He stood a little straighter, trying to calm her, then led her down the steep bank to the river’s edge and they hid among the pussy willows. The fires burned brighter.

The nomen were poised high on the far bank, looking anxiously in his direction. They had heard the ringing swords, but so long as the fire blinded them, so long as Gaborn and Rowan hid in the shadows, the nomen searched in vain. Perhaps the sound of the mill wheel upriver confused them; perhaps they were not sure if a fight had been fought in the woods. None seemed desirous to brave the river, to fight half-blind. Gaborn recalled vaguely that nomen feared the water.

Wading among pussy willows into water up to his waist, Gaborn looked downstream.

Three frowth giants stood knee-deep in the water at the river’s bend. One held a fiery brand aloft, while the other two held their huge oak rods poised like spears. They peered into the water like fishermen waiting for someone to try to escape.

The firelight that blinded the nomen would only help the giants to see better. For a moment Gaborn studied them. The water downstream could not be more than three feet deep. There was no way that he and Rowan could make it past the giants.

Rowan suddenly gasped in pain and doubled over, clutching her stomach.

10

THE FACE OF PURE EVIL

Iome stood atop the south tower of the Dedicate’s Keep as Raj Ahten and his guard rode up to the gates. Out in the fields, night was falling, and the flameweavers had begun heading for town, walking across the dry grasses. A small range fire burned in their passage, but to Iome’s surprise, it did not rage uncontrollably. Instead, a hundred yards behind them, the fire extinguished, so that the flameweavers looked like comets, with trails of dying fire in their wake.

Behind them came a great wain from the forest, filled with men in robes, bouncing over the rutted mud road that led from the castle into the Dunnwood.

Raj Ahten’s legendary Invincibles also began marching into the city, forming up in twenty ranks of a hundred each.

But others stayed behind, out on the plains. The shaggy frowth giants kept to the tree lines and stalked along the rivers, while the dark nomen, their naked bodies blacker than night, circled the castle, squatting on the fields. There would be no escaping them this night.

To the credit of the guards at the gates of the Dedicates’ Keep, they did not open to Raj Ahten immediately. When the Wolf Lord made his way up the city streets to this, the most protected keep within the castle, the guards held fast.

They waited for King Sylvarresta to descend from the tower, with Iome walking at his side, hand-in-hand. Two Days followed immediately behind, and Chemoise trailed.

Good, Iome thought. Let the Wolf Lord sit outside the gates for a moment longer, waiting on the true lord of Castle Sylvarresta. It was a small retribution for what she knew would come.