'There seem to be enough of them.'

'If there were not, we would capture some.'

'Truly?' Jasmine's wonderment was on her face until she saw the laughter in Dhariat's. 'Oh, you.' They rode on in companionable silence.

It was not long until the trees came between them and any view to the east as they wound along the mountain's side toward a gap in the ridge which was full of northern sky. Once over that, Dhariat rode ahead to take a turn at scouting while Sowsie rode with the others, pointing out landmarks, speaking of the growth of trees and shrubs. She had brown, clever hands and a far-seeing look in her grey eyes which were separated by squint lines from looking long sunward across the lands. Daingol answered her. He was full of inconsequential chatter which dropped into the pool of his brother's silence. Both were rusty-haired and freckle-mottled, easy together and with Sowsie, riding their shaggy horses as though they and the beasts were one. As they rode, however, their ease began to depart. They shifted in their saddles, rubbing their heads, their eyes. Sowsie reined up abruptly, said in response to Thewson's murmur, 'Something there, westward. Hurt. Wounded. I can feel crying, not human. Something grieving, going on and on.'

She shook her head, dismounting in one swift movement. The others followed her lead, staggering on numb legs. The sun had fallen behind the peak of Gerenhodh, and they shivered in the shadow of a great bulk of lichened stone.

'Let us wait for Dhariat,' Sowsie said. 'Something is wrong there, westward. We can risk a fire if we build it in the chimney of the rock. Use only very dry wood, and we will bury it as soon as our food is hot.' Then she stood staring westward while Daingol busied himself with foodstuffs, while Lain-achor examined the hooves of the horses, and while Thewson moved restlessly in the clearing, working at his thighs with his hands.

'I have some salve that will help him,' Sowsie said to Jasmine. 'It will deaden the pain as well as toughening the skin. These southern men are not horsemen.'

'These Lakland women are not horsepeople, either,' Jasmine answered. 'Or this one has forgotten what she once knew. I hurt too.'

'A few days will heal it. Use the salve on both of you.'

They stewed grain over the fire, mixing it with chunks of dried fruit and that shredded, dried meat which had been called 'badumma' since the time of the Axe King. The word meant both 'stone' and 'meat.' Privately, Jasmine thought it looked like something which should be fed to chickens, but it was tasty enough and there was little left for Dhariat when she returned to them. Her face bore a wary, listening expression, but she shook her head at them to indicate she had seen nothing.

'If we ride until dark,' she said, 'we can come around the spur of mountain into the Sasavinian. There is a post house there, with water, if you can ride that far.'

Thewson nodded grimly. Jasmine asked, 'Did the salve help you?'

'It helps skin. It is bones that break. This horse is very wide.'

Jasmine grimaced in reply. 'Put one leg in front of you, across the saddle. Switch from side to side as we ride. It will help a little.'

They rode on into the dusk, Jasmine and Thewson growing more unhappy with each step as skin chafed and muscles turned into knots of pain. When the stars were burning they came into the upland which sloped west in a wide meadow crossed by meandering streams almost hidden between grass-furred banks. At the edge of the forest they could see the post house, shuttered and dark, Lain-achor, who had scouted the evening hours, rode up to them and conferred with the Sisters in a low voice. Finally, Sowsie said, 'We will go back into the woods to a place I know. There is water there. We will not risk the house.'

Jasmine groaned. 'I was dreaming of a real bed. My bones are broken.'

'No.' Sowsie was definite. 'Something comes from the west. The post house is too well known. We will not be trapped within walls.'

They built a little fire in a hastily dug pit, burying it immediately after they had eaten and made mugs of sweet, musty tea. There had been little smoke, and in moments all evidence of it was gone, borne away on the little wind which rushed at them up from the west, smelling of the sea.

Deep in the night Jasmine woke in the circle of Thewson's arms to stare at the stars and wonder where she was. Something had wakened her, and from the stiffening of Thewson's body she knew that he, too, had come out of sleep. Close to them cautious footfalls went by, and heads were silhouetted against the sky. From somewhere down in the forest a creaking came, as of a door opened, then the sound of horses and the smaller creaking of a wagon wheel. Sowsie knelt at their sides, placing her hands across their mouths. 'Down at the post house, a group of black robes have stopped. They have something with them in a wagon. Be very still.' Jasmine tried not to breathe, fought down a hysterical urge to sneeze. Moments wore away endlessly until the sounds below them moved away to the east. At last she fell asleep, only to be awakened once more by a downpour of rain.

They rose to a cold breakfast and a swift departure under cover of the trees. Daingol went back to examine the post house and to track those who had been there. Sowsie went westward, scouting the way they would go. Dhariat rode as though half asleep. They spent a long, dull morning riding among the trees, staring at the high meadow under a constant drip of rain. Again and again as they rode they saw groups of black robes proceeding eastward through the pass, almost always with heavily laden wagons, sealed and mysterious in the wan light.

On the fifth day the skies lifted to leave mists and rising fogs in place of the rain. Sowsie rode back to the others and spoke in satisfied tones as she rubbed her weary horse down. 'I have been as far as the Batum-Batok. No more wagons, no more black robes. Daingol has not yet returned? Well, there is still a little wind from the sea. Let us have hot soup to warm us. We can bury the fire.'

They had almost finished when Daingol rode in. 'Nothing,' he said. They went on to the south, whether toward the Hill or some other place, I could not tell. The wagon tracks are deep, very deep. The wagon was heavily loaded all of them have been heavily loaded. A peculiar odour persists where the wagons have gone. However, they have gone. None are left behind.'

Sowsie nodded. Then we will go on more quickly. We will sleep at the Batum-Batok, then go out of the pass onto the slopes above the river plain of the Sals. There is still something west of us which cries pain, but it is beyond the wall.'

They saw the wall, a long jagged line across the width of the pass, when only a short time of daylight remained. Daingol urged them to hurry. There is Batum-Batok, old Axe King's wall. He pastured his horses in the Sasavinian in winter, and this was the wall which kept the horses in and the thieves from Jowr out.'

The horses went to a fast trot which made Thewson grunt rhythmically. The wall loomed, crowned with widely spaced towers, pierced by gaping holes where great gates had once hung. In places the wall had tumbled into slopes and ramps overgrown with vines and low herbage, and the horses went up one of these as though to a well known stable. At the top of the wall was a wide, paved space with a trough at one side full of rainwater. Sowsie was already gathering wood from among the dried bushes which grew on the stones. Lain-achor had gone on and was not to be seen.

Night had fallen before he returned. 'I found what is left of a horse herd,' he said. 'Several mares dead. The herders dead. Half eaten. That stink everywhere, on the bodies, the soil. Musky. The mares put up a fight, but they were trapped in a canyon.

'What kind of thing could kill a herd of great-horse mares? They fight like gryphons.'

Lain-achor shrugged. 'They wore fighting shoes, sharp as knives. The hooves were bloodstained and stank. The mares fought, but something killed them.'

'How long?' Sowsie asked.

'Three or four days. Face it, Sowsie. The black robes had some monstrous beasts in those wagons.'

That night for the first time in weeks Thewson spent hours honing the edges of his spear blade, that great, leaf-shaped blade, arm-long, which he had carried from the jungles of the south throughout all his wandering.

They rode out in the morning to see the black wings of carrion birds rising in clouds from a glade at the edge of the trees. They did not need to go near to smell what Lain-achor had described. Jasmine made a face and rode ahead of the others, trying to get upwind. Thus she was alone when she heard the sound, a kind of soprano trembling of the air, a childlike sound. Her horse's ears went up, and it began to amble toward the noise, head cocked. There in a hollow where trunks of fallen trees made a sort of pen stood a very young foal, head down, legs spraddled wide. Jasmine was off her mount and into the pen without thinking about it, and the others found her there cuddling the foal and talking to it in baby talk.

'Help me get it out,' she demanded, restating this more urgently when the others seemed to delay. 'Now! Poor thing, so hungry and tired trying to get out. Its mother must have been killed.'

'We have nothing to feed it, Jasmine,' objected Sowsie. 'The little thing is too young to survive without its mother.'

'Ah, poor thing, poor baby. It must have run away when the whatever-it-was killed the horses, run away and got itself caught. Ah, poor baby.' She struggled to lift the foal. Thewson stepped across a fallen trunk to take it from her. 'Now, what is this about its not surviving?'

'Milk, Jasmine. The foal is not weaned yet.'

'So? We will buy goat's milk at a village.'

'The villages are closed, Jasmine. Everything is closed. No trading. No selling. I doubt we can get anyone to talk to us.'

Jasmine was thoughtful for a long moment, then said, 6 Goats cannot be closed, Dhariat. They need forage, and I doubt the herders are out in the field cutting grass for them when the goats do it so easily for themselves. We will steal one.'

Daingol snorted. 'So much for Laklandish morality.'

'There is nothing moral about Gahl,' retorted Jasmine. 'Nothing at all. Nothing moral about closing up villages and not talking to people. We need a goat and will steal one, that's all. We can leave something in payment if you like.'

Thewson rumbled with wry acceptance. 'I will get her a goat, trail finder. We will see if Thewson remembers his youth among the herds of his enemies.'

They rode westward, the foal across Jasmine's saddle pad, too weak to protest, head and forefeet dangling disconsolately on one side, hind feet kicking in occasional reproach on the other. By midmorning they had come to the entrance of the pass where long meadows opened to fall away in green undulations to the silver glimmer of the Sals. They skirted it at the northern edge, among the trees. Villages lay to the west in the folds of the hills, bright as scattered blocks, children's toys, tethering the open sky with pale ropes of smoke. Thewson sought a movement of livestock on the slopes and, when he found it, rode away from them to rejoin them later with pounding hooves, grunts, and a bleating captive across his thighs. The goat was indignant, half terrified, but content finally to take small sheaves of grass from Thewson's hands as they tried to persuade the foal to nurse from the bulging udder. Finally they improvised a nursing bottle from a flask and leather glove which Lain-achor donated reluctantly to the project. The foal drank greedily.

Three times they went down the slopes toward the glimmer of the Sals where the riding would be easier along the river banks. Three times they withdrew into the screen of the trees as clots of black-robed Gahlians, some with wagons, some without, came along the river heading south. They stopped for the night high on the slopes under cover of a tumble of stone, and they set watches throughout the hours of darkness.

When morning came, the little foal struggled to his feet and approached Jasmine and the bottle with determination.

'See, Thewson. He knows me already.'

'He knows food,' Thewson replied. 'Better than he knows his feet.'

It was true. The foal could hardly stand. Each time his feet were collected beneath him, one would give way and leave the little animal struggling once more.

'He has to count them,' offered Daingol. 'Here in the valley of the Sals the children still play the old counting games in the language of D'Zunalor. They say, "Tin, tan, zara, san, zos, zem, komek, dan, zarazara, tansoz." So the foal does, see? Tin, tan, zara, san ...'

'Tin-tan,' echoed Jasmine. 'Well, that's a good name. We will call him Tin-tan, and soon he will be big enough to stop counting his feet; you'll see.'

Though it was still late winter on the eastern side of the mountains, here on the western slopes the warm winds from the sea summoned spring. On the south sides of rock walls, where warmth collected during the days, small heads of lavender and yellow poked through the dried grasses and spikes of blue lady's lily shook their hanging bells. 'Jaer slept us through winter,' Thewson remarked. 'Spring comes now.'

'Is there spring in the Lion Courts, Thewson?'

'When the flame trees bloom, we say that is spring. The rains stop then. Then is the time when the trees-eat-their-shadows, the time for buying wives.'

'I would not want to be a bought wife.'

Thewson laughed, reached out to touch her as he had formed the habit of doing. 'Only the Chief really buys wives. All other men must find someone who wishes to be bought. I would come to your house, Jasmine flower. In the dark night, I would come. Outside your wall, I would lie down, still as the tiger in the grass. I would whisper through the walls, "Jasmine, let me buy you for my house." And, you would say ...'

Jasmine flushed and leaned over the foal. 'What would I say?'

Thewson shrugged, laughed again. 'You must say. You must tell the price.'

The foal turned to put its soft lips against Jasmine's thigh and at that touch the centre of her broke to let tears flood down her cheeks as her breath caught deep. 'Oh, Thewson, if you want me, you can have me for Hu'ao. Get me Hu'ao back again and I will be your wife.'

He nodded where he sat, searching the far sky as for an answer which pleased him. Finding none, he looked at her sternly. 'This is a high price, you with the hair of smoke and dark eyes. Who knows can I pay it or not? So, you have said it. I will try it.'

'You have never even said you love me,' whispered Jasmine.

He made a mocking noise, deep in his throat. 'In the Lion Courts, this is not said.'

Dhariat trotted back toward them. 'What is all this tarrying? Come up and ride beside Lain-achor. We did not want to come so close to Mount Hermit, but we cannot go farther down the slope because of those cursed Gahlians.'

Jasmine wiped her eyes on her sleeve, pretended an interest in what Dhariat was saying. 'Who was the Hermit, Darry? Was it in the Axe King's time?'

'Ask Daingol, or Lain-achor. This is their territory more than mine. I know only that it is an area better avoided.'

They caught up to the rest and began the traverse of a long slope of scree on which the horses slipped and scrambled for purchase. By noon they had come only halfway across it, but they stopped on an outthrust of stone to eat and to feed the foal. It was then she asked Daingol about the Hermit.

He hushed her. 'It is not a story to be told while on the mountain, Lady. He whom we call Hermit was not quite that. He wakened things which might better have slept forever. Better we not talk of it here.' Jasmine contented herself with making up her own stories and with thinking how much the four from the Hill resembled one another. Sowsie was tall, Dhariat short, Lain-achor and Daingol of medium height. Dhariat was round, the others lean, and she had black hair while Sowsie's was grey and the brothers' rusty gold. Still, all had the same alert bearing of head and shoulders, the same quick perception, though Lain-achor moved with the sullen grace of a heron while Daingol was swift as a hunting dog. They had the same lines around their eyes. There was about them the simplicity and habit of persons long together in similar circumstances, and when Daingol shook his head about the Hermit, Lain-achor, too, shook his head warily.

To look at Thewson was to see something else again. She found him strange and wonderful with his high-bridged nose and full mouth, hair pulled high into yarn-bound tails which fluttered behind him. He loomed above them all, taller far than Sowsie, so tall that Jasmine's head came only to his chest. Here in the north he wore a woven cloak as the others did, but beneath the flowing wool were his leather loin guard and leggings, his breast and back plates of stiffened hide, thick and hard as wood. Always the spear was at his side. If Jasmine slept at one side, the spear lay at the other. Jasmine felt that the spear never slept, that it watched through the night like a sentinel. She had almost asked Thewson if this could be true, but something kept her from the question.

They mounted again, except for Thewson who chose to lead his horse across the shifting stone. He did not mount until they came into the trees once more. Even then, he did so abstractedly, as though alert to something else. Suddenly he pushed by Jasmine to ride forward and touch Daingol on the shoulder.

'Scout. I smell it now. Upslope on the wind.'

They halted. Then they could all smell it, musky and foul, not overpowering but unmistakable. 'Would the wagon have come near?' Thewson asked himself. 'Yes. Here the road is almost below us.'

They went on into the evening, coming to a narrow way which led between tall stones into the next valley. In the half darkness they did not see the squat figures which swarmed out of the rock until they were surrounded. Even Thewson was covered by them in an instant, a lion brought down by a thousand dogs. All was silent. Daingol had time to mutter a curse, that was all. Then they were trussed up, gagged, and carried away into the deepening shadows of the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

THE WARTY MEN.

Day 14, Month of Thaw When Jasmine caught her first glimpse of their captors she thought they were men, men somehow gnarled and twisted as stumps, warty and rough, bright orange where they were lit by firelight, black where they were in shadow, demonlike, troll-like. Jasmine felt that she should be trembling with horror, and yet she was strangely calm. It may have been the way that the warty hands patted the foal, or the shy stroking which she felt along her thighs; there seemed no menance from these creatures. They seemed, she thought, to do some violence but not to feel it.

Lain-achor and Daingol did not share her calm. They struggled like trapped stallions in the nets with which they were bound. Thewson lay beside the fire, so trussed he could not move. Across the fire Dhariat and Sowsie leaned together to struggle to their feet.

Now began a strangeness. One of the warty creatures knelt at Jasmine's feet and began to smell her, sniffing like a curious dog at her feet, ankles, thighs, crotch, up her belly to her breasts, then down her arms to her hands, spending a long time smelling her fingers. Then the first was pushed away and another began the same game while the first crouched over Thewson's immobile body to begin the same procedure. Across the fire Jasmine could see others gathered around the Sisters and the scouts, sniffing and mumbling, making a peculiar susurrus of gargles and sniffs which were almost, though not entirely, words.

A command from the shadows took the creatures reluctantly into deeper darkness beneath twisted trees. Their conversation went on, mumbles and mutters, silences broken by grunts of agreement. They came into the firelight once more, this time grouped around a taller one, one with a head borne forward, the neck extended somewhat like a beast's, but with joints which were smoother and more ordinarily human. This one came first to Jasmine, and she tingled with apprehension. If dogs had a king, she thought, it should look like this, smile like this with sharp muzzle, let its tongue loll like this through long jaws. It grasped her hand and smelt of it, then the other, then knelt to sniff her feet as the others had done.

It turned away to Thewson, then to each of the others, repeating the sniffing of hands and feet. It hunkered, finally, at the fireside, ears tilting forward toward the assembled warty ones, grunting, 'These have not been with it.'

Jasmine understood this muttered speech. Lain-achor and Daingol stopped struggling in their astonishment. Thewson turned his head fractionally within his bonds. The dog king repeated, 'Not these. No smell of the things. No smell of the muldrek.'

Heads cocked, ears swivelled, eyes peered at them. Hands patted at them nervously, taking away the ropes and gags, leaping away as though fearing retaliation. Thewson plucked his spear from the fireside where it had been dropped by the warty ones, drew Jasmine toward the others, uncertain whether to stand fast or flee.

'What who are they?' Jasmine asked.

The dog king regarded her sneeringly, then nodded toward Daingol. 'He knows,' muttered the dog king. 'I see he knows.'

It was true. Daingol drew the travellers into a group around him, stood resolutely facing the creatures. 'You are the creatures of the Lone Man. The Hermit of Tinok Ochor.'

The creatures gargled and mumbled, giggled a little with a quick, feminine titter. Jasmine wondered if there were women among them. Girls? Was some femaleness caught in these warped and rough-hided forms? The dog king nodded. 'No more his creatures, man. He made us, but he is gone, and we go on living.'

'I thought you were a myth,' Daingol said. 'I thought you were vanished in history, something to tell the children.'

'No. Not vanished. Not a myth. Real. Alive. We go on living and living. It is wearisome, but we do it. Sometimes we laugh. When we are killed, we are angry. The things are killing us, eating us, eating our God Horse, our God Mare....'

'The thing....whatever it is that smells so strange? We smelt it on the trail, but it has nothing to do with us.'

'Not true. You come from a place, a place Gerenhodh, we hear you say it. Those muldrek things go to Gerenhodh, and to Orena. We hear them say it.'

'Powers,' breathed Dhariat. 'What manner of things are they?'

'Crawling things, hard as iron, slithering and strong, slow and hard, with feet that tear, with mouths that burn.'

In imagination they pictured some hard, horrible thing moving through the stone halls toward Old Aunt and the Sisters. 'Where they are trapped, there below...' breathed Jasmine.

'If there is a crack, the worm will go there. There is no place it cannot go.' The dog king intoned this as though relishing their horror.

Sowsie interrupted. 'I know what he's talking about. We know them as Tharnel worms, from the far north somewhere. But the Sisters aren't children. They won't be easy prey, even for that.'

'They take them, those muldrek, to your place. You are the cause of it!' The dog king was accusative and insistent, posturing before his followers as he began shouting at them. They became sharply aware of their position, backed against a rock wall, re-armed, but surrounded by hundreds of shifting bodies who were beginning to murmur restlessly.

'We are not the cause of it,' said Sowsie carefully. 'We are not the cause of it.'

'If you-ones did not live there, the muldrek would not come,' the dog went on.