense of the revelation.

It was then that the horses started and shied, their nostrils flaring at the whiff of something sharp and musty on the rising wind. Osman leapt to the saddle, followed instantly by Aglaca and the rest of the troopers. Standing in the stirrups, the huntsman scanned the featureless fields. Finally, like an old Plainsman visionary, Osman pointed to where the high grass thrashed and quivered, like the surface of a lake when something large and unfathomable rises from its depths and parts the shallow waters.

"There," Osman announced calmly, gesturing toward the moving furrow on the horizon. "A small one, but worthy of the hunt."

Verminaard scooped up the runes and pulled himself into the saddle. His companions already raced ahead of him, their horses spurred to a brisk trot toward the northern horizon, where his centicore rumbled and his glory would come thrashing through the high grass.

Their horses were good ones, swift and tireless. By mid-morning, the centicore was clearly in sight, lumbering ahead of them, its stout legs churning with a slow and ceaseless power.

It was an ugly thing, Verminaard agreed, as he had been told it would be. Its thick skin was armored with dried mud and algae, its arm-length tail bulbous and spiked like a mace. As tall as a man at its shoulders, the centicore was a young one, no doubt, since its horns were smooth and unscarred. An old folktale said that to meet its stare was death, that the very rocks of the Khalkist foothills were the remains of hapless hunters who had been turned to stone by its gaze.

Of course, Daeghrefn maintained that the legends were nonsense. He had killed two centicores himself, and both times, he claimed, he had looked the thing full in the face as he took its life. There was no magic in the creature, Daeghrefn said, no power except the fear prompted by the wild imaginings of the mountain peoples.

Osman was one of those mountain folk, however, and as the horsemen closed on the centicore, he ordered the young men to each side of the plodding creature. With a grunt, the monster lurched into a small box canyon between two cliff faces. After all, Daeghrefn had appointed the huntsman as a guardian of sorts, and if the centicore turned to charge, the lads would be at its flanks, at a safe distance from its swiveling horns and its legendary gaze, and the shortsighted focus of its anger would fall on Osman and the troopers alone.

Circling to the right of the beast, his horse brushing against the rock face, Verminaard leveled his lance. The horse quivered nervously beneath him, the foul smell of the beast thick in the moist, windless air. Verminaard stood up in the stirrups, locked his legs at the knees, and leaned forward in the saddle.

To his left, skidding over the black volcanic rubble, the centicore reached the rocky cul-de-sac. Slowly and stupidly the beast turned, facing Verminaard. In that time- two seconds, perhaps three-their eyes locked in the shadow of the cliff walls, and the boy saw the dull, shallow stare of the beast, its eyes as drab as wet slate.

It barely knows I am here, he thought exultantly. And now as it turns, I shall charge it and…

Then something flickered deep in the eyes of the monster.

Verminaard weaved above the saddle. For a moment, he believed he had imagined that strange, cold light that seemed to emerge from the heart of the beast, chilling yet beckoning him with some deeply malignant pressure. And yet it was not imagined, was not his own superstitious promptings, for how could his own mind freeze him, confuse him, and fascinate him so?

Verminaard blinked and fumbled his lance. The language of that light was something he almost knew, as though the thoughts of the beast had reached out across half the canyon and across a thousand years, embracing his thoughts and beginning a long and cold instruction. And yet he was not sure what it meant. The look had been cloudy, elusive, as indecipherable finally as the runes he tried vainly to read.

I shall charge it, he thought. I shall drive it into precious Aglaca.

His thoughts wrenched back to the moment, and he spurred his stallion. The beast turned and fled him, rumbling through the rough, gravelly stretch toward the other wall of the canyon where Aglaca waited, his lance leveled, his horse calm and steady.

Now! Verminaard thought, goading his horse after the barreling centicore. Now, while the thing is intent on Aglaca!

It would be a tough kill for an untried lad. The centicore lumbered toward Aglaca, its mouth agape, its horns swiveling like scythes. Aglaca blinked nervously and steadied his trembling lance, drawing again on his extraordinary courage as the monster closed the distance by half, the plodding strides gaining fluidity until the beast moved surprisingly fast over the gravelly edges of the cul-de-sac.

Then, unexpectedly, Osman rode between the lad and the charging animal. The older man had seen disaster unfolding from his post at the mouth of the cul-de-sac, and he realized at once that the post he had taken, chosen because it was the most likely place the beast would charge, was barely close enough to rescue the imperiled Solamnic youth. He spurred his horse over the gravel, shouting and whistling to distract the monster, and he reached Aglaca not a moment too soon, turning to face the centicore and raising his lance to receive its charge. The soft flesh at its breast lay exposed by the centicore's reckless assault, and all the veteran huntsman had to do was hold the lance as the creature drove itself upon the tapered shaft, then return with his seventh kill. His deeds would be sung in Castle Nidus, in the villages among the foothills, and by huntsmen as far away as Sanction and Zhakar.

So the hunt would have ended, had not Verminaard's pursuit distracted the beast.

Wheeling awkwardly on its forelegs, scattering gravel and earth as it turned, the centicore stumbled toward the charging youth. Alarmed, seeing the danger to his master's son, Osman spurred his horse forward, riding beside the centicore, seeking a soft spot, a vulnerable place in the filthy array of scales along the monster's back.

Suddenly the beast lashed out with its thick, macelike tail. The barb whistled through the air and crashed into the side of Osman's helmet with a ring that Robert's pursuing column heard a hundred yards from the mouth of the canyon.

Osman toppled from the saddle and fell heavily to the ground. For a moment, he tried to rise, his arms extended weakly above his lolling head, but then he shivered and lay still just as Verminaard's lance drove deeply, with a crackling of gristle and bone, into the breast of the centicore.

The impact of lance against the monster thrusted the young man back into the bracings of his saddle, and the breath fled from him as the air spangled with red light. He remembered only falling and being caught by the cords.

Then he remembered nothing at all.

Aglaca was kneeling beside him when Verminaard came to his senses. The huge hulk of the centicore lay not ten yards away, the broken lance embedded deep in its vitals. The shadows of horsemen surrounded him, and as he tried to stand, the seneschal Robert grabbed him under the arms, lifting him and bracing him.

"What happened here?" Daeghrefn's sharp voice asked, like a distant humming in his ears.

"The centicore is dead, sir," Aglaca volunteered. "And it was Verminaard's brave charge that killed it."

"And not only the centicore," Daeghrefn declared icily. "Osman has fallen to the same rash assault. Attend to his body and leave the centicore here for the ravens and kites. The beast is a shameful kill."

Verminaard could not believe his bad fortune.

He'd had scarcely a second's exulting, scarcely a moment to look across the churned and broken ground to the steamy, hulking body of the beast, to revel in his courageous act.

It was Aglaca's fault, the Voice soothed, gliding into his deepest thoughts as he sulked in the saddle. He could have joined the ceremony, closed the circle of the hunt with a simple cast of the spear. He refused, out of a stupid and blind loyalty to a vanished god

… and Osman died for Aglaca's pride and his helplessness. If he'd been man enough to kill the centicore…

Verminaard rode home in the middle of the column, Aglaca beside him. Over the mile and a half from the box canyon to the edge of the plains, the smaller lad never spoke, but when they reached the foothills and the narrow pass that led through Taman Busuk and south toward Castle Nidus, Aglaca finally addressed him. The brisk wind that met them erased all memory of the grasslands, the rank smell of centicore, and the sweat of terror-stricken horses.

"Your father will come around, Verminaard," Aglaca soothed. "He's wounded over the loss of Osman, but he'll see soon enough that your act was courageous, that you were only trying to help me out."

Verminaard winced at this new needling but kept silent, his eyes fixed on the path in front of them. Once, maybe twice, Aglaca thought that his companion was ready to speak, but each time the other lad shook his head and sank back into a gloomy quiet.

They passed over a stone bridge, wider by far than Dreed, where the horses walked three abreast and the riders, forced to dismount and lead the animals, trudged over the causeway of rock and gravel, exchanging muted conversation and stories about Osman's bravery.

"What's this bridge called, Verminaard?" Aglaca asked.

"Bandit's Bone" came the answer, muttered and clipped.

"Is there some burial ground here?"

Verminaard was about to loose a tirade upon Aglaca, to berate him for his pride and smugness and self-righteous, bloody-minded ways, when suddenly the air bristled with arrows. Rising from the rocks on the far side of the bridge ahead, a dozen archers aimed, fired, and reloaded as the rider at the front of Daeghrefn's column toppled over the bridge and into the gorge, the black shaft of a Nerakan arrow run through his back.

"Nerakans!" Daeghrefn roared. "Ambush!"

From the rocks behind them came a second group of bandits, also armed with bows, and instantly another deluge of arrows poured down on Daeghrefn's party. The relentless barrage eclipsed the midday sun, and the warriors on the rock bridge milled in confusion, while men before and behind Verminaard toppled into the gorge, some shot through several times.

Daeghrefn whirled in the saddle and shouted orders to his men. Verminaard strained to hear his father through the strange, aggressive yells of the Nerakan archers as they launched volley after volley upon the trapped hunters. But then the lad's eyes brought him the news as all the men turned their shields toward the far