‘I don’t think I know you two,’ Avin said.
‘We’re new,’ the first one said, shrugging. ‘We just joined the Royal Guard last week.’ He set a canvas bag on the floor and took out a pry-bar. He carefully inserted the bar under the lid of the barrel and worked it back and forth until the lid came free.
‘What are you doing?’ Avin demanded.
‘You can’t drink it if you can’t get at it, Avin,’ the fellow pointed out. ‘We’ve got the right tools, and you probably don’t.’ At least the man was clean-shaven. Avin approved of that. Most of the men in the Royal Guard looked like trees with golden moss growing on them. ‘You’d better taste it and make sure it hasn’t soured, Brok.’
‘Right,’ the other one agreed. He scooped up some of the wine in the cupped palm of his hand and sucked it in noisily. Avin shuddered. ‘Tastes all right to me, Tel,’ he reported. A thoughtful look crossed his face. ‘Why don’t I fill up a bucket of this before we put the lid back on?’ he suggested. ‘Hauling this barrel up the stairs was heavy business, and I’ve worked up quite a thirst.’
‘Good idea,’ Tel agreed.
The bearded man picked up the brass-bound wooden bucket Avin used for a waste basket. ‘Is it all right if I use this, Avin?’ he asked.
Avin Wargunsson gaped at him. This went too far – even in Thalesia.
The burly fellow shook the contents of the waste basket out on the floor and dipped it into the barrel. Then he set the pail down. ‘I guess we’re ready then, Tel,’ he said.
‘All right,’ Tel replied. ‘Let’s get at it.’
‘What are you doing?’ Avin demanded in a shrill voice as the two approached him.
They didn’t even bother to answer. It was intolerable! He was the Prince Regent! People had no right to ignore him like this!
They picked him up by the arms and carried him over to the barrel, ignoring his struggles. He couldn’t even get their attention by kicking them.
‘In you go,’ the one named Tel said pleasantly, almost in the tone one uses when he pushes a horse into a stall. The two lifted Avin Wargunsson quite easily and stuffed him feet first into the barrel. The one called Brok held him down while Tel took a hammer and a handful of nails out of the canvas bag and picked up the barrel-lid. He set the lid on Avin’s head and pushed him down. Then he rapped his hammer around the edge of the lid, settling it in place.
Only Avin’s eyes and forehead were above the surface of the wine. He held his breath and pounded impotently on the underside of the lid with both fists.
Then there was another pounding sound as Tel calmly nailed down the lid of the barrel.
The ladies quite firmly dismissed Kalten when they set out the morning after the attempt on Queen Betuana’s life. Kalten took his self-appointed duties as Xanetia’s protector quite seriously, and he was a bit offended at being so cavalierly sent away.
‘They need some privacy right now,’ Vanion told him. ‘Set some knights to either side to protect them, but give them enough room to get Xanetia through this.’ Vanion was a soldier, but his insights were sometimes quite profound. Sparhawk looked back over his shoulder. Sephrenia rode close to one side of the sorrowing Xanetia, and Betuana strode along on the other. Xanetia rode with her head bowed, holding Flute in her arms. There was about them a kind of exclusionary wall as they closed ranks around their injured sister. Sephrenia rode very close to the Anarae, frequently reaching out her hand to touch the stricken woman. The racial differences and eons-old enmity appeared to have been overridden by the universal sisterhood of all women. Sephrenia reached across those barriers to comfort her enemy without even thinking about it. Betuana was no less solicitous, and in spite of the gruesome demonstration of the effects of Xanetia’s touch, she walked very close to the Delphaeic woman.
Aphrael, of course, was in complete control of the situation. She rode with her arms about Xanetia’s waist, and Aphrael’s touch was one of the more powerful forces on earth. Sparhawk was quite certain that Xanetia was not really suffering. The Child Goddess would not permit that. The Anarae’s apparent horror and remorse at what she had been compelled to do was entirely for the benefit of her two comforters. Aphrael was quite deliberately erasing Sephrenia’s racial animosity and Betuana’s superstitious aversion by the simple expedient of intensifying Xanetia’s outward appearance of grief.
It was easy to underestimate Aphrael when she appeared in one of her innumerable incarnations as a capricious little girl, and that was probably the main reason she had chosen the form of the Child Goddess in the first place. Sparhawk, however, had seen the reality of Aphrael waveringly reflected in the brass mirror back in Matherion, and the reality was neither childish nor whimsical. Aphrael always knew exactly what she was doing, and she always got exactly what she wanted. Sparhawk firmly fixed the wavering image of the reality of Aphrael in his mind so that it would always be present when the dimples and the kisses began to cloud his judgement.
The days were significantly shorter this far to the north. The sun rose far to the southeast now, and it did not go very high above the southern horizon before it started to descend again. Each long night’s frost piled up on the previous night’s lacy blanket, since the pale, weak sun no longer had the strength to melt what had built up during the hours of darkness.
It was nearly sunset when a towering Atan came loping down a frosty forest path to meet them. He went directly to Queen Betuana and banged his fist against his chest in salute. Betuana motioned quickly to Sparhawk and the others. ‘A message from Engessa-Atan,’ she said tersely. ‘There are enemies gathering on the coast at the eastern end of the wall.’
‘Trolls?’ Vanion asked quickly.
The tall Atan shook his head. ‘No, Vanion-Lord,’ he replied. ‘They’re Elenes, and for the most part they’re not warriors. They’re cutting trees.’
‘To use in building fortifications?’ Bevier asked.
‘No, Church Knight. They are lashing the trees together to build things that will float.’
‘Rafts?’ Tynian asked. ‘Ulath, you said that Trolls are afraid of the sea. Would they be willing to use rafts to go around the outer edge of the escarpment?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ the blond-braided Thalesian replied. ‘Ghwerig did use a boat to cross Lake Venne, and he almost had to have stolen a ride on some ship to get from Thalesia to Pelosia when he followed King Sarak during the Zemoch war, but Ghwerig wasn’t like other Trolls.’ He looked at the Atan. ‘Are they building these rafts north of the wall or here on the south side?’
‘They’re on this side of the wall,’ the Atan replied.
‘That doesn’t make too much sense, does it?’ Kalten asked.
‘Not to me, it doesn’t,’ Ulath admitted.
‘I think we’d better get up there and have a look, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said. ‘That attack on Betuana last night was fair evidence that Zalasta knows we’re coming, so this little stroll through the woods has accomplished its purpose. Let’s join forces with Engessa and Kring and find out if Sorgi’s made it to the beach yet. Winter’s coming on very fast anyway, and I think we’ll want to deal with the Trolls before the sun goes down permanently.’
‘Would you see to that, Divine One?’ Sparhawk said to Aphrael. ‘I’d ask Bhelliom to do it, but you’ve been handling things so well that I wouldn’t want to appear critical by taking over at this point.’
Aphrael’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t push your luck, Sparhawk,’ she said ominously.
Sparhawk was never really certain whether Aphrael had somehow moved them during the night or had slipped them across the intervening miles at some point between the time when they swung up into their saddles and the time when their mounts took their first steps. The Child Goddess was too practiced, too skilled, to be caught tampering when she didn’t want to be.
The hill was the same hill that had been lying to the northwest of their night’s encampment when the sun had gone down – or so it seemed – but when they crested it about a half-hour after they set out, there was a long, sandy beach and the lead-gray expanse of the Tamul Sea on the other side instead of a broad, unbroken forest.
‘That was quick,’ Talen said, looking around. Talen’s presence on this expedition had never really been explained to Sparhawk’s satisfaction. He suspected Aphrael, however. It was easy to suspect Aphrael of such things, and more often than not the suspicions proved to be well founded.
‘There’s someone coming down the beach,’ Ulath said, pointing at a tiny figure riding along the water’s edge from the north.
‘Khalad.’ Talen shrugged.
‘How can you tell?’
‘He’s my brother, Sir Ulath – besides, I recognize his cloak.’
They rode on down the hill and out onto the sand.
‘What kept you?’ Khalad asked Sparhawk bluntly when he joined them.
‘I’m glad to see you too, Khalad.’
‘Don’t try to be funny, Sparhawk. I’ve been struggling to keep Engessa and his Atans from swimming round the outer edge of the escarpment for the past ten days. They want to go attack the Trolls all by themselves. How did Stragen’s plan come off?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ Talen told him. ‘We were on the road during the Harvest Festival. I know Stragen and Caalador well enough to know that most of the people they were after are probably dead by now, though. We’re a little late because we wanted to make sure that Zalasta’s people saw us coming. We thought we might be able to divert him enough to keep him out of the way of Caalador’s murderers.’
Khalad grunted.
‘Are the Trolls gathering anywhere nearby?’ Ulath asked.
‘As closely as we can tell, they’re all clustered around the abandoned village of Tzada over on the other side of the Atan border,’ Khalad replied. ‘They tried to climb the wall for a while, but then they pulled back. Engessa’s got scouts on top of the wall watching them. They’ll let us know when they start to move.’
‘Where are Engessa and Kring?’ Vanion asked him.
‘Up the beach about a mile, my Lord. We’ve built an encampment back in the forest a ways. Tikume’s joined us. He brought in several thousand of the eastern Peloi about five days ago.’
‘That should help,’ Kalten said. ‘The Peloi are very enthusiastic about their wars.’
‘Any sign of Sorgi yet?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘He’s feeling his way in through the reefs,’ Khalad replied. ‘He sent a longboat on ahead to let us know that he was coming.’
‘What’s this business with the rafts all about?’ Vanion asked him.
‘They aren’t rafts, my Lord. They’re sections of a floating bridge.’
‘A bridge? A bridge to where?’
‘We aren’t sure. We’ve been staying back a ways so that the Edomish peasants constructing it won’t see us.’
‘What are Edomishmen doing on this side of the continent?’ Kalten asked with some astonishment.
‘Building a bridge, Sir Kalten. Weren’t you listening? Talen’s old friend Amador – or Rebal, or whatever he calls himself now – is sort of in charge, but Incetes is there too, and he’s the one who’s making the big impression. He bellows orders in archaic Elenic, and he’s been braining anyone who doesn’t understand him or move fast enough.’
‘Is it that counterfeit one we saw in the woods near Jorsan?’ Talen asked.
‘I don’t think so. This fellow seems to be quite a bit bigger, and he’s got a sizeable contingent of men in bronze armor with him. I’d guess that somebody’s resurrecting people out of the past again.’
‘That would probably be Djarian of Samar,’ Sephrenia said. ‘Maybe he can raise whole armies after all.’
‘He can if Cyrgon’s lending him a hand,’ Aphrael added. The Child Goddess had appeared to be dozing in her sister’s arms, but she had clearly been listening. She opened her large, dark eyes. ‘Hello, Khalad,’ she said. ‘You look a little wind-burned.’
‘We’ve had some gales coming in off the Tamul Sea, Divine One. There’s a strong smell of ice mixed up in them.’
‘That’s what they’re doing,’ Ulath said, snapping his fingers.
‘Does he still do that?’ Tynian asked. ‘I was hoping you’d cured him of it by now.’
‘Ulath likes to play leap-frog with his mind, Tynian,’ Sephrenia said calmly. ‘He’ll come back in a moment or two and fill in the blank spaces for us.’
‘How long has it been cold up here, Khalad?’ Ulath asked.
‘It wasn’t particularly warm when we got here, Sir Ulath.’
‘Is any ice forming up in the inlets and along the beach at night?’
‘Some. It isn’t very thick, though, and the tide comes in and breaks it up before it has the chance to spread.’
‘The floating ice a mile or so out to sea isn’t breaking up, though,’ Ulath said. ‘It rises and falls with the tide because it’s not grinding up against the rocks. It’s probably almost a foot thick out there by now. The Edomishmen aren’t building rafts or a bridge. They’re building a pier out to that pan-ice. There’ll be another one north of the wall as well. The Trolls will cross the ice. We know that because they did it to get here from Thalesia. Cyrgon’s going to march the Trolls to the pier north of the wall and drive them out to the pan-ice. Then they’ll march south across the ice and come ashore on this south pier.’
‘And then they’ll attack the Atans again,’ Vanion said bleakly. ‘How thick will the pan-ice have to be to support the weight of the Trolls?’
‘Two feet or so. It should be thick enough by the time the piers are finished – if it stays cold.’
‘I think we can count on Cyrgon to make sure that it stays cold,’ Tynian noted.
‘There’s something else, too,’ Khalad added. ‘If Cyrgon’s playing with the weather this way, it won’t be too long before Sorgi’s ships are locked in ice. I think we’d better come up with something, my Lords – and fairly soon – or we’re going to be hip-deep in Trolls again.’
‘Let’s go talk with Kring and Engessa,’ Sparhawk said.