Then all my planning want for nothing.

The wind cracked the sky open. A white lightning flash, and rain slanted on the gale like a gray sheet. Three flashes more and I was engulfed in a curtain of water.

What would happen now was this. The rain would wash out the beguiling traces of the decoy horse; it would additionally form mud which, if the deluge ceased as abruptly as it had commenced, would dry the perfect imprint of my own footfalls. Meanwhile, blundering blindly through the wet, I would distribute as many obliging tokens of my passage as there were unseen bushes to trample through and branches to snap. There was also one other pleasing thing. Some horses will not turn in a storm. Maybe my Eshkorian steed would balk, freeze, or bolt back the way I had sent him, empty saddled, into my pursuers’ midst.

I stood in the lightning-splintered rain, cursing myself to further thought. It seemed to me I should proceed no farther than to the nearest hiding place, and thereby create as few tracking signals as I could. The horse, if it continued going despite my doubts, would mark indications of its flight the guide might yet discover. And, whatever happened, they would not imagine me crouched at the wayside. They would believe I had pressed on.

Accordingly I made up the adjacent slope to the little natural tower of limestone at its summit. Here, between two porous spurs, in the black glue of the mud, I resigned myself to waiting out the storm.

It was to be a long, long wait.

The storm battered on the hills, sometimes stampeding off a way, then returning. The rain and wind did not abate. Four hours must have passed, and with grim humor I began to keep a look out for the hunt. I had by then started belaboring myself; I should have foretold the foul weather, the warnings of it had been there to see, I should have retained the horse, I should have run on south, trusting the rain to hold and confuse my track. In short, I should have done everything I had not.

Presently five riders dashed across the slope below, heading southeast.

Obviously the party had split, no longer sure of my direction.

They were all Kortis’ men. Even through the rain, I had made out their black, their silver skull-faces with black glass eyes. Only the captains of Kortis Phoenix Javhovor wore the uniform of my father’s guard. Still set on retribution?

I wondered how far they would get before they came up with my horse, or else turned back for cover. I wondered, too, where the other four or five had taken themselves and if any of Erran’s soldiery were with them. Though my usefulness for Erran was over and he had no particular interest in vengeance, there were still his scientific philosopher’s experiments with my flesh. Maybe he had offered some reward for me, and Kortis’ impoverished captains were riding for it. Nemarl might have sent men, too. Yet there were only ten I had noted. Not many for the pelt of the Black Wolf, son of the Black Wolf of Ezlann. Perhaps there were other parties abroad I had not yet seen.