Rethwellan had granted Menmellith client-state status and semi-autonomy shortly after Daren had been born. Supposedly this was a kind of thanks-offering for the birth of a third son; in actuality, now that she’d seen the state with her own eyes, Kero suspected that the King had seized on the first available excuse to liberate his land from a considerable drain on the royal coffers. Menmellith was mostly mountain, hellishly hard to travel in, constantly raided by Karsite “bandits,” and probably impossible to govern or tax effectively. Now it was governed by its own fractious, taciturn folk, served as a buffer between Karse and the lusher lands of Rethwellan, and the King need only hire the occasional merc Company to clean things out now and again, instead of being forced to keep a detachment of the army there on permanent duty.

“We’re fairly useless at the moment, you know,” Shallan said, as her horse picked its way daintily across a dry streambed that formed part of the trail. “They’re just sending the scouting parties out to make sure everything’s still where it’s supposed to be.”

“I know,” Kero sighed. If there was one thing she’d learned with the Skybolts, it was that warfare consisted mostly of waiting. “I’m not even supposed to report to anyone unless we do see something odd. I suppose it wouldn’t be so damned bad if we could see something going on, but the bastards are not coming out of that canyon.”

“Can’t say as I blame them,” Gies said laconically. “ ‘F I’d got m’self trapped in a blind canyon, wouldn’t be comin’ out either. They c’n hold us off long as the food‘n’water last, an’ we just might get bored an’ go away.”

Shallan laughed; not a sound of amusement, it was a particularly ugly laugh. “Between them, the Wolflings and the Bastards are likely to make things real uncomfortable for them in there. Then when they pop out, we’ll be waiting. And so will the Earthshakers.”

Kero preferred not to think too much about that. It was going to cost the two Companies of foot quite a bit in blood to shake the “bandits” out of their lair. By contrast, the Company of heavy cavalry and the Skybolts’ skirmishers had it easy, if dull.

But when the “bandits” did emerge, they’d be like any desperate and cornered creatures, and Shallan was likely to get a bellyful of fighting.

But it wouldn’t profit anyone to say that out loud, so Kero held her peace, and kept her eyes on the uncertain trail. The last thing she needed to do would be to lame Hellsbane.

“Stand,” Kero told Hellsbane. The gray stamped restlessly once more, but then obeyed with no other sign of rebellion. Kero tapped her right foreleg, and the warsteed lifted the massive hoof and set it in Kero’s waiting hands.