So it went all that day, and the next. Without sleep or rest, almost without food, they forced their exhausted mounts into the blinding snow and cold. They were able to endure only because the enemy had learned caution. The priests held the cavalrymen back to avoid the Decimate of pestilence and the surprises of the landscape. But they were always there, always coming.

Testing the enemy, General Klamath slowed his army. The struggling mass of riders had gained enough ground to pass around waterskins and packets of food. At rare intervals, they paused at streams while their horses drank. Between halts, they survived by relying on the shapes and possibilities of the terrain.

On one occasion, the First Captain’s guides took the army into a forest. The woodland covered a few square leagues, no more, but it was thickly overgrown, as dense as a jungle. The only paths were the trails of deer, the tracks of woodcutters. Bellegerins who knew the region led the riders along snow-clogged ways while the cavalrymen crashed among the trees, forcing their own paths by brute strength. When Klamath finally left the forest, the Magisters of fire and lightning were ready. They transformed the woodland into an inferno. The Magisters of wind fanned the flames. The Magisters of drought sucked away the snow.

That trick won a temporary respite. It gave General Klamath’s people a little rest, kept the horses from foundering. But it did not last long. Shielded somehow, the cavalrymen began emerging from the flames. Klamath’s army fled again.

As the leagues passed, his opportunities to slow the enemy dwindled. Twice his people reached brisk rivers that could only be forded by men who knew their secrets. The complex currents and rapids probably cost the enemy a few lives, a degree of inconvenience; but those gains were small. Beyond the rivers, Belleger became a land of knotted hills marked only by wintering shrubs and occasional trees, useless to Klamath’s army.

He was exhausted himself; and he had already pushed his people past their limits. Hampered by heavy snows and strain that did not slow the enemy, he had nothing left except desperation.

Trembling with an entirely personal shame, he sent Captain Rowt ahead to relay new orders.

On command, Hegels slowed the army to a walk, deliberately encouraging the enemy to close the gap. At the same time, he dispatched two dozen riflemen back along the army’s track. They were told to hide themselves as well as they could and wait for clear shots at the priests.

General Klamath did not hope for much success. For those riflemen, he had no hope at all. Exposed by their firing, they would be hunted down. But their deaths might increase the enemy’s wariness. The priests could not know how many men Klamath was willing to sacrifice. In his place, they would have no scruples.