Meam did not comment. Thin features cast to indifferent disdain, he listened and absorbed each stray fact the boy spouted. Bv the ti~e the gelding was cooled, fed, and groomed clean of sweat, he had cata- loged a major array of tactics used in past raids against Red-beard's clans in Rathain. When the page boy wound down, he ventured laconic opinion that as yet, he remained unimpressed.

Done with the picket lines, his saddle and the Hanshire horse cloth slung over his shoulder, he pursued his quest for a meal. At the cook's tent, a well-placed disparagement sent the boy inside to fetch bread and jerked meat. Mearn waited, sharp-eyed and observant on the sidelines, overhearing stray phrases and talk from the men who came and went about unnamed business.

"... give the forest-slinking lizards their comeuppanc~-.? a pike- man said, chuckling.

Through a lull in the breeze, a companion enlarged on the story, his gestures expansive and vehement. "... for what they did in the bogs.

Let them suffer harkaron s fell vengeance for all eternity... nothing D '.

else but a tenday of sharpening weapons. Have blades in our band could split hairs with a cat's breath behind them..."

Low talk from another quarter cut in between gusts of wind. "Man, they'll be swept up like leavings. No chance .... other troops moving in through the mountains .... them surrounded, and clan scalps enough to make felt to restuff our Lord Mayor's upholstery."

Riled as a cat doused in rainfall, Mearn capped the blaze of his temper. Bit by bit, patient, he assembled each gamered fact. Under Alliance orders to sweep northward, these crack Etarran troops held a crown disposition to hunt down free clansmen in Tysan. Stung pride would be vindicated. Having suffered and bled through laid ambush in the wetlands, these men were rested and hot to take down the bar- barian vermin who had abetted the Shadow Master's clean escape.

Nor were their officers anything less than prepared for the tricks cor- nered clansmen could mete out.

326.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

Mearn had quartered the camp. As s'Brydion knew war, he recog- t~ized excellence. After five seasons spent plowing the forests of I~bain for Jieret Red-beard's unscrupulous breed of scout, they were !~:~r iened veterans, lethally practiced at keeping a near to invisible ?r~,~ence.

He ate what the page brought, suborning racked nerves to assuage his body's demand for replenishment. Emerged from a seamless tem- '.~est of thought, he laid down the wild card hand he had cut from the :loth of desperate courage and chance.

"I'm tired," he announced without preamble. Lest the flustered :~a~e seek a superior officer to ask for bedding and shelter, Mearn ~ :;ht the boy's wrist with insistent fingers. "I won't sleep under :anv,~. Too smelly. Fetch me a blanket. I'll choose my own place set out of the wind, where I won't scratch from picking up head lice."

Once the blanket was found, he crossed the camp again, the saddle and cloth still carried across his left shoulder. He took painstaking minutes to cut and skin a green willow branch. With that oddment in ~and, he acquired a seemingly limitless enthusiasm for exploring the !~rush between tents. He poked under bushes. His vexing, erratic :ourse wound in circles around a structure of tight-lashed canvas, then stalled into another confounding silence.

The page grew rebellious. "That's the supply and the armory," he volunteered in exasperation.

"I do have a nose, whelp." Not to be hurried, Mearn extended his search and turned over each leaf on the ground. "One can't be too :areful. Tracking dogs might have pissed here."

"They're kept caged in wicker," the page disallowed.

Since Mearn had detected neither barking nor whines, he made chill conclusion that this company practiced the headhunters' cruelty of cutting the dogs' vocal cords to make them run silent.

Scarcely able to mask his shudder of distaste, he unloaded his sad- dle, folded his lean frame in the blanket, and lay down full length on bare earth. "Good night."

"What?" The befuddled page glowered.

"I said, good night." As a final eccentric foible of privacy, Mearn arranged the crusted saddlecloth with its bold Hanshire blazon over his exposed head and face.

The page stood at a loss with his mouth open. As Mearn's breath- ing steadied, then slowed to soft snoring, the boy paced, kicking stones in bilious frustration. His orders to watch this high-handed courier included no avenue for relief. Nor was an officer nearby to consult or say where his irregular duty left off. The boy stood; he 327.

JANNY WURTS.

deliberated; he went foot to foot in sore doubt. Finally, resigned, he sat down in the brush to keep boring vigil. The prospect of watching a prig sleep through the night underneath the ripe felt of a saddle- plaint among peers, a boy could do little but sulk and endure the injustice.

Hours crawled. The watch changed. The last wakeful men retired to their tents. The courier from Hanshire did nothing but lie in unmoving, oblivious quiet, while the page leaned his back on a sapling. Tired, he dozed once or twice. The final time he opened his eyes, the brush over his head rang with the chirps of spring sparrows.

Dawn had broken. Through a pearl haze of fog, men stirred, seeking breakfast or the latrine ditch. The page stretched, rubbed his eyes, and through the complaint of stiff muscles, ascertained his charge had not strayed. The courier's boots and spurs still poked from the blanket. Naught else had changed; the red-and-black saddledoth remained creased like a tent over his insufferable, swelled head.

The page endured privation in eye-watering discomfort, then finally gave in to bodily need and relieved himself in the brush. The Hanshireman slumbered on, oblivious. The sun rose, melting the streamers of mist and unveiling a day like a chisel-cut diamond.

The camp was fully aroused before an irritable petty officer sent by the watch came inquiring to see why the courier had failed to make an appearance.

"He's asleep, still." Grouchy and feeling unjustly martyred, the page boy tossed a pebble just shy of the blanket. "Probably lies in silk sheets until noon in that decadent city he comes from. You kick him awake. He has thankless manners."

The petty officer stroked his clipped beard. He eyed the man- shaped muddle of horsecloth, saddle, and blanket with visible trepi- dation. Then, touched to a sudden, chill plunge of intuition, he stepped forward and stamped his booted foot with full strength onto the courier's midriff.

Sticks snapped. The blanket collapsed, sagged in folds that revealed the form underneath to be nothing else but an artful arrangement of twigs and dry grass.

"Murdering fiend!" the officer gasped. "The confounded dog was a spy!" He elbowed aside the gaping page and raced headlong to raise the alarm.

The Etarran camp erupted like a nest of kicked wasps, but not to a wild stir of noise. Men reacted in a chilling, oiled flow of discipline, tearing down tents and searching through every nook and cranny of 328.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

packed baggage. Twenty minutes after the stunning discovery, the officer of the day watch stood in straightlaced formality and deliv- ered the raw news to his captain.

"The man's not in camp, though his horse, his sword, his saddle and cloth are still here. The outlook is no good. He slit the tent canvas with a dagger and crawled into the armory. All the tactical maps are taken from the locked chest. He snatched an excellent sword, then caused enough mischief to make us all choke in embarrassment."

"Sabotage?"

The officer swallowed. "Yes sir." He shifted huge shoulders under his mail, braced his nerve, and recited the list. "All the steel broad- heads were cut from their shafts, and the fletching stripped off the arrows. Sword blades were unwound at the tang and separated from their hilts. At the horse lines, we found all the bridles cut apart. We'd fix them with string, but no one in camp can find a damned bit for his horse, or a girth that has any buckles."

"Embarrassment, you say?" The captain stabbed his eating knife upright in the crust of his scarcely touched bread loaf. "I call it may- hem." His eyes narrowed with thought and a chilling, leashed tem- per, he snapped his strong fingers, causing the page who knelt by his elbow to jump. "Go. Fetch my parchment and seal."

Then he leveled his blue eyes at the duty officer, and said, "You're not finished?"

The man caught under scrutiny fidgeted, the sweat rolling from under his steel helm. "No, sir. The kennelman claims the meat for the dogs was tainted. At least, since he fed them, every last one's fallen sick."

The account suffered a break as the page boy returned, bearing the troop commander's lap desk and the tied leather bundle which pro- tected the state seal with its su~nwheel blazon of authori~.

"Keep talking, man." Resigned to the setback that spoiled his breakfast, the captain unburdened the page boy. His hard fingers flipped open the lap desk. "If our scouring of the clans is no longer a surprise, the other troops have to be warned. You can talk while I write." He accepted the wrapped packet containing the sunseal, then paused, his frosty brows snagged in a frown.

"Something wrong, sir?" The duty officer blotted his moist face.

The troop commander showed his teeth, an animal response to murderous fury as he snatched up his knife and slashed the thong ties. The rolled leather fell away and revealed an old knotted root left in place of the sunwheel seal to attest crown authority. "Why, that slithering get of a snake! For this, I'll see his entrails torn out by dogs and his scalp taken under my dagger!"

329.

JANNY WURT$.

The page boy launched into panicky excuses. "The lock wasn't loose on your coffer, sir. No papers were missing." Then the damning worst, from the lips of foolhardy innocence. "Whoever stole the seal from your things had to know just where to look."

"Be silent." The captain fingered his steel, his temper leashed through hardened experience, and his slate-colored eyes fixed back on the man ~,,hose report was unfinished, and whose perspirin fea- tures showed inordinate lack of surprise. "There's more?"

"Yes, sir." The forbearing sigh this time seemed to rise from th~~ harried man's boot soles. "The groom on the picket lines was given a requisition order, sealed and signed in what looks to be precise forgery."

"What did that groom give, say quickly." No idiot, the troop caN- tain thrust to his feet. "The facts are by far more important th,~ tl~, blame."

The reporting officer braced himself. "Six horses, half of them salt- died and bridled, and the last three apparently on lead reins. ~c'~.

examined the tracks. The creatures were roped in pairs. The da~'~~ patrol saw someone they believed to be ours, leaving with remout~t~ in tow. He carried packeted orders under your wax seal, and we c~'t fault them, the sunwheel blazon was genuine. A short dista~c~ fr~,~~ our outer line, the trail scouts say the horses slowed down. Then their tracks diverge to all points of the compass."

"You tried dogs?" said the captain, not truly expecting the obvious had not been covered.

"First thing, sir." The watch officer rubbed his moist hands on his surcoat. "The two bitches well enough to stand up lost the scent next to the picket lines. That's where the groom said the rogue mounted.

We can follow that horse, but that's wasted motion." This spy had proven inventively clever. He had likely climbed from one saddle to another before he sent the loose horses packing.

"All right," said the captain, all ironbound purpose. "I want action.

Now. Each one of those horses will be tracked and brought in, I don't care if their trail leads through Sithaer itself. Every man will be ques- tioned. If anyone saw this traitor's face clearly, I want his detailed description. Next, we assume he's barbarian blood. Why else steal the tactical maps, if not to send word to the enemy? We're marching north anyway. Last night's little blunder just lit the fires under our order of march a bit hotter. At the end, we'll face men who are warned and desperate. By the Light, if there's justice, our line sentries are going to stand front and center when we close with the murdering fugitives."

330.

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A searing, short pause, as the captain recalled the humiliation that he had no seal for his orders. Nor could he verify his dispatch to Avenor to send formal complaint of the infamy.

"Damn the motherless, slinking little weasel!" he exploded in livid heat that promised a reckoning in bloodshed. "When we net his close kin, I will personally sew their damned scalps as a fringe on my sad- dlecloth."

By noon, sweating in the humid spring warmth that chafed blis- ters under gambesons and made chain mail weigh like poured lead, the men ran down the last horses. Not one bore a rider. The spy's tracks were not found, though the hound couple which survived the morning's bout of poisoning whuffed and milled in baffled circles.

They sprawled on .their sides, muddied and panting, while their irritable handlers persisted. The next hour entailed the miserable, wet labor of leaping across hummocks and scouring the verges of the waist-deep, dank pools in the fenland. Sedges and cattails waved in the wind. Half-budded maples trailed lichened branches and tough roots into the peat black waters of the sinkholes. Hard effort flushed nothing but otters and the flap of displaced crows.

Nothing moved but the high-flying hawk, while clouds gathered and plumed like combed silver overhead and threatened more rain before nightfall.

In due course, the search was called off. The guileful courier had left no trace of his passage, and his clanblood relations would inevitably receive the premature warning of trouble.

The setback raised grumbles, but no loss of morale. These were seasoned fighters who had marched against clansmen before. They knew to expect balking tricks and sly tactics that time and again deferred victory. This campaign might go hard, but the ending was assured. Without ships, the barbarian enclaves in south Tysan were doomed, soon to be reaped by the vengeful steel of Lysaer's Alliance of Light.

In the late afternoon, the gathering storm rode the west winds rak- ing in off the ocean. The rain drizzled, then gushed, then hammered down in white sheets. The barrage chased the dark pools in the marshes to stippled pewter, and glazed the bent limbs of the maples.

Mearn s'Brydion waded shin deep to keep dogs off his scent, his wet leathers clinging like glue at each stride, and his fingers locked to the straps of three rolled leather map cases. The brass-capped ends bashed his thigh when he stumbled, his ankles caught back by the sawing tangles of sedges. Only the relentless chill kept him wakeful.

331.

JANNY WURTS.

His thoughts came in fragments, their mean'mg unmoored by the expanding spirals of exhaustion.

He slogged his way past another islet of hummocks. The sucking pull of the mud continually mired and slowed him. Yet he dared not traverse the high ground, not with an Alliance armed force at his back, enraged by his suborning trickery. Some of the dogs might sur- vive the pulped water hemlock he had used to taint their dried meat.

Etarran field troops were not fools in the wilds, and no lack of bridles and girths would swerve them from their orders to march north.

Breathless, shivering, gnawed to the bone by the ache of spent mus- cles, Mearn perched his hip on a deadfall. Rain pocked the water in rings at his shins. Premature dusk banked deep shadows beneath the stained boles of the trees. The low, misting clouds showed no sign of lifting. Rain blew and swirled and trickled from his eyebrows, and rinsed streams through the garlands of watercress plastered over his thighs. Failing light was going to upset his bearings. Mearn tipped back his head and fought off a flattening rush of disheartenment. He had only the lichens for orientation. On the south sides of trees, the salt winds from Mainmere burned off their splotched growth; and the shag moss did not grow north-facing.

Mearn shut stinging eyes, every nerve end and instinct alive to his danger. Range too far east, he would find only distrustful fenlanders in their lowly wattle-and-mud huts. Pass too far west, and he would encounter high ground, fair game for a second armed troop the maps showed would be beating a line inland from Hanshire. South lay the Etarrans he had riled like jabbed hornets, and north, and if luck saved him, he might find the armed bands of Lord Maenol's scouts who had foiled the Alliance's cordon of Riverton.

Geese called in the reeds. Daylight was fast waning. The gloom seemed cast in lead silver between the plummeting curtains of rain- fall. Mearn shoved off through the vast, empty maze of stilled bog- land, no longer able to mind his own noise as he snapped through the sticks of the thickets. He tripped again, slamming his shoulder on the knob of a willow bough. "Forgive," he gasped, breathless, by time- worn clan custom acknowledging the mistake of his own clumsiness.

The nurturing trees might overlook his offense, but the needs of his body could not be deferred for much longer.

The willow grove thinned. Hedged by gathering darkness, the ground snaked away into tarnished, dull pools inked with the knees of dead tree roots. A lightning-struck oak thrust a blackened shell skyward, the stripped husks of burned saplings angled like spears through the rioting tangle of briar. The past fire had scorched off the 332.

FUGITIVE I~RINCE.

moss and the lichen. A few sloshing steps brought the water waist deep. Mearn paused, half-immersed. He wiped streaming wet from his eyes, while the wind slapped and battered at his hair and his clothing. He hitched the map cases up to his shoulder to protect their waxed hide from immersion.

Rain blurred the landmarks. The sere, muddy banks held no sign of an otter's den, or any other small animal burrow to hint which direction lay south. Only the unreliable, buffeting west winds lent their unkindly semblance of guidance.

These fens were not safe to traverse after dark, with mud sinks that could swallow a man's foot in one step and suck down his bones beyond finding.

Mearn slogged ahead, splashed into a hole, then managed a claw- ing recovery back to raised ground. He would have to double back.

The effort would certainly turn him around. Trail instinct did not apply in this land, with its puzzle-cut maze of tangled, brown hum- mocks, and meandering pools inscribed by hammering rainfall.

Immersed in deep thickets, clawed raw by green thorns, he lost his bearings again. Faced by a deeper stand of water than before, he now shivered uncontrollably. The relentless chill stole his body's reserves.

He knew his survival hinged upon finding immediate shelter and food. Sleep now was his enemy. To yield to his craving for overdue rest would see him a skeleton picked clean by predators. The urgent warning he carried would become lost, and the maps, which detailed the Alliance sweep through south Tysan for the purpose of eradicat- ing clan bloodlines.

Mearn thrashed into another grove of maples, hampered by clos- ing darkness. A gray heron startled into flight from her fishing. He recoiled from the noise. Twigs clawed at his burden. He caught back the loosened bundle before the straps gave, and clasped the rolled leather to his chest. Breath sucked through his locked teeth. He no longer knew if the whine in his ears was the shrilling of spring peep- ers, or yet another warning of overtaxed senses about to let go and fail him. He kept moving regardless, unwilling to give way to the beckoning void that offered him painless unconsciousness.

Through the sheet-lead expanse of another shallows, Mearn lost north again. He groped for a tree, a stripped stump, any firm object that might still harbor a telltale colony of shag moss. His touch met cold mud. Reeds slapped his face. Cattail down snagged in his nostrils and smeared yellow fuzz on his eyelids. He coughed into darkness that seemed too thick to breathe, and shoved on against a battering tempest of cold wind. The rain sluiced and hissed and 333.

JANNY W URTS.

rinsed through wet leaves. He knew he must stop, find some sort of shelter, and wait out the night or the storm. Vertigo threatened to unstring his balance. Already he could have become turned around and be moving back into the armed camp of the enemy.

Time slipped. He became aware that he sat underneath the drip- ping crown of a marsh maple. Gusts roared through the branches, and clattered the loosened, dead runners of vines. Far past feeling cold, he crimped his hands on the straps that secured the purloined map cases. Fear and worry were numbed, his cognizance flattened to insipid and dangerous lassitude. The rain drove down, relentless, and scattered thin trickles off the wicked ends of his hair. Only the otters fared well in this weather. Meam heard the splash as they dove from the banks, hunting small crayfish, or cavorting for sport in the dark- ness.

Or perhaps their noise masked the doings of men. He could no longer tell. The vise grip of exhaustion left his skull feeling packed with wet cotton. Overcome by inertia, he attempted more than one brutal measure to regain his feet and keep moving.

Nothing changed. His last strength was long spent. Mearn sat, huddled with his forehead bowed on his knees, and his smeared wrists tucked at his ankles. Weariness sapped his last spark of vitality, but not stubborn will. He still held the map cases clenched to his breast. Asleep or unconscious, he did not respond as the splashing disturbance approached him. Nor did he stir in the flare as someone unshuttered a wick lantern. The breath of the storm winnowed the reek of hot fat, then the must of wet clothes, sewn from the skins of small animals. A skiff made of bark glided through the shallows.

From a perch in the bow, a wizened little grandmother raised a horn lantern, while two younger male relatives pointed and whispered in the singsong dialect of the fenlands.

The poleman paused. Shoved by contrary wind, his boat drifted.

On the greening bank, the spearpointed sedges bent and flattened, streaked like ruby glass with reflections. The juddering light picked out the arrivals, with their stitched leather caps tied with talismans fashioned from feathers, and strung acorns, and little stars woven of flax straw.

"It's a man sitting there. Has no boots on, that's odd," the grand- mother observed in a mollified, half-toothless warble.

Rain slanted through the purl of the mist. "Could be dead," mused the squat uncle, who rinsed the offal from the last kill from his hands.