Bai’s answering smile made Shai shudder and the other man grin as at a gift. “Listen to your greed, ver. I know the temples say otherwise, yet they enrich themselves with our offerings, eh? I’ve a brother still in debt slavery, and mean to free him. So let’s go. Before the army moves on.”

He laughed. “Moves on? Lord Radas’s army has reached its target.”

The siege of Toskala had commenced.

THE FLIGHT OF reeves swung wide around the road until it reached the upper reaches of the River Olossi, here not wide but swollen to a green churning roar with the flood rains. They glided southwest, strung in a line at varying elevations along a valley’s edge. Each eagle bore a reeve and a soldier.

Anji, harnessed in front of Joss, said, “Look there. A ford.”

A rockslide broken off from a treeless ridgeline had filled part of the river, boulders and debris sunk halfway across and thereby making the shallows hard to defend. This time of year, the remaining deep channel boiled with white water. A booming sound pounded at intervals like a smith hammering on an anvil.

“Where’s the next crossing?” shouted Anji.

“The Westcott ferry.”

They covered about eight mey, passing hamlets and farmsteads set back from the river although mostly the land here was forest cover sprinkled with clearings, moister than the Barrens but not as lush as the countryside in the east.

They sighted a substantial village and the Rice Walk, which on the Westcott side of the river became known as the Lesser Walk. Folk in the fields spotted them. A figure ran into the village, and in its wake the rest fled toward the palisade. By the time Scar touched down in the nearest fallow field, sixty or more people stood at the gate with adzes, hoes, rakes, axes, spears, and staffs balanced in their hands.

Anji unhooked, and then Joss, but the reeve approached alone along a raised walkway between fields.

“Greetings of the day,” he called. He addressed the eldest person, a stoop-shouldered man with the weathered face of one who has spent years working under the sun. “I am Joss, marshal of Argent Hall, come on urgent business. I hope you’ll give me your respectful attention.”

The old man walked forward accompanied by a middle-aged woman in a good quality silk taloos and a younger man carrying a spear. Joss heard his flanking eagles land.

“If you’ve come for one of us, we’ll not allow your depredations,” said the old man. “Not unless you present proof beyond doubt of guilt.”

Maybe shock showed on Joss’s face, because folk pointed at him. “Have reeves come here and demanded you give up individuals into their custody?”

“Last year it did happen. Said they hailed from Horn Hall. They took five young people. Into custody, so they said.”

“Horn Hall!”

“Know you of Horn Hall?”

“The hells! Last year I had reason to visit Horn Hall, and found it abandoned.” He wanted to slap himself until he woke up. Another mystery, and one he had no time to solve.