“I’m not your enemy,” Borenson whispered to the trees. “If you seek enemies, you’ll find them soon enough. They come.”

Cautiously, reverently, Borenson urged his mount to walk under the dark boughs. Only a few yards, far enough so he could tie the big warhorse in a shallow ravine, then creep back to the wood’s edge to watch Raj Ahten’s army pass on the road below.

He did not have to wait long.

In a few moments, twenty men raced over the hills below, war dogs leaping to keep ahead. To Borenson’s horror, Raj Ahten himself led them.

For a moment, Borenson feared the trackers would follow his trail, but down by the river they stopped for a long time, searching the ground at the spot where Gaborn had taken Torin’s armor.

Borenson made out some muffled shouting, but did not understand the dialect of Indhopalese the men spoke. They hailed from a Southern province, but Borenson knew only a few curse words in the Northern dialect.

Raj Ahten recognized that Gaborn’s party had split.

They followed Gaborn. Borenson felt terrified, wondered why Raj Ahten himself would head a party to capture Gaborn. Perhaps the Wolf Lord valued Iome and Sylvarresta more than Borenson imagined. Or perhaps he wanted Gaborn as a hostage.

Silently, he willed Gaborn to hurry, to ride hard and fast and never slow till he reached Longmot.

The trackers had hardly raced over the hills to Borenson’s left when the army of the Wolf Lord came marching down the road, their golden surcoats bright in the last rays of sunlight before the oncoming storm.

Archers came first, thousands strong, marching four abreast. Mounted knights followed, a thousand. Then came Raj Ahten’s counselors and magicians.

Borenson cared little for the Wolf Lord’s soldiers. Instead he watched what followed next. A huge wain, encased in wood. A wagon to hold Dedicates—probably fewer than three dozen of them. The wagon was guarded closely by hundreds of Invincibles.

An arrow could not pierce its wooden walls. Borenson could see that one man alone would find it impossible to assault the wagon’s occupants.

No, he knew the truth.

Raj Ahten could haul only a few vectors with him, hoping no one would slaughter the hundreds of poor Dedicates in Sylvarresta’s keep, or in other castles he might have taken here in the North.

When the Dedicates’ wagon passed, when the cooks and armorers and camp followers and another thousand swordsmen hurried past, followed by the last thousand archers in the rear guard, Borenson grimly realized that killing Raj Ahten’s vectors would be impossible.

He would have to concentrate on breaking into the Dedicates’ Keep in Castle Sylvarresta. He worried at how many guards waited for him.