“South, I guess,” she said out loud. “I haven’t a chance of catching up with the others, and they won’t wait for me. We were going north and east, so if I go south and can get back across this river, I should be in the right area to make for the Border again.”

Nothing answered her, not even a bird. She could hear birds elsewhere, off in the forest, but her movements had frightened them into silence here.

It made her feel like a creature of ill-omen, a harbinger of death. Something even the birds avoided—

Until she caught sight of a bold green-crested jay swooping down out of the trees to steal a bit of the ruined, discarded journey-bread.

Then she laughed, shakily, and cast off her feelings of impending disaster. Hellfires, she thought, as the mare picked her way between the trees, I’ve already had my quota of disasters. I should be about due for some good luck.

But the imp of the perverse wasn’t finished with her yet—or else, perhaps, there truly was a curse in operation. She found a path—a well-worn path leading from the river—and followed it just out of sight, afoot, leaving Hellsbane tethered in a safe place hidden by the underbrush. It was just as well that she hid the horse—because the path led to a village, one with formidable walls, and the village was placed across the only real road south.

She discovered, by watching the place for half the morning, that it was a very active village—the headquar ters, so it seemed, for the local Karsite patrols. The riders coming in and going out were not in uniform, but they rode with military discipline and precision, and Kero twice saw priestly robes among them.

She cursed to herself, but crawled back to where she had left Hellsbane and retraced her steps to her cold camp, where she destroyed every sign that a scout had been there. There was no hiding the fact that someone had been here, but she did her best to make it look as if the camp might have been the work of children.

I only hope that Karsite younglings run off to play soldier in the woods the way we did, she thought grimly, as she sent Hellsbane picking her way through the forest, trying to keep her on things that wouldn’t show hoofprints—stone, pine needles, and the like. She’d muffled the mare’s hooves in leather bags, which should confuse things a little, but Hellsbane hated the “boots” and Kero wouldn’t be able to keep them on her for very long.