'Haufuth!' Indrett hissed. 'We agreed not to mention your concerns!'

'We did, but we've asked Leith to face up to his responsibility. We have to face up to ours. We can't leave Leith to work this out on his own.'

Bless you, Haufuth. Leith did not expect to meet the Destroyer face to face: the Undying Man would surely have more important people to deal with. Nevertheless, his village headman's words were the first in the meeting sympathetic to him.

T have learned some things about the Jugom Ark,' Leith said determinedly. 'It is tuned to my emotions, though I'm not sure what to make of that. Any advice would be welcome.' Put it back on them. 'I can heal with it. I haven't tried to use it as a weapon. I'm worried I'd do damage I didn't intend.'

'You need to find somewhere alone and practise,' Farr suggested.

'How could he practise?' Maendraga asked quietly. 'Are we going to round up volunteers to be slain by the Arrow?'

'What do you suggest, magician?' Farr leaned towards the guardian as though pressing him for an answer.

'Why not trust the Jugom Ark?' Belladonna stood and walked elegantly over to where Leith stood, Arrow guttering in his hand. 'You talk as though Leith directs the Arrow by his will.

From what I've seen, the reality is far more complex. Sometimes the Arrow reflects Leith's feelings, but other times it appears to direct his actions. How else do we explain the way Leith beat back Deorc's unholy blue fire?'

For a moment he debated telling the Company about the voice in his head. Well, the Arrow speaks to me, but I'm not going crazy, honestly. A wild thought ran through his mind. He told them of the voice, and as a result his friends and family decided he was insane and demanded he lay the Arrow aside. He complied, feigning sorrow and leaving the task to others more fit than he.

No, he'd made his choice. Twice he'd made it by picking up the Arrow, once at Joram Basin and then again when he accepted leadership of the Company. He couldn't take that way out.

He was their leader now: it was time he led them. Ironically, his first act as leader would be to sit and listen to his followers chastise him.

He found the next hour very difficult. He was lectured by Kurr and, more gently but still as gallingly, by the Haufuth - whose abandonment of the Company in Withwestwa Wood seemed to have been forgotten. His father brought up the subject of his brother while his mother nodded in the background. Again everyone ignored Mahnum's difficulties with his own father, Modahl. It all seemed so unfair.

Words formed in his mind. Just as I've been fair to you by admitting my fault, you need to be fair to me. Until Hal explains why so much of his counsel works against our interests, he needs to be watched. Just as you have called me to account, so you need to call him.

He gritted his teeth and kept his mouth closed. The vision he'd had in Foilzie's basement enabled him to get through without saying something he would regret. Only two dissenting voices were heard in the pavilion. Maendraga and his daughter continued to suggest there was little to worry about, but Leith knew better. He needed knowledge, and he knew from whom he would seek it.

Waking up a little earlier than usual, Stella slid across her silken sheets and eased open the curtain of her litter. The Army of Bhrudwo had spent the last week slowly winding up a series of steep inclines, ascending to a land even higher than the high plateau of Birinjh, and the previous night they had halted on a broad stair just above the treeline. In the half-light of a pre-dawn sky, the land around her seemed just like that of northern Firanes. The environs of Windrise, perhaps, or the upper Thraell valley. Just thinking of those places set her heart aching, and the tears she seemed constantly to be shedding came to her eyes yet again. Her mind populated the landscape with woodsmen - laughing Fodhram, perhaps - and a village or two, their fires sending lazy spirals of smoke into the pinking sky. She imagined the Company walking up that shadowy defile to her right: the old farmer Kurr in front, Leith and his brother Hal just behind, deep in conversation. Her eyes moved back down the valley, and there she was, it seemed, eyes down on the stony path, walking in front of the Storrsen brothers, Farr and Wira - her heart gave a twist - followed by Perdu and the Haufuth sharing a joke. For a moment the agony of the sight bit at her like a knife in her side, and she screwed her eyes shut tight; but the scene remained spread across her inner vision.

A few feet away to her left, her four guards sat huddled around a small fire, eating the same gruel they fed to her each morning. One of them raised his voice in song, a high-pitched, plaintive chant that sounded entirely in keeping with her despair. After a few minutes the singer rose, put down his bowl beside the fire and began walking towards her litter. No doubt he went to wake her to another day of fear, of hopelessness, of darkness.

Abruptly, Stella couldn't stand it a moment longer. On this bitter morning a slow death in the wilderness seemed infinitely preferable to continued captivity, even if it was in a silken cage.

She darted forward, her thin legs pumping, and within moments was gone, swallowed up by the shadows.

CHAPTER 11.

VULTURE'S CRAW.

WARM SOUTH WINDS CONTINUED for a week or more until, early in the afternoon of the twentieth day since they had left Instruere, the Army of Faltha halted atop a small rise and looked out over central Faltha. Directly below them the Aleinus flowed from right to left in a wide curve, arcing off northwest into the mazy distance of the Maremma where, on the edge of sight, the sunlight reflected from hundreds of nameless lakes. To their right lay the town of Vindicare, the capital of Austrau, Straux's less populous eastern province. Behind the town over three hundred leagues of semi-arid steppeland stretched to the Taproot Hills of Redana'a in the east, and from the Deep Desert in the south to Favony in the north. Across this less promising land the army would have to make their way, but not on foot. Below them, in the broad harbour built in the lee of the great river's curve to the north, dozens of huge barges had been constructed.

'I hope this works,' said Leith to his generals. 'We've emptied the City's coffers to get these rafts built on time.'

'Barges, my lord; barges, not rafts,' said the captain of the Instruian Guard, wincing. 'Don't let them hear you call them rafts.'

'They might hear more than that if they haven't built as many as they promised,' Kurr growled.

'I can only count fifty. Didn't we order at least a hundred?'

'They had one month, my lords,' said the Chief Clerk of Instruere, the man charged with this task ever since serious thought had been given to moving a large army from Instruere to the Gap. 'One month to find materials, hire workers and build a hundred barges.' He smiled at them obsequiously, then shrugged his shoulders as though making it clear that this turn of events was in no way his responsibility. 'It was always going to be a difficult challenge.'

Behind him someone groaned in frustration.

The trek eastward had encountered its first serious check, Leith knew. He sent his generals to make a detailed assessment of the condition of their fighters, while he, the Company and a number of officials made their way down to the Vindicari Docks to find out how many barges were available. Soon they would learn whether they had to abandon their grand idea of poling up the still-sluggish river to Aleinus Gates, and sacrifice at least ten days in a long, slow march across the steppes.

The Falthan army was forced to wait in Vindicare for two excruciating days. The Haufuth tried to tell himself it prob-ably would not matter, that the Bhrudwans might now already be streaming through the Gap, or more likely still be six months short of it. The line of thought only got him wondering how Leith planned to provision an army of sixty thousand men while they waited for the Destroyer to appear, and how foolish the Company would appear if the Bhrudwan army failed to materialise. That could be faced in the future, but for now the task of waiting for the remaining barges to be finished gnawed at his patience.

Leith expressed similar sentiments. The Haufuth used the opportunity to answer his own doubts. 'We arrived a full three days ahead of our schedule,' he said between mouth-fuls of breakfast on the second morning. 'Not fair to expect the shipbuilders to have finished their task ahead of time, is it?' He leaned over and patted Leith's hand. 'We did manage to send off a good third of the men yesterday. They'll be well up the river by now.'

'Haufuth?' Leith said quietly. The big man leaned over close to him, drawn by something in the boy's voice. 'What did you do when it all got too much for you? When people wanted more than you could give them?'

The village headman sighed his relief. The Company had talked much together since their meeting with Leith, worrying about how the young man was coping with leadership, concerned he no longer had anyone to talk to. They had all witnessed the falling out between the two brothers, and continued to hide from Leith the depth of hurt Hal suffered that day. A reconciliation seemed unlikely, eliminating one of the people Leith might have gone to if he chose to unburden himself. Then there was Phemanderac. No one had seemed closer to the Arrow-bearer than the curious philosopher of Dhauria, yet something had come between them also, though no one had seen any evidence of ill-feeling, and Leith himself denied it. If anything, the Dhaurian now appeared reluctant to spend time with Leith, even though he had promised to educate the lad in the mysteries of the Fuirfad.

The boy needed to talk to someone. All agreed far too much depended on him to allow his potentially destructive silences to continue. Now he had spoken, and the Haufuth knew he must be very careful in the way he answered.

Take it lightly, he told himself. 'I always relied on the village council,' he replied blandly, as though not appreciating the importance of the question. 'If I thought something was too large for me, I could always turn to them.'

'But none of them can carry it,' Leith said in little more than a whisper. 'None of them can hear it.'

'I don't think my size helped me,' the Haufuth continued in his conversational voice. Don't lecture him! 'The villagers knew my limitations. Sometimes they saw me as a fool, a big buffoon not to be trusted with anything but food. I had to learn to let others do things I felt perfectly capable of doing myself. I'm not sure how I would cope if I had your burden to carry.'

'You wanted us to leave you behind at Roleystone Bridge.' Leith's voice was tight. 'You wanted us to continue along the Westway without you. In the end, you remained with the Hermit and had a rest from your cares. Who will give me a rest from mine?'

'Leith, back then everything seemed to be lining up against us. The Bridge was torn down, the Bhrudwans taunted us with their captives, and there seemed little chance of our survival, let alone rescuing your mother and father. But now look at us. See how far we have come! We found the Jugom Ark, and with it gathered together a great army. We are well on the way to doing what we once thought impossible. At Roleystone we were a handful, now we are many thousands, and there are many wise and experienced people here who can share the burden.'

'No,' Leith whispered. 'There is no one. No one else. Only me.'

The Haufuth was about to reply when a Vindicari official, just up from the docks, bustled in to the tent. 'You asked me to report when the hundredth barge was launched,' said the man briskly. 'We have worked all night under torchlight, and the last ten barges are ready to be floated. Will you come and inspect them?'

The look on Leith's face as he followed the official out of the tent, his breakfast uneaten, his words unsaid, nearly broke the big man's heart.

Numbers, numbers. Four hundred and seventeen dead, Leith was told, when the seventy-first barge foundered and the following barge drove over the top of it, spilling soldiers into the dark, cold waters. All numbers, not panicking, screaming, drowning men. Just numbers. Over two hundred deserters, most from the Straux army, running from the growing spectre of war, running because the speech-fostered enthusiasm had died. Sixty thousand less four hundred and seventeen, less a further two hundred. Numbers.

Around him soldiers took turns at poling his barge into the slow but inexorable current, making a league every hour, ten leagues a day, two hundred and fifty leagues to Aleinus Gates. More numbers. Less than half the number of days gone, more than half the number of leagues travelled. Good progress, they told him. To Leith they were just numbers. He recalled sitting with other children in front of the Haufuth's house, reciting his numbers. He'd always been good at them. He could feel the shape of them, he could tell when they didn't add up or divide right, when someone derived a careless answer. The numbers in his head had that careless feel. Even though he knew he had not made a mistake, they still felt wrong.

The deaths were regrettable, his advisers said; and in the same breath told him many more would have been lost if they had attempted the long march across the steppeland. Many more, they assured him, their faces lined up in a row in his tent, delivering the news without a tear.

Just information. He was doing the best thing.

He couldn't sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he seemed to slip below the surface of green waters, eyes wide open, watching others sink into the darkness, unable to save himself, unable to save them, unable to breathe ... Finally, some time in the night, he slipped out of his tent and down to the shore of the cursed river, sat down on the bank and cried out his misery under the uncaring stars.

Ninety-eight barges arrived at Aleinus Gates a full five days ahead of his generals' most optimistic schedule. Only one further barge lost, and that only slowly, gradually falling apart over a number of days. The Falthan army was well rested, ready to take to the path that would lead it through a northern winter to the Gap. Supplies were alarmingly depleted, but agents dispatched from Instruere in the days before the new Council was invested had purchased food and provisions enough to see them through Vulture's Craw to Kaskyne, a two-week trek along narrow paths.

More encouraging was news that another army waited for them at the small town of Aleinus Gates. This army numbered perhaps five thousand, all but a few hundred of which came from Sturrenkol, the capital city of Favony, whose king remained loyal to Faltha. King Cuantha of Favony made the journey south with his army in order to see the Jugom Ark for himself, he claimed; and the Company spent a long evening in discussion with the king and his advisers.

'No one knows Vulture's Craw better than we,' said King Cuantha, a curly-haired, freckle-faced man of perhaps thirty years, indicating his retinue of courtiers. 'If there was another way east, I would recommend you take it; but there is not, since the first snows of winter have already closed the high Wodranian passes. You are walking into difficulty, friends. Vulture's Craw is not kind to winter travellers. Could you not have left earlier in the year?'

'There are passes through the mountains?' asked the Captain of the Instruian Guard. 'We had heard that they were impassable.'

'They are impassable. These days the deep highlands are overrun with wild men down from the icy north. They will not hesitate to waylay any travellers on the mountain paths. Many of my people have been slain by these brutes. There have been reliable reports that some of the victims are tortured and eaten. Having said that, I doubt even these losian wildlings would attack an army such as yours. You would have been safe had you arrived here even six weeks ago. Now the snows would eat your army more quickly than the cooking fires of the Wodrani.'

'What is so dangerous about Vulture's Craw?' Leith asked. The red-haired monarch turned his not-so-regal face towards the Arrow-bearer, measuring the young northerner who carried in his hand the salvation of Faltha. There could be no doubt, his spies told him: the Arrow was no trick, and thus the threat from the east was no mere rumour. Besides, he reminded himself, one of his eastern villages had been destroyed just over a year previously, and not by the Wodrani. According to the handful of survivors, the attackers had been Bhrudwans; and this story had been confirmed just today by the father of the Arrow-bearer himself.

In the moments before he answered, the King of Favony took stock of the leader of the Falthan army. His informants in Instruere spoke of a mighty magician who ended battles with a word, and who immolated his enemies in fire. Well, the Arrow was undoubtedly capable of great things, but, at first glance at least, its callow Keeper seemed nothing more than a small-minded villager.

Was this the opportunity he had been waiting for?

'Vulture's Craw is a deep gut where the Aleinus roars and foams like an angry bear,' he told them. 'In winter deep snows can smother the paths, while in spring the river floods, sometimes carrying the paths away and all who travel on them. Every spring the floodwaters bring down a few bodies still frozen from the winter snows. When the floods abate, the vultures gather; hence, Vulture's Craw.'

'Why, then, would we take our army through there?' Sjenda of Deruys snapped. The chatelaine of the Raving King's castle, she had proved to be the best at chivvying reluctant suppliers, often procuring essential provisions at a cost far below that which any of Leith's Instruian officials could achieve. She had an open, round face and a demeanour that many mistook for naivete, an impression corrected the instant she spoke. 'Might as well just tip our supplies in the river and be done with it!'

'Because, fair one, it is neither spring nor deepest winter - yet,' replied the king heatedly, his eyes narrowing. 'Though if you waste time wishing the inevitable would not come to pass, then in spring you might meet the Bhrudwan army right here!'

Leith spoke up at just the right time to avert an argument between people he clearly needed.

'If we must take this path, then let us set foot on it as soon as we can. I don't like the sound of those winter snows, and I am a northman. I don't like to think of southerners caught in a winter storm.'

'I will send expert guides to assist you, my lord,' said Cuantha. 'This is a precious gift, for two days' march east of here a last bridge stretches across the river. There you must choose between the north and the south bank. The road on the north bank is longer, steeper and narrower, but is somewhat sheltered from the north winds, while the south road is perhaps three days shorter, but travellers are vulnerable to storms coming down off the Wodranians.

You'll need a local to help you choose.'

Sjenda sniffed loudly, as if doubting that any mere local could know more about the movement of men and provisions than her. Leith leaned forward to get a better look at her, perhaps to quell any argument she might offer, and the Jugom Ark flared in his hand. The officials sitting on either side of him threw themselves from their chairs. Leith's advisers backed away from him, and Sjenda's face wore a frightened pallor.

'Oh,' he said, embarrassed. 'I'm sorry. This thing is attuned to me, or so I'm told. I have yet to learn how to fully control it.'

From that moment the gathering busied itself with mundane matters, heads down and private thoughts unvoiced, but no one approached Leith. And sitting quietly in a corner of his own pavilion, the King of Favony watched the young Bearer of the Arrow and considered how best he could turn this situation to the advantage of his new master - and to himself.

Leith had his mind on other matters. He'd managed to have Maendraga and his daughter assigned to his barge, and had spent three interesting weeks on the wide, slow Aleinus River in the company of the two magicians. They had filled his head with both mysticism and good sense, but he was having a dreadful time separating the two.

The Guardians of the Arrow, Belladonna and her father, had been genial and restful companions. Neither guardian pressed him in the way he felt his other friends had done, trying to force him into some revelation about the Jugom Ark. Instead they had passed their days in simple conversation, only incidentally touching on the subject of most importance to them all. They knew Leith needed to learn, and he knew they knew it, but their unhurried approach opened him without any harsh words needing to be spoken.

'Yes,' Maendraga had said, his rich voice reminding Leith of the time they shared on the Wodhaitic Sea. 'Jethart is right when he says the Arrow only affects those of the Fire.'

'Why is that? Are there talismans for each of the other elements?'

Belladonna laughed, the gap in her front teeth visible in her smile. 'We were told so. The knowledge was passed down from Bewray's time, but no one knows with certainty.'

'Can't see it myself,' Maendraga interrupted his daughter agreeably. 'The Jugom Ark is the product of rebellion and justice. I don't think similar situations prevailed for the people of the Water, Earth and Air.'

For a while the two guardians debated this idea, constantly referring to the writings of Maendraga's ancestors, an increasingly esoteric subject to which Leith could contribute nothing. Eventually the river rocked him gently to sleep.

A few days later Leith had asked the question foremost on his mind. 'Is the Jugom Ark a weapon?' For a reason he could not yet name, the subject was difficult to broach.

Father and daughter discussed it for a while, but could not make up their minds. Maendraga began by arguing forcefully for the position that the Arrow must have a function as a weapon, but Belladonna opposed him. 'Can a weapon unify?' she wondered aloud, after her father suggested the very shape of the Jugom Ark pointed to its function.

Leith seized on her argument. 'Weapons are made to divide and defeat,' he said. 'How does division suggest unity?'

Maendraga answered immediately. 'Easily, Leith. Especially if the weapon divides Faltha and Bhrudwo. What better reason to unify Faltha? Of course it's a weapon.'

'But if it is a weapon, how does it work?' Belladonna continued to pull at the issue like a loose thread hanging from a garment.

Maendraga turned to Leith and raised his eyebrows ques-tioningly.

'Well, I haven't used it as a weapon,' he said. 'I've healed with it, at the Court of Nemohaim and when Escaigne and the Ecclesia were ambushed by Deorc. I used it to resist the blue fire of the Destroyer. I don't know what other powers it has.' He looked down at the Arrow in his hand.

'The biggest miracle, of course, is the assembling of this army,' Maendraga said thoughtfully.

'Perhaps the Bearer is supposed to heal the hurts of his army, thereby maintaining their unity?'

Belladonna uncrossed her long legs as she said this, and began pacing back and forth on the barge.

'Or maybe heal the hurts of the Bhrudwan army, drawing them in to some greater unity with Faltha?' Maendraga put out an arm and touched her, emphasising his point.

'But it took the Destroyer's hand,' Leith said. 'Wasn't that its original purpose? What if I'm supposed to assault the Destroyer with it?'

'I'm not sure how you would go about that,' Belladonna said doubtfully.

Leith pulled out his most convincing argument, the one which had come to him weeks before.

'The carvings in the Hall of Meeting show the Most High loosing the Arrow at the Destroyer using a bow. I wasn't given a bow. Surely, if the Arrow was meant to be used as a weapon, I would have been given a bow? How can I launch this weapon at our foe?'

Maendraga rubbed his chin, deep in thought. 'The Jugom Ark would not suffer an ordinary bow, however constructed. It would set the wood alight.'

'Must I sneak into the Bhrudwan camp, then, and throw it at him? If I throw the Arrow and it does not destroy him, I will have surrendered it to him for nothing.'

'Maybe you need to get even closer and stab him with it.' Belladonna's tone suggested she harboured severe reservations about what she said.

'Through the massed might of Bhrudwo and the Lords of Fear? That's even worse. If they catch me I will have surrendered myself as well as the Arrow.'

The discussion continued on for an hour or so, but seemed to Leith a waste of time. Nothing could be proved anyway. They could conceive of no simple method of testing the Jugom Ark's efficacy as a weapon without rounding up some of their own soldiers and using it against them. He could hear Hal's outraged voice of protest if that idea was suggested! And, thought Leith, my voice would be added to his.

Though their time on the barges was soon over, Leith hoped to spend more time with the guardians later in the march. They were friendlier, more knowledgeable and less judgmental than his parents would likely be. Go and speak with Hal, his mother and father would say. He doubted he could explain to them why he couldn't do that. Hal speaks in my head, he'd say to them. He is taking over my mind. 1 need to work this out without his interference! No, telling them about the voice would further harm the already reduced respect in which his family held him.

Leith looked up from his musings: the King of Favony was about to take his leave. Best to keep my eyes open. Take every opportunity to speak to Belladonna and Maendraga. And Phemanderac, if 1 can find him.

'I do not like the look of this weather, no matter what Ruben-rammen says.' Kurr was unhappy, and not afraid to let others know it. 'I know what we'd call this weather in Firanes.'

Farr stood shoulder to shoulder with the old farmer. 'You can smell it, can't you. Up on Vinkullen we'd be bringing in the stock and splitting the firewood. There's snow out there, sure enough.'