Koris gave only a preoccupied nod to that. He had dipped finger into his tankard and was drawing lines on the scrubbed board before him, chewing absentmindedly the while at a flat-sized hunk of brown bread. Those lines made sense to Simon, looking over the other’s hunched shoulder, for they duplicated maps he had seen in the muster room of the city keep.

That finger which ended with Sulcarkeep on its tip formed one arm to encircle a wide bay, so that across the expanse of water the city of the traders faced — although many miles lay between them — Aliz, the main port of Alizon. In the confines of the bay itself was cupped the island of Gorm. And on that Koris carefully made the dot to signify Sippar, the main city.

Strangely enough Yle did not lie on the bayside section of the peninsula coast, but on the southwest portion of the shoreline, facing the open sea. Then there was a sweep of broken line southward, extending well into the Duchy of Karsten, all rock cliff with no safe anchorage for any ship. The bay of Gorm had been of old Estcarp’s best outlet to the western ocean.

The Guards’ Captain studied his work for a long instant or two and then with an impatient exclamation, rubbed his hand across it, smearing the lines.

“There is only one road to Sulcarkeep?” asked Simon. With Yle to the south and Gorm to the north, parties from each Kolder post could easily slice in two a peninsula road without greatly bestirring themselves.

Koris laughed. “There is one road, as old as the ages. Our ancestors did not foresee Kolder in Gorm — who in their sane minds could? To make safe that road,” he put his thumb on the dot he had made for Sippar and pressed it against the age-hardened wood as if he were remorselessly crushing an insect, “we would have to do so here. You cure a disease by treating its source, not the fever, the wasting which are the signs of its residence in the body. And in this case,” he looked bleakly up at Tregarth, “we have no knowledge upon which to work.”

“A spy—”