The words, by themselves, had no tangible meaning, like a tale sung at festival time, but their voices had an edge so sharp that Nallo found her own shoulders tightening in response. A great ravening beast was lumbering down on them, and they just sat there helplessly in its path.

46

The Istri Walk was the great thoroughfare of the Hundred, wide enough to accommodate two wagons rolling abreast on the raised central pavement with well-trodden dirt paths flanking the walk on either side. Marit found it eerie to pace its measures in such solitude. Every village was closed down tight, not one person out on road or path except for gangs of farmers working the fields without the usual songs to pass the time. Everything was too quiet, Marit thought, not with the lull before the storm but with the shock of destruction after.

The trailing edge of the army appeared roadside, the detritus of their passage: A naked toddler with a distended stomach sucked its dirty thumb; a lad herded a paltry herd of skinny goats along the verge; a man with a crutch limped away when he saw them, keeping his head down. People had been scavenging for wood and kindling, for there was not a scrap of forest litter on the ground besides rotting vegetation.

Wagons blocked the road, but the riders broke into a canter and flew over them. The guards bobbed their heads in obeisance, afraid to look her in the eye.

“Who built this road?” Hari asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Not even in the Sirniakan Empire.”

“No one knows,” said Marit. “Even the tales don’t say.”

“I see such a path one time,” said the girl, who called herself Kirit.

“Where?” asked Marit when it became obvious she wasn’t about to say more.

“In the grasslands. Just one place. A big tower. No one lives there, only demons. A road like this one, I see there.”

“Who built it?”

Kirit shrugged. “Demons.”

They passed a second barrier, set at the outskirts of a village overrun with soldiers sitting at their ease on porches, but chatter died as the three cloaks passed. In the fields beyond the village, the army had set up its main bivouac, rank upon rank of traveling tents amid hundreds of campfires. As the long quiet spilled down to dusk, they rode into the camp, their cloaks billowing as the wind caught the edge of coming night. Twilight, mist, and death, they approached the heart of the enemy, identified by a trio of huge tents. Evidently Lord Radas liked his comforts.

Aui! Her chest felt tight, and her throat constricted. Hari was breathing raggedly, maybe not aware he was doing so. As for the girl, she likely was a demon, because as small and helpless as she looked, she acted no differently than if she’d been riding into her home village, not that Marit could begin to imagine a village filled with people with such ghastly pale faces and hair.