The only way we're going to trail these yrch is to get ahead of them, Mary said.

Ritva hesitated; that was risky. But it was important to know where the enemy had come from. She raised her head and whistled softly; a few moments later her Duelroch and Mary's Rochael came trotting up. They slid into the saddles and turned west, down into the river valley, over the road and into the abandoned fields. Those were tall with brush and weeds, and rows of trees beside long unused irrigation ditches, but the mounts were Arabs and agile as cats... thousand-pound cats with hooves, of course.

They signaled their mounts up to a slow canter, keep ing their eyes wide for threats to their legs-once they had to crow-hop over a big disk-harrow that had been sitting and rusting and growing a coating of vine and stalk since before they were born. A barn owl went by overhead, a flash of white in the darkness and a screech as it dove through the night to carry off something small and furry spooked into motion by the riders.

"That's enough," Ritva said softly, peering to see the black outline of the heights against the star-shot blackness of the sky.

Mary nodded; one of the advantages of being iden ticals was that they agreed on most things. This was far enough ahead that they could cut back into the hills eastward, given that they'd moved faster. At the edge of the broken ground they left their horses standing in a hollow with the reins looped up; that took really good training.

Hold, Ritva Signed.

It was the two Cutter scouts they'd seen. The twins stopped in the shadow of a stand of scrub pinyon pine, their war cloaks turning them into shadows within shad ows. The enemy were feeling more confident now, walk ing along leading their horses. The twins turned their heads slowly, slowly, keeping their eyes moving. Ritva still felt herself blink when four more stepped out from behind a steep fold of striped rock.

Uh oh, Ritva thought, clenching her teeth. We must be inside their screen.

Mary Signed: Might as well go forward as back. We need to get some hard information on this crew.

Which was true, but still unpleasant. They waited again, while the men they'd followed disappeared behind that tall fold. Their eyes found a course-from one boulder or patch of scrub to another, points that would screen them as much as possible from the lookouts they couldn't see but knew were there. Walk slowly, pause... then down on your belly and crawl like a snake...

And catch the damned war cloak on thorns. Careful, careful. Nothing caught the eye like a flutter.

As they moved they watched for the betraying movements and noises. Setting out a string of guards around your camp was all very well, but you had to check on them regularly-otherwise someone could sneak in, practice Sentry Removal and then get away again with out being detected. You had to make sure the sentries were just being quiet, not lying there cooling to the ambient temperature.

The officer who did the rounds was quiet enough, but they caught his motion-his helmet was glossy, not dull matte, and it showed in the moonlight. Ritva felt her own pulse and counted, drawing her breath in steadily and evenly as the sentries were checked.

He makes his rounds every fifteen minutes, she Signed. And the lookouts are there... there... there... and there.

Mary nodded agreement. Another ten minutes, and we'll go through below that boulder. Maybe we can get out past them that way later. In the meantime, let's go look at what all these sentries are guarding.

It was snake-crawling all the way now, imitating a clump of brush. From pool of darkness to darkness, halting five minutes for every one they moved. The wind was in their faces, what there was of it, so dogs wouldn't be able to scent them, if the Corwinites had any. At last they were in the darker blackness beneath the great rock. Ritva raised her head, fractional inch by fractional inch.

There.

A long narrow cleft in the rock, east-west mainly but with serpentine wriggles, stretching out of sight on her right, and probably opening up to the river on the west. Black cottonwood trees along the sandy bed of the ar royo, and an occasional thicker clump that was probably a spring; the moonlight turned everything to shades of gray and silver, but the thickness of leaves was still ap parent. And the low red dots of banked campfires scat tered down it, bright to their dark-adapted eyes. A slight smell of woodsmoke, too, and cooking, and the stamp and whicker of horses.

Let's see, Ritva thought. Eight men to a fire... that means somewhere around two hundred all up.

She got the binoculars out. The horse lines were well hidden, in along the sides of the canyon, but she could see men hauling buckets of water to them, and bags of cracked grain fodder.

Enough horses for every man and a fair number of remounts... that's a wagon, light two-wheeler. They're traveling without much baggage.

For most of an hour they lay on the lip of the gorge, carefully noting the details. The Cutter soldiers did the things soldiers usually did-sharpening blades, tend ing armor, sewing things and patching things and oiling things and putting new laces in things, eating stew or beans out of communal pots and flat wheat cakes cooked on griddles. They also seemed to do a lot of praying, in a manner which involved kneeling in ranks and making gestures in unison; presumably they were leaving out any chanting or singing.

Then...

A face sprang out at her in the binoculars for an in stant: a middle aged man, forty or more, not big, not small... but with a patch over his left eye, and a long white scar diagonally across it. Mary hissed very slightly beside her. Ritva memorized the face; part of her noted that the man certainly had luck, to have survived that. Someone had cut him across the face with a sword, and hard enough to nick the bone. He turned away and walked into the darkness; two other men followed him, with the indefinable air of someone listening to a superior.

One by one the fires were covered by earth and the men lay down, wrapped in blankets and pillowed on their saddles. They also set up their walking sentries, close in and by the picket lines where their horses were tethered, and relieved the outflung ones on the heights around.

Good, Mary Signed. There's one we missed, see?

Ritva nodded. And right on our way out.

That was the problem with making yourself invisible. If someone missed you, you could miss them. Particularly, you could miss them until they didn't miss you.

This was going to be awkward. Her hands moved again.

Can we get past them on the sneak?

I don't think so. Not going this way.

Ritva bared her teeth behind the gauze of her war cloak's mask. They weren't here to fight, and she didn't like to fight unless she had to anyway, and if they couldn't do it quick and quiet they were unpleasantly dead. Her eyes went along the path they'd have to take, past the big boulder, then over the ridge...

Yup, she Signed mournfully. Sentry Removal. No choice.

Dunedain training involved a lot of Sentry Removal, and they'd taken the Bearkiller version before they left Larsdalen for Mithrilwood.

It wasn't precisely like combat. Killing people was relatively easy-which went both ways, unfortunately-but doing it very suddenly with complete silence and nothing visible beyond a few feet was another matter. Human beings were surprisingly tough that way; just stabbing or hitting them rarely did the job fast enough and often involved a lot of shouting and screeching and clanging. It was even more difficult when they were wearing armor.

They turned and crawled, waited while the Cutter officer did his rounds of the sentries, then moved forward right afterwards to take advantage of the maximum time before he came back.

The Corwinite scouts were well placed, about ten yards apart and turned so each covered the other's back, each lying behind a convenient rock with a leg drawn up so that they presented a smaller target but could spring erect quickly. And each had his recurved bow ready with an arrow on the string.

Can't shoot them, Ritva thought.

An arrow made noise, not much but enough on a still quiet night like this, and it usually ended in a scream even if you hit something eventually fatal. Both the men were in three quarter armor, back-and-breast of overlapping plates of waxed leather edged with steel, leg guards like chaps, mail sleeves. That didn't make them invulnerable to bodkin-point arrows from an eighty-pound bow, but it did make a quick kill even less likely.

Certainly can't run up to them and fence. Two swords now, two hundred in a couple of minutes after the first sound of steel. And I don't like the way those two sit and wait-I'll bet by Elbereth Gilthoniel that they know which end of the sharp pointy edgy cutty thing to pick up. Wild Hunter, give me a hand here, will you?

Her hands moved in minimal gestures. Mary's war cloak moved slightly as she worked underneath it, but no more than the slow cool breeze might ripple a bush. Then she crawled away, with the same stop-and-start rhythm as before, while Ritva waited, filling her mind with the image of a leaf drifting downward. Calm...

They were close enough now to see the sentries turn their heads, and Mary stopped whenever their eyes started to swing around in her direction. If you timed it right that made you the next thing to invisible; when it was this dark, a good war cloak just couldn't be told from a natural lump of dirt and vegetation. Ritva's right hand went to her waist. Not to draw a blade; instead she slid out a weapon made of two lengths of ashwood, each two feet long, joined by a short length of fine alloy-steel chain.

With deer, the stop and-start tactic could let you get close enough to touch them, or slit their throats, as long as they didn't scent you. Human senses were less keen but they could make up for it with wits. A good lookout memorized all the bushes and outcrops near his post. When one turned up where it shouldn't...

Her sister was out beyond the two Cutter sentries now. One of them-the one farthest from Ritva's motionless position-stopped his steady back-and-forth scanning and turned his head with a sharp snapping motion. The first time as if he didn't quite know what he was looking for, the second in a whipping arc as he noticed something that shouldn't be there.

Mary came to her feet in a smooth twisting arc that spun her like a discus thrower. Her buckler was in her hand, gripped by the rim; she'd stripped the rubber gasket from around the rim a few moments ago and slipped the hand grip out of the hollow side.

That left her with a shallowly concave steel disk a foot across, very much like what the old-timers called a Fris bee, two pounds of it with a knife-sharp edge all 'round. It flew from her hand in a long smooth arc that bisected the Cutter's face below the brim of his helmet with an audible but not-too-loud crunch.

You could cut through a two-inch sapling that way, or chop a horse's leg out from under it. There were old practice stumps in Mithrilwood with a lot of crescent-shaped slots in their surfaces.

As the man dropped, limp as a puppet with cut strings, some very distant part of Ritva's mind knew she'd wince over that sound for a long time to come. The rest of her reacted automatically, hitting the quick release toggle of her war cloak and charging on soft-soled elf boots with a tigress precision that hardly rattled a rock. The other Cutter had whipped around to see his comrade die. He drew and shot with lightning speed; the arrow might even have hit Mary if she hadn't thrown herself flat again the instant the buckler left her hand.

He didn't waste any time when he saw or heard or felt or sensed Ritva coming up behind him, either; he dropped the bow and turned the reach for an arrow to a snatch at the long hilt of his shete. That brought his hand down across his body to his left hip, which was convenient.

Once you'd snuck up on a sentry, you had to do some thing with him. If he was stronger than you-which a man would be more often than not-it required something more than brute force to remove him. The weapon she carried gave her a five-foot reach; the quick flick of her right wrist and arm swung it in a blurring circle to wards his neck. The chain link struck flesh and the other handle swung around to go smack into her left palm. Her wrists crossed and wrenched apart with a savage economy of motion and all her shoulders and gut be hind the explosive power. The handles and chain multi plied it like a giant nutcracker... and back home they practiced this move by swatting flies out of the air on summer afternoons.

There was a crackling, popping, yielding sound like stiff wet things giving way-which was exactly what it was, and which echoed up her hands and arms in a way that made her bare her teeth in distaste. The man's eyes bulged for an instant, and then he col lapsed, not quite as limp as his companion but not doing more than kicking and gurgling a little before he went quiet.

Aunt Astrid called it "using leverage."

Ritva frowned as she crouched beside the corpse and its heels drummed on the hard earth one last time. There were times... there were times when she wondered if there was something wrong with Aunt Astrid.

She passed a hand over her eyes and over the dead Cutter's, and touched a finger to the earth and to her lips. To take life was to understand your own death-that the Hour of the Huntsman also came for you; the sign ac knowledged that, and that they would all lay their bones in the Mother's earth and be reborn through Her.

Of course, there's Uncle John, she thought, as she joined her sister in a quick silent dash downhill towards where they'd left the horses. He doesn't use leverage, much.

Little John Hordle's idea of Sentry Removal was to sneak up-he was astonishingly quiet for such a big man-grab the sentry's chin in one huge red-furred hand and the back of his head with the other and give a sharp twist so that the unfortunate was looking back between his own shoulder blades.

Aunt Astrid called that "crude, just crude."

Two days later Ritva hid behind a hillside rock a hun dred and fifteen miles farther south and west, struggling to control the impulse to shoot.

Why do they keep following us? she thought. It's not reasonable!

She could see six of the Cutters below them, trying to track the twins over an expanse of bare rock. It was ninety yards' distance, and she could kill at least a couple of them...

The problem was that then they'd know they were on the right track; also they'd start shooting too, of course. She and Mary had doubled back on their own trail to see if they were still being tailed, and here the irritating pursuers were.

Don't be angry, she thought. Anger is first cousin to fear. If you make decisions because you're scared, you'll fuck up.

Under her breath, a movement of lips rather than air, she recited one of Little John's training mantras to herself: I must not lose my temper.

Temper temper temper is the bum killer.

Temper is the little mistake which leads to you lying On the ground wondering Oi! What's with all this spreading pool of blood, then?

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past the other bugger Will be the one bleeding.

Only I will remain, wiping off me knife.

Calm returned. One of the Cutters was on foot, quar tering back and forth over the gravel and sandstone, trying to find a place where hooves had scored it. He wouldn't have much luck; they'd led their horses over this bit, then come back barefoot and wiped out every sign of their passage that they could detect-even sweeping up a lump of horse dung.

The dart of her will beat on the men; she hoped they could feel it as she murmured a binding spell. At last one of them straightened up and looked around at the rocky hillsides. Then he threw his helmet down and kicked it, shouted an order at another Cutter, who went and fetched it; and then they turned back on their own trail.

She slumped behind the rock, breathing deeply, feeling her heart slowing down from its pounding roil.

I was not scared, she told herself. I was just... peeved.

And it's weary by the Ullswater And the misty break fern way; Till through the crutch of the Kirkstane pass The winding water lay The song seemed to soothe the little clump of horses, or at least make them less determined to browse among the thin scatter of green brush in the tumbled rocks at the base of the hill, where water collected beneath the dry gritty soil. Rudi waved his lariat and got them mov ing back towards the main herd, keeping an eye out for their wild kin-they'd had problems with mustang stallions trying to cut the mares out.

These interior lands had an eerie emptiness to someone who'd grown to manhood in the lush valleys west of the Cascades. Life of hardy types adapted to the dryness and the alternation of savage heat and deep cold throve here, but sparsely; little handfuls of burro, mustang, big horn sheep, feral cattle scattered across endless miles, wolves and cougar less common still, with even jackrab bits and coyotes not something you saw every minute. They'd seen nothing of humankind besides the ashes of an old campfire near water now and then. This country had been thinly peopled before the Change, and most of the survivors had moved elsewhere in the generation since. The few who remained were wandering hunters, solitaries or single families or tiny groups who shunned outsiders.

He grinned to himself as he took up the song again; one of the little feral mustang studs had tried to cut out Epona, and gotten kicked into next Tuesday for his trouble. The big black mare got along better with horses than with most human beings, but she wasn't one to permit liberties either way.

The horses were moving well back towards the main herd when he finished: And she sang: Ride with your brindled hounds to heel And your good gray hawk to hand; There's none can harm the knight who's lain With the Witch of the Westmoreland!

He broke off as the head of the Mormon party rode up; he'd noticed that some of the old songs made the bishop a bit uneasy, grateful though he was.

"Thank you again for helping us with the horses," Nystrup said as he reined in by Rudi's side. "That alone will mean a good deal to my people."

Neither of them talked about anything larger or more political, though Rudi knew the older man was nourish ing a desperate hope of aid from the free peoples of the far West. Rudi had advised him to send an embassy, and given a letter of introduction, but...

I wish I could go back to arrange it, he thought. But I can't. The Powers have given me a task. And Matti's recommendation... her mother is probably so angry she'd string the messenger up rather than promise them help, sure.

"A little honest work never hurt anyone," the Mac kenzie replied politely, wiping at his face with a bandanna as he rode. "And we're not there yet, to be sure."

The sun was strong but the air temperature only a lit tle on the warm side of comfortable-the part of northern Nevada they were passing through was six thousand feet up, and didn't get really hot until August. Even then it would be a crisp, clear dry heat.

Sparse grassland and silvery sagebrush rolled on every side, studded here and there with the darker green of dwarf juniper on a hillside. A golden eagle wheeled high overhead in majesty, across a pale blue sky that was clear from horizon to horizon. It was probably waiting for rabbits or other small game startled up by the horse herd. Insects buzzed and rattled, and a long-tailed spotted lizard stared at him with beady eyes for a second and then whipped off behind a sage.

A herd of pronghorns had been edging closer most of the morning to get a look at the horses and wagons-the little beasts were incorrigibly curious-but now they took fright and fled at better than sixty miles an hour, white rumps flashing, faster than anything on earth ex cept a cheetah. Occasionally one would bounce up out of the herd's dust cloud, rising as if it had landed on a trampoline.

Maybe they're just running and jumping because they like it, Rudi thought, watching them with pleasure. Well, I do occasionally myself, so why not them?

They'd acquired that speed when there were cheetahs in North America, fifteen thousand years ago; to them the returning grizzlies and wolves and the spreading tigers weren't anything they had to worry about except from ambush. But there were cheetahs again, rumor said, down on the southern plains, escaped from private hunting pre serves in the aftermath of the Change along with lions and a dozen other types of game. In time they'd work their way north, adjusting to the harsher winters as they went.

And when the cheetahs arrive here, the pronghorns will be ready. As Mom says, that sort of thing shows how thrifty the Powers are at getting us to work their will, will we or no.

Hills rose to the east and north, white stone scored by gullies and spattered with the wide-spaced green of ponderosa and pinyon pine on their higher slopes. There wasn't much motion right now, apart from the fleeing antelope with the Y-shaped nose horns, and a fat desert tortoise calmly burying its eggs a little to the north. Then a flicker of something showed in a ravine, and a click and rattle of stones followed, faint with distance. His eyes narrowed, and his hand began a motion towards the bow cased at his knee.

"Someone coming," he said to the Mormon.

"Where?" Nystrup said, startled.

"Up there... ah, it's my folk. My sisters, to be precise."

The twins came riding from the higher ground north eastward, their horses picking a way down the rocky slope. They were wearing war cloaks, which made them look like bushes on horseback with the tufts of greenish yellow grass and sprigs of sage and juniper stuck through the loops that studded the garments. That meant they'd been doing a sneak on foot somewhere to the eastward during their scouting mission.

And that they found something important.

They drew up and nodded at the bishop and Rudi; the rest of the party from the Willamette drifted over as well.

"There are people ahead of us," one of the two said, her face dusty and drawn and tired. "Two different bunches of 'em, both about a day's ride out northeast."

The other took up the tale: "One of them's mostly on foot, heading south along the old gravel road. Say three hundred on foot, fifty on horseback, and packhorses and mule-drawn wagons for baggage. Over to you, Ritva."

Ritva-or possibly Mary-continued: "The others came in from the east a couple of days ago and they've been waiting since-camping cold, small fires for cooking and doused immediately, not much smoke and no noise. Two hundred, all mounted, with a remuda herd and some light wagons. They're holed up in a canyon overlooking the trail heading south up this valley to that old lake..."