Caught without knowledge of the password they demanded, Mearn refused answer until their advance had brought them inside one stride of him. The hand under his mantle rested taut on his knife.

He kept his spurs ready to wheel his spent mount into immediate, hard flight, for no saving grace could lift the hair-trigger potential for disaster. These were townbred veterans with hard-core disaffections.

Here in the free wilds, where clan accent alone could provoke a bloodletting misunderstanding, Mearn had no wish to claim the pro- tection of Prince Lysaer's Alliance with his family. A s'Brydion pres- ence abroad with credentials, but no escort, would raise all the wrong sort of questions.

"Who passes?" the sentry repeated. "Say your name and your pur- pose!"

Mearn let his dragging exhaustion sap the lilt of clan origins from his tone. "Courier, northbound."

Then more crawling chills flicked the length of his spine. The whis- pered rustle of branches from behind gave warning as more men closed at his back. His straits were now unequivocal. He rode alone, with no lawful witness within miles to gainsay the fight actions of men who held him surrounded with drawn steel.

The next query carried a cold snap of suspicion. "What brings you here? Your path takes you far from the public road."

Mearn kept his birth dialect blurred, and his hands light and taut on his weapon. "Alliance business." To his right, where the gulch held pooled water, the chorus of spring peepers had silenced. These men would have concealed archers placed there, backing them up against mishap.

Ready to wheel his horse's startled weight and ram the two swordsmen behind him, Mearn measured his odds. If the bowmen had poor eyesight and miserable aim, he might narrowly manage to beat an escape through the brush. Very likely he would be wounded.

Any lead he might gain could last only as long as some headhunter thought to set dogs on him. Without knowing the size of the camp 318.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

these men guarded, dissembling stayed his best option. Mearn assayed an impatient, townborn inflection. "I have northbound dis- patches. Very urgent."

The Etarran officer was steady enough not to kill out of hand.

Scarcely a day's march away from the river, he must know an overt barbarian presence was unlikely in the middle of wide-open country.

Mearn waited, unbreathing, to see whether sweet luck or mischance was going to present his next opening.

The duty officer called for a torch. "Let's have a look."

Flint and steel were produced with no fumbling. One of the sen- tries had rags soaked in pitch already prepared and waiting. As the flame burst and flowered, carnelian light played over Mearn's leather-clad knee, then the sable and scarlet colors of the officer's cloak he had purloined from the gatehouse that morning. Behind the folds of his mud-spattered hem, his gelding still wore the matching saddlecloth with its Hanshire blazon, that he had forgotten he car- ried.

The Etarrans fixed on the city mayor's device, and troubled to look no farther.

"Dharkaron's bollocks!" somebody carped from the sidelines. "Not another of you louses! Gave up my bed to your kind last night. The peacock disdained to fold up his blankets, far less say thanks in grati- tude. Treated everyone he met like the get of a bootlicking scullion."

"Be still, you!" Defined in the light by the braid on his surcoat, the authority proved a man of middle years, rangy and fit and intolerant of nonsense. To Mearn, he made swift disposition. "All right, sir. You need not prove out the unpleasant reputation your countrymen left with my troops. You pass. Then you speak to the captain on watch. If your needs can be met, he'll look after the arrangements."

Mearn masked a thrill of delighted inspiration behind faintly sneering reserve. Weary, hungry, and hagridden by the urgency to move on, nonetheless, the gambler in him refused to ignore the dubi- ous gifts dame fortune cast in his lap. He tipped a superior nod to the sergeant. Then he gathered his reins, risen to an arrogance no less withering than the Hanshire aristocrat who preceded him.

"Fiends plague!" a plaintive voice announced in oversight. "He'll need tonight's password if he isn't to find himself skewered on the swords of the inner watch."

Mearn pulled the gelding up short, his expression sure prelude to a burst of reviling temper.

The sergeant grumbled his unembarrassed apology and shared the prearranged signal. Mearn inclined his head, touched firm heels to 319.

his horse, and passed by, girded to wring what advantage he could, starting with a hot meal.

Behind him, the disaffected patrol indulged their dismal opinion of Hanshiremen. "Not a trustworthy lot, never have been. Hate royalty like plague. The fish-eaters consort with witches and soothsayers, as well as abet Koriani. You knew their Lord Mayor's high council is said to dabble in black magic?"

"Stow the loose chatter!" snapped the sergeant.

His chastened men broke up to resume their lapsed posts, while Mearn moved on out of earshot. In apparent routine, he let his exhausted mount pick its own way through the rim-lit gulches and low brush. The farther he progressed, the more fresh unease chafed at his overtaxed nerves. Again, he surveyed the plain. The shaved moon textured a panorama like etched lead. He detected no sign of a camp.

Only a storm-raked wrack of bent trees that marked the dry conflu- ence of a watershed. The hollow he crossed was scarcely a notable landmark in the lowland face of the Flats. He heard no human sound.

Just the rustle of a fox, and the endless sough of the wind through the budding twigs of bare branches. Whatever business an armed camp had here, these Etarrans knew enough to use even this barren terrain to advantage.

Mearn slowed the gelding, sobered by an ingrained campaign wis- dom to revise his original estimate. Given two lines of sentries, and no discernible activity, cold instinct lifted his hackles. An armed pres- ence that maintained such secrecy would not be inept, or unleashed for any other Alliance agenda than the harrying of Tysan's free clans- men.

Made aware like a douse into ice water that his danger was far greater than he realized, Mearn combed the shadows more closely.

He saw nothing still. His palms sprang a cold sweat and his warning instinct changed from mild to rousingly urgent. A covert retreat now carried more than chance risk in this country, where a mouse could not cross these stands of dry brush without telltale rustles of sound.

Mearn weighed a dangerously cruel set of choices. Best odds of survival were to bleed the horse dead, then try and creep back past the alert ring of sentries he had just hoodwinked to protect his iden- tity. If he slipped through unseen, he would then be on foot, easy prey for the tracking dogs dispatched to run him to earth. Hot pursuit would inevitably close at his heels. A horse carcass would draw notice, perhaps even before the watch reported his presence at the next routine change of the guard.

He could trade his anonymity for short-term escape, or he could 320.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

play for high odds and act out his guise as a bullying blue-blooded Hanshireman.

Had the stakes been less grim, Meam could have laughed for the damnfool straits of his predicament. By that hour, he had been mov- ing at speed through rough country for the better part of five days.

His rest had been snatched between showers in the thom brakes; his last meal, a chunk of sour cheese bought from a farmwife out feeding her geese. His judgment was failing, each separate thought strained as though drawn through a pall of black silk. Had he not been about t(~ nod off in the saddle, he might have bypassed the first pack of sen- tries altogether.

Mearn stroked the neck of his flagging mount. To reward the poor gelding for trusting service with the furtive thrust of a knife seemed the ungrateful act of a coward.

An insatiable gambler, Mearn let the rash heat in his blood call his fate. Since trained soldiers were likely to dog his path anyway, he tnight as well snatch the bold opportunity to gain provisions and a fresh horse.

"Oats and a rubdown for you then, old man," he whispered in wisecrack resolve. His bluff would carry more thrill for wild stakes, never mind the maniacal temptation to gripe the Etarrans in the most evil manner he could. He pressed the gelding's scrambling, tired gait, swearing as noisily as any Hanshire townsman whose urgent orders sent him across an inhospitable wilderness.

The inner ring of sentries came at him like sharks in their haste to issue their challenge. Through snapping sticks as the horse fought bad footing, Meam gave the password in the sloppy, soft vowels that centuries of affected fashion had evolved into citybred speech.

"State your business," the guard demanded, unsatisfied.

"Courier," barked Mearn. "You can't see with the two eyes Ath put in your face?" He added a phrase in the west coastal dialect that would raise a ripe flush on a galleyman.

"From Hanshire?" The flustered guard jerked up his chin, then snapped for a henchman to unshutter the light.

Slit eyed in the blinding flare of a lantern, Meam gave his obstreperous opinion. "Fiends plague! You Etarrans always check on the obvious with the plodding stupidity of fed ticks."

Three guards slapped swift hands to their weapons, insulted. No fool, the young officer waved the arrival on quickly. He could do little else without risking a brawl unlikely to stop short of bloodshed.

Meam smiled like a fox and rode past.

A bowshot ahead, he encountered the camp, a row of dark tents 321.

]ANNY ~'URTS.

hunkered into a hollow carved out of the stony debris of a floodplain.

The site lay well masked, set into the willows that knitted the low ground in the flats. The shelters were invisible unless an observer all but stumbled into their midst. Mearn saw no loose ends, no telltale gleams of chance firelight. The fitful, hard gusts did not slap at slack canvas, nor did stray talk ride the breeze.

This field troop displayed deadly, meticulous care. In sheer size alone, their presence bespoke a planned devastation, the work of trained reivers moving fast into enemy territory. Mearn disliked the unpleasant bent of his hunches, that Lord Maenol's clan scouts were going to receive a grim retaliation for upsetting the late march into Riverton. Nor did informed hindsight applaud the decision to beard the wolf pack in its chosen lair. This strike force was sea- soned by the wiles of headhunters, and likely as fast to take scalps without question if they caught wind of an infiltrator inside their camp.

Though contentious escapades were Mearn's personal specialty, the banner which flew above the command tent made him wonder if even his brazen wit could pull off a challenge this grand. For the field captain in charge here had served the s'Brydion family as a merce- nary until the campaign at Vastmark had brought an abrupt change of patron. The duke's brothers were far more than passing acquain- tances, and Mearn's false claim of identity as a Hanshire courier would be seen as a killing offense.

A stick snapped on his back trail. Mearn spun, saw the two-legged shadow that stalked him, and snarled a silent obscenity. His presence had apparently stirred enough doubt that a guardsman had been sent to tail him. Most likely the creature was instructed to make sure he reported straightaway to the acting officer of the watch.

Hazed to a spurt of riled temper for this latest unlucky setback, Mearn drew a deep breath, then turned to engage every twist of cun- ning wickedness he could raise to secure his stake in survival.

"If you're going to follow," he drawled in contempt, "might just as well do so up front, where you won't take the point of my knife in mistaken belief you had thieving eyes on my purse."

The stick-cracking rustles hitched through a pause, then resumed as a stocky, perturbed soldier elbowed his way through the prickles of a hazel copse. Despite his large build, he moved well. His balance reflected a swordsman's neat tread, and though self-controlled, his temperament was by no means phlegmatic enough to withstand the barrage of Mearn's baiting. If he dared not strike back at a Hanshire courier, he would settle for shedding an unwanted responsibility as 322 ~.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

fast as humanly possible. "Head groom's still awake. He'll care for your horse."

"I'll care for my horse," Mearn shot back in distemper. He dis- mounted and loosened his saddle girth, running on in snide language under his breath about the ineptness of rattle-pated grooms. For sheer, stinging mischief, he added an insolent phrase in dialect he picked up by the Riverton gates, when the officer whose mantle he filched had swept in.

"Fatemaster's bollocks!" The stout guardsmen peered past the sloped neck of the gelding. "Is every living one of you also related to the priggish family of the mayor?"

Mearn smiled, sly in malice as a weasel. "Thick witted, are you, to take so long to notice the connection."

The pair crossed inside the camp perimeter, the alleged Hanshire courier all peevish-sharp nerves, and the heavyset soldier tagging his heels in contrasting, subservient awkwardness.

No torches burned, even damped behind canvas. Those men who had not turned in for the night hunkered down in small groups, con- versation held to low whispers. They blended into the pitch shapes of the shadow, faces and hands stained with walnut dye to mask the pallor of bare flesh. Their shelters were sturdy and weatherproof, showing the odd scurfs and mends of hard use, and a layout taken from a headhunters' practice, with tents placed in rows of predictable width to allow ease of movement in darkness. Mearn lightened his tread, made cautious by the lethal stamp of competence reflected in every salient detail.

This camp was laid out for instantaneous action, from swift reloca- tion to surprise attack. Men called to arms from the deepest of sleep could move, fight, and organize without tripping over tent pegs and ropes. No clutter lay about, no stray gear or strings of washed cloth- ing. At a table with camp seats placed near the center, three wakeful officers clustered in conference, a tight-shuttered lantern between them. Yet no gleam of flame gave their presence away in the faint, mottled fall of the moonlight.

Led into their presence, Mearn used the snagged hair of the geld- ing's mane to obscure direct view of his face. His posture stayed straight, every inch of him arrogant. At length the camp watch cap- tain broke off discussion and issued a testy inquiry. "Don't stand there dumbfounded! If you have any purpose here, state it."

Since the uppity Hanshireman deigned not to speak, his disgrun- tled escort was forced to step UP and explain. "Here's a courier, bound north bearing urgent dispatches."

323.

JANNY WUI~TS il A drawn pause; the watch captain waited, braced on mailed elbows. His expectation made the silence unbearable. Red-faced, the sentry resumed his report, unable to refute the implied chain of com- mand. "Yes, he needs food. Care and grain for his horse."

Mearn forced his breath steady as the lamp was raised up, and a cauffous, brief finger of light tJJcke~ed over his c/oak and the Hah- shire blazon on his saddlecloth.

Blunt as the mace he wore at his belt, the watch captain pressed his gruff inquiry. "You know him?"

"Sithaer no! Thank the power of Light for that blessing." The sol- dier glared with pure rancor at Mearn, who gave back a smile full of teeth.

Across the table, one of the subordinate officers clapped a hand to his beard to mask humor. The duty captain noticed, and snapped, "Swellhead or not, he can't stay in camp unescorted."

The guard braced his posture in bitten-off protest. "Respectfully sir, I'm posted on the inner perimeter until midnight. Since this dan- dified errand boy requires a servant, will you hear my advice? Assign him somebody's unseasoned page. Preferably one with an insolent tongue that's deserving a stiff round of punishment."

"Just make sure he knows how to clean a man's boots," Mearn remarked from the sidelines.

The watch captain lost his breath to astonishment, then struggled not to laugh at the stilted discomfort of the soldier caught in the breach. "I understand your position," he said, straight-faced. "By all means, we don't pander to mincing state guests." He nodded dis- missal to his disaffected veteran. "Return to your post with my co~- pliments."

Relieved at vindication, the heavyset guard grinned in parting. "Be sure the daisy attends his own horse. He's already told me our grooms aren't fit to pluck the arse end of a goose."

Left with the watch captain and two inimical senior officers, all of them thankfully strangers, Mearn held his ground, wary. His airs and affectations in fact bought no immunity. This strike force was not warmly disposed toward strangers, nor did it welcome unannounced couriers who impinged with a claim of hospitality.

"You will leave all your weapons with us," the watch captain instructed, stretching the hard muscles of his forearm. Moonlight snagged on the links of his mail as he leaned his massive weight over the table. "No one here knows you. We don't leave men armed who aren't vouched for."

Mearn said nothing, but yanked loose his sword belt. He knotted 324.

FUGITIVE PRINCE.

ti~, ends of the leather around the scabbard and, in masterful pre- ~~nption, pitched his offering toward the seated officers; as if all his li~~s, any man near him would naturally scramble to vie for the favor ~t his service. To judge by the fast reflexes of the brute who received tt~e catch, his best chance was to stay on the offensive and discourage t~,,) close a scrutiny.

Before the captain could phrase a demand for his dagger, Mearn Clustered back in disdain, "Since I'm not an assassin, will you insist t~~at I eat with my hands?"

Any competent killer would use a noiseless garrote before steel; a fine point the watch captain was shamed to concede since the dagger remained in Meam's custody.

he first throw fell to s'Brydion wiles, that freewheeling complaint ~-,~ , .~d a grating embarrassment in this bastion of prideful authority.

X,o more argument ensued as a page boy was rousted and assigned ~!te mean task of dogging Mearn's presence in camp. The steaming norse and its troublesome rider were dispatched straightaway to the picket lines, to long-suffering sighs of relief.

Granted limited autonomy and a precarious state of safe-conduct, '.,,~eam adopted the sneer he liked best to intimidate crews on the ,lecks of his brother's war galleys. Cardplay had taught him the ele- .;ant fine points of intimidation without the crude bluster of exertion.

n one withering glance, he sized up his escort, a swaggering, lanky ~oy of sixteen who tripped over his own feet at each step.

Since braggarts typically feared contradiction, Mearn spun on his heel. He tugged his mount in the wrong direction, his blunder a cer- tainty since the wind in his face carried no tang of manure.

The boy plucked at his sleeve, then flung back as Mearn bristled.

"Don't touch me, whelp." In sterling offense, Mearn faced forward and continued on his wa~ The page followed. Three dozen strides passed before the boy raised the nerve to correct the displaced orientation.

By then, the s'Brydion envoy had finished his count of the tents, and by swift extrapolation, set a crude limit on the strength of Alliance numbers. This force kept no camp followers. Servants and support troops were pared to a minimum, and an overheard scrap of conversation had informed that even the healer bore arms. More than one shelter's ridgepole displayed trophy scalps, clan braids knotted together like rope, or wound in the blood-crusted thongs the living man's wife would have tied in before battle.

Enraged and grieving, Mearn came at last to the picket lines. This division was light horse, the animals all prime, kept glossy with grain and condition. By contrast, the hack he tied up and rubbed down was 325.

JANNY WURTS.

thin and straight shouldered, an eyesore of a livery horse outclassed by its neighbors.

The page boy fatuously pointed this out.

Mearn ignored him. By clan belief, all things alive were made equal, no animal given more worth than another, and no man's life valued above either. Moved to cross-grained annoyance for the boy's townbred ignorance, he fixed his whole attention on tending the tired gelding's legs.

Just like the chained dog spumed by the free one, the snubbed page inflated his boasting to compensate.