Oddly enough there were no signs of the crawling monsters that breached walls in this fashion. Yet there were few stones of the keep still stacked one upon the other. And it was plain an enemy force was encamped here.
They had come upriver by boats, and these were drawn up on the opposite shore of the river.
My duty was divided. This landing must be reported, yet Joisan was much on my mind. No wonder I had sighted her in that vision clad in mail and gentle with a dying man.
Was she captive or dead? Back in the trackless wilderness through which I had come, I bad crossed trails of small groups moving westward, refugees by all evidence. Perhaps she had so fled. But where in all those leagues of wild land could I find her?
Lord Imgry had set me a duty that was plain. Once more I was torn between two demands, and I had one thin hope. There were signal posts in the heights. Messages could be flashed from peak to peak-in the sun by reflection from well-burnished shields; at night by torches held before the same backing. I knew the northern one of those, which could not be too far from Ithkrypt If that had not been overrun and taken, Imgry would have his warning, and I would be free to hunt for Joisan.
Using scout skill I supped away from the vantage point that had shown me Ithkrypt. There were parties of invaders out, and they went brashly, with the arrogance of conquerors who had nothing to fear. Some drove footsore cattle and bleating sheep back to slaughter in their camp; others worked to the west, seeking fugitives perhaps, or making out trails to lead an army inland even as Imgry had feared, that they might come down on us to crush our beleaguered force between two of theirs.
I found Hiku an excellent mount for my purposes. The pony seemed to follow by his own choice that country into which he could merge so that only one alerted to our presence there could have been aware of our passing. Also he appeared tireless, able to keep going when a stable-bred mount might have given out, footsore and blowing.
That these dales had their natural landmarks was a boon, for I could so check my direction. But I came across evidence that the invaders were spreading out from Ithkrypt. And I knew that I would not be a moment too soon. Perhaps I was already a day or so too late in sounding the alarm.
I found the crest on which the signal niche was located and there studied with dismay the traces of those come before me. For it was the order of such posts that there be no trail pointing to them; yet here men, more than two or three, had passed openly, taking no trouble to cover their tracks.
With bare steel in my fist, my war hood laced, I climbed to the space where I should have found a three-man squad of signal-men. But death had been before me, as the splashes of clotted blood testified. There was the socket in which the shield had been set so it could be readied to either catch the sun or frame the light of a torch-there was even a broken torch flung to earth and trampled. I looked south, able to make out the next peak on which one of our outposts was stationed. Had those attacked here been able to give the alarm?
Now I applied my forest knowledge to the evidence and decided that battle had been done in mid-morning. It was now mid-afternoon. Had they wings, perhaps the invaders could have flown from this height to the one I could see, but men, mounted or on foot, could not have already won to that second point in such time. If no warning had gone forth, I must in some manner give it.
The shield had been wrenched away. I carried none myself, for my activities as scout had made me discard all such equipment. Signal – how could I signal without the means?
I chewed a knuckle and tried to think. I had a sword, a long forester’s knife, and a rope worn as a belt about my middle. My mail was not shining, but coated over on purpose with a greenish sap which helped to conceal me.
Going forth from the spy niche I looked around-hoping against hope that the shield might have been tossed away. But that was rating the enemy too low. There was only one thing I might do, and in the doing I could bring them back on me as if I had purposefully lashed a nest of Anda wasps – set a fire. The smoke would not convey any precise message, as did the wink of reflection from the shield, but it would warn those ahead.
I searched the ground for wood, carrying it back to the signal post. My last armful was not culled from the ground under the gnarled slope trees, but selected from leaves on those same trees.
I used my strike light and the fire caught, held well. Into it then I fed, handful by handful, the leaves I had gathered. Billows of yellowish smoke appeared, along with fumes that drove me coughing from the fireside, my eyes streaming tears. But as those cleared I could see a column of smoke reaching well into the sky, such a mark as no one could miss.
There was little or no wind, even here on the upper slopes, and the smoke was a well-rounded pillar. This gave me another idea – to interrupt the smoke and then let it flow again would add emphasis to the warning. I unstrapped my cloak, and with it in hand went back to the fire.
It was a chancy business, but, though I was awkward, I managed to so break the column that no one could mistake it was meant for a signal. A moment or two later there came a flash from the other peak that I could read. They had accepted the warning and would now swing their shield and pass it on. Lord Imgry might not have exact news from the north, but he would know that the enemy had reached this point.
My duty done, I must be on my way with all speed-heading westward. To seek Joisan I could do no more than try to find the trail of one of those bands of refugees and discover from them what might have happened to my lady.
If so far fortune had favored me, now that was not true. For I learned shortly that the pursuit was up, and such pursuit as made my heart beat fast and dried my mouth as I urged Hiku on. They had out their hounds!
We speak of those of Alizon as Hounds, naming them so for their hunters on four legs, which are unlike our own dogs of the chase. They have gray-white coats, and they are very thin, though large and long of leg; their heads are narrow, moving with the fluid ease of a serpent, their eyes yellow.
Few of them were with the invaders, but those we had seen in the south were deadly, trained to hunt and kill, and with something about them wholly evil.
As I rode from where that smoke still curled, I heard the sound of a horn as I had heard it twice before in the south. It was the summoning of a hound master. I knew that once set on my trail, those gray-white, flitting ghosts, which had no true kinship with our guardian dogs of the dale keeps, would ferret me out.
So I set to every trick I knew for covering and confusing my trail. Yet after each attempt at concealment, a distant yapping told me I had not escaped. At last Hiku, again of his own accord, as if no beast brain lay within his skull but some other more powerful one, tugged loose from my controlling rein and struck to the north. He half slid, half leaped down a crumbling bank into a stream, and up that, against the current, he splashed his way.
I loosed all rein hold, letting him pick his own path, for he had found a road which could lead us to freedom. It was plain he knew exactly what he was doing.
The stream was not river-sized, but perhaps a tributary to the river that ran through Ithkrypt. The water was very clear. One could look down to see not only the stones and gravel that floored it, but also those finned and crawling things to which it was home.
Suddenly Hiku came to a full stop, the water washing about his knees. So sudden was that halt that I was nearly shaken from my seat. The pony swung his head back and forth, lowering it to the water’s edge. Then he whinnied and turned his head as if addressing me in his own language.