Chapter Eight

 

 

The shallah who walked down the long, dusty road leading to the old fortress outside of Britar that evening looked disappointingly ordinary, at least in the opinion of Myrell, the Valdani captain who'd had the initiative to imprison twenty of Josarian's friends and relatives a few days ago. The approaching stranger didn't look like someone who could kill two Outlookers with his bare hands, and he certainly didn't look like a man who couldn't be killed. If this was Josarian, then he seemed like any other Silerian peasant, despite all the stories spreading about his courage and prowess.

Toren Porsall, a Valdan despite the ridiculous Silerian title, had come to Myrell with a complaint about the murdering, thieving villain. So Myrell—who understood these barbarians better than his thin-blooded superiors in Cavasar and Shaljir ever would—had taken immediate and ruthless measures to deal with the situation.

If the Outlookers couldn't find Josarian, then they could at least turn his own people against him by making them suffer because of him. Once the Valdani started executing these prisoners because Josarian wouldn't turn himself in, the shallaheen wouldn't continue being so loyal to him. No, indeed. Myrell had seen the way these peasants turned on each other with only the slightest provocation. He'd seen the lust with which they pursued their bloodfeuds and the reverence they showed to assassins. Savages like these would need only a nudge to turn them against Josarian, and then they'd be so eager to kill him that the Outlookers wouldn't need to keep trying.

If Josarian didn't turn himself in, that was. Myrell stood on the parapet walk above the main gate, watching with immense satisfaction as a lone shallah approached the fortress. Surely this had to be Josarian. Time was running out for the outlaw if he wanted to die a martyr rather than be hounded by his own kind. The sun was setting, and tonight would be the last dark-moon before Abayara renewed herself and appeared again as a glowing sliver in the sky. Tomorrow night, the Outlookers would begin slaughtering their prisoners, one per day, if Josarian didn't turn himself in.

Capturing Josarian would be an even better outcome for Myrell than getting him murdered by other shallaheen. Even if Myrell's commanders knew that his bold strategy had been the seed of Josarian's destruction, they would still take the credit themselves if the outlaw were slaughtered by his own kind. But if Myrell captured the outlaw, if he could bring Josarian's head to Cavasar, or even to Shaljir.... Who knew what kind of glory would be his as a result?

Myrell made the Sign of the Three and prayed that the approaching stranger was indeed Josarian, come to save his friends and relatives from certain death. It seemed an unlikely sacrifice for a shallah to make, but there was no denying that they could be as blindly loyal as they were bloodthirsty and vengeful.

The stranger stopped perhaps two hundred paces from the main gate. His shaggy black hair hung past his shoulders, unkempt and ungroomed. He wore the rough, homespun clothing of most shallaheen, and his left hand was lightly bound, as if he'd cut it—or sliced it open for one of those barbaric Silerian blood rituals. Myrell could see he was a young man, tall, slim, and straight-backed. He seemed to match the description they had of Josarian.

The stranger looked up at the ramparts where, in anticipation of his approach, some thirty archers stood at attention. He called out, in lightly accented Valdan, "Who is the commanding officer here?"

"I am. Captain Myrell. Who asks?"

"I do, obviously."

"Who are you?" Myrell demanded, ready to signal his archers.

"Toren Porsall sends you his greetings, Captain."

Myrell hesitated. "You're one of Porsall's men?" A shallah? It seemed unlikely. Valdani aristocrats let shallaheen plant their vast fields, harvest their crops, build their roads, and tend their livestock, but they seldom let them rise to the trusted ranks of their bodyguards and personal servants.

"No," the stranger replied with a grin. "I am merely Porsall's host at the moment."

"Explain yourself, shallah!"

"Upon hearing that you had taken twenty shallaheen into custody, I thought it prudent to take a Valdani toren into custody before—"

 "What?"

"—coming here to discuss how we might resolve this awkward situation."

"You've abducted a Valdani aristocrat?" Myrell sputtered in fury.

"Surely you know it's an old Silerian custom," the impertinent shallah replied. "It's how the Society keep themselves in luxury when tribute is slow in coming."

It was indeed an old custom among these wild people. Even now, with the pressure the Emperor had brought to bear upon the Society, it was still not uncommon for toreni and wealthy merchants—Valdani, Silerian, and foreign—to be abducted by the Society, held until a ransom was paid, and murdered if it was not. Indeed, the custom was so firmly established that many potential victims paid a ransom upon receiving a message suggesting that if they paid a preemptive sum now, then the Society wouldn't be forced to go through with the actual abduction. And the implicit threat was no bluff; anyone who refused to pay was abducted. But Myrell had never heard of a mere shallah attempting an abduction.

"Who helped you abduct Toren Porsall?" Myrell asked.

"I didn't need help. Any more than I needed help to get into his bedchamber and steal his gold."

"Josarian," Myrell said with conviction.

"No one but me knows where Porsall is, Myrell. If you kill me now, he'll die where I've left him. And it will be your fault."

"I will not be held responsible for—"

"Won't you? After all, I've just explained the situation to you in front of many witnesses."

"I demand proof of this ridiculous claim!"

"I thought you'd say that." Advising the thirty archers aiming right at him not to be nervous, Josarian unfolded a small bundle he'd been carrying and held it up.

Myrell stared in perplexity for a moment before saying, "A bloodstained tunic? That's your proof?" His tone was scathing, but he was shaken.

"Porsall's tunic." Josarian lowered the shirt and examined it himself. "Too bad about the blood, but he was a little difficult to abduct, I'm afraid."

"I want to examine that tunic!"

"By all means, Captain. Would you like to come out here and join me?"

Myrell ignored the jibe and ordered a detachment of eight men to ride out of the gate to collect the tunic for examination.

 

 

Tansen watched four Outlookers ride back into the fortress, carrying his once-immaculate Moorlander tunic with them. Besides being dusty and mended, it was now liberally stained with blood from the wound he'd re-opened on his left palm: a little something to reinforce the fiction of Porsall's violent capture.

The other four mounted Outlookers remained with him. He had strapped his sword harness to his bare torso beneath the humble tunic he now wore. He had readjusted it so that both swords were sheathed against his back, the lump of their hilts concealed by his shaggy hair.

Now he just had to stall long enough to give Josarian the time he needed. When the fortress gate re-opened to admit the four Outlookers carrying the tunic, he was encouraged by what he glimpsed within; a considerable number of men seemed to be preparing for his capture.

After examining the tunic, Myrell called down, "This is Moorlander workmanship, shallah! Do you take me for a fool?"

"Moorlander? Really?" Tansen said. "Does that matter?"

"Do you seriously expect me to believe it belonged to a Valdani toren?"

"I wouldn't know about the fashions worn by Valdani aristocrats, Captain," Tansen called back. "But since the toren gets all of his horses from the Moorlands, perhaps he favors their garments, too."

Myrell paused to consult with someone, then shouted down, "You'll have to do better than this, Josarian!"

"Perhaps you should send some men to Porsall's estate to confirm that he's missing," Tansen suggested.

"It's nearly dark," Myrell pointed out with open irritation. "It would take my men half the night to get there."

"That's hardly my fault."

"All of this is your fault!"

Tansen grinned. Counting the minutes, he judged it time to make his move. "I'll come back tomorrow, Myrell, and hope that you're prepared to be more reasonable then."

"You're not going anywhere!" Myrell screamed down to the Outlookers surrounding Tansen, "Stop him!"

Tansen moved to keep the mounted Outlookers between himself and the archers on the ramparts. Using the speed he'd spent years developing, he reached behind his head and inside the loose collar of his tunic to unsheathe his swords. He killed one Valdan with a quick slit of the throat, then dispatched another with an upward thrust through the belly and into vital organs before the remaining two Outlookers realized what was happening.

Then, enacting the part of the plan that he really hated, he swung himself up onto one of the horses in full view of thirty archers, urging it into a gallop before he was more than halfway mounted. The sickening whine of arrows hummed all around him as he rode away from the fortress at top speed. The fletching of one arrow brushed past his cheek. He lay against the horse's neck, hearing the pounding hoofbeats of the two Outlookers who followed close upon his heels. One of the archers had the wit to aim for the horse, and the beast squealed and faltered as an arrow pierced its hindquarters. Tansen shouted and ruthlessly walloped it with one of his swords, desperate to keep it running until he was out of range of the archers. If that arrow was poisoned, he had only a few moments left.

Sure enough, the horse began staggering just a few strides later. A dose of poison meant to kill or disable a man might not kill the horse—or at least not quickly—but the animal couldn't keep functioning. Hoping they were far enough away from the fortress by now, Tansen tugged on the reins, slid from the horse's back, and turned to confront the two Outlookers who were in hot pursuit. One of them cried out and fell when a stray arrow took him in the back; his horse kept running.

Tansen estimated that he was now far enough from the fortress that only bad luck would make him the victim of an arrow at this range. Unfortunately, he believed in bad luck.

He couldn't wound the oncoming horse of the remaining Outlooker, since he'd need it to escape from the mounted Valdani now pouring out of the fortress. He stood his ground, ducking the Outlooker's attack and letting him live to make another one, and another one after that. When he thought the horse had slowed down enough that he had a good chance of catching its reins when he killed its rider, he made his move. A deep slash across the Outlooker's sword-wielding wrist disarmed the man, and a quick thrust tumbled him from the horse. Tansen mounted the animal and, turning to make sure that the Outlookers wouldn't lose sight of him, he headed for the escape route he and Josarian had plotted out last night.

 

 

Josarian had climbed the far northern wall of the fortress and crept across the roof of the barracks while Tansen had stood talking outside the fortress gate, keeping the attention of most of the Outlookers firmly fixed there. He'd then managed to sneak into the garish little Shrine of the Three where he'd forced a Valdani priest to tell him where the shallaheen were being kept. Then, with the ruthlessness that had been born in him the night he'd become an outlaw, he strangled the sobbing priest with his yahr rather than risk discovery.

After stealing the priest's robe and concealing the body, he hid inside the shrine, waiting for the crowded fortress to empty out when the Outlookers pursued Tansen through the mountains and straight into the deadly trap he had chosen the night before: a long-forgotten Kintish quarry, abandoned centuries ago. Dozens of men galloping straight into that after sunset were not likely to survive. Josarian just hoped Tansen would be able to direct his own mount into the concealed hiding place they had constructed near the pit last night. Who was to say that a horse—fear-maddened, confused, and painfully stupid—wouldn't ignore its rider's commands and plunge straight ahead to certain death?

However, Tansen insisted that he had learned a great deal about horsemanship from the Moorlanders and wasn't worried about that aspect of the plan. Tan thought he was a lot more likely to be killed by Valdani archers. If that happened, he had warned Josarian, the only chance to free the hostages would be while the Outlookers were swarming all over his corpse, and it wouldn't be a particularly good chance.

Although locals estimated that half the Outlookers posted to this fortress were currently searching the countryside for Josarian, there were still nearly one hundred men inside the compound. That was far too many for Tansen and Josarian to fight. Nor could the two of them sneak the prisoners past such high walls and so many men. So they had hit upon a plan to make most of the Outlookers leave the fortress—by convincing them they were chasing Josarian, the solitary outlaw who was considered the only threat to this stronghold. Since Josarian didn't know how to ride a horse, and since the hostages were unlikely to respond with alacrity if freed and ordered to fight by the roshah who had come to Emeldar announcing he intended to kill Josarian, Tansen would have to pose as Josarian at the gates of the fortress.

They had studied the fortress and the surrounding area for a full day before developing their plan. If Josarian could free the twenty hostages, he estimated that the shallaheen would still be outnumbered by two-to-one even after Myrell ordered the majority of his men to go out in pursuit of the man he believed was Josarian. Those were bad odds for unarmed men, but the best odds that could be offered by two men attempting to attack a Valdani fortress.

Hiding inside the shrine, Josarian heard the sudden commotion outside: shouting, orders, swords rattling. Tansen had made his move. Josarian risked peeking outside. Judging by the speed with which the Outlookers were racing around, buckling on their sword belts, shouting for their horses, and galloping out of the main gate, it seemed that Tansen had escaped the archers. Josarian said a brief prayer of thanks; no one wanted to lose a brother so soon after gaining him. Then he donned the hooded robe of the Valdani priest and slipped outside.

The hostages were being kept in a dungeon beneath the guarded command chambers. Never having seen the interior of the fortress, Josarian and Tansen had reluctantly concluded that once Josarian was inside, he'd have to rely on quick-thinking and whatever luck came his way. Now, as chaos reigned all around the command center, Josarian, dressed as the hooded priest, walked right past guards who were too confused and excited to pay any attention to him.

Once inside the building, he avoided speaking to anyone; his Valdan wasn't bad, but he definitely didn't sound like a native speaker, let alone an educated priest. He descended the steep, winding stone stairs described by the priest, going deep into the underground chambers carved out of solid rock. Two guards stood at the end of the passageway at the bottom of the stairs. There was a locked wood-and-iron gate behind them, and beyond that lay the prison cells. Even had the priest not described everything for him, Josarian would have known he was approaching the dungeon now; the stench of sweat, urine, excrement, and centuries of human misery filled the air down here.

He saw the iron keys to the heavy gate and the prison cells hanging on the wall, just as the priest had said they would be. He decided that with all the noise overhead, no one would hear what happened way down here.

Josarian walked towards the guards. At the very moment that they realized there was something strange about him and grew alert, he pulled a yahr out of each voluminous sleeve of the robe and attacked. He struck the nearest guard across the face, momentarily disabling him. He used the moment to break the other Outlooker's wrist while the man was drawing his sword. He turned and killed the first one with two skull-shattering blows, then tripped the second one as he attempted to run away. Josarian picked up the Valdan's fallen sword and, handling it awkwardly, slit his throat.

Swords. Tansen had told him—had fiercely insisted—that since he couldn't smuggle twenty yahr into the fortress, he and the hostages would have to fight with any weapons they could take away from the Outlookers.

Swords. He looked down at the Valdani blade in his bloodstained hand. It felt heavy, strange, and clumsy, but... by Dar, he had never known how easy it was to kill a man with a sword! Silerians were only permitted to own bladed tools such as skinning knives, axes, and sickles. Neither Josarian nor any Silerian he knew—except Tansen—had ever even touched a sword, let alone wielded one to kill someone. No wonder the Valdani had disarmed Sileria after conquering it! They could never have so thoroughly subdued a people armed with such weapons.

Heart pounding, he picked up the other dead man's sword, grabbed the heavy key ring on the wall, and chose the key most likely to fit the elaborate lock on the gate. He unlocked it, hung back for a moment in case there were more guards on the other side, then rushed into the dank corridor lined by prison cells. It was illuminated only by two heavily smoking lanterns, one at each end of the corridor.

His brother-in-law Emelen was the first man to peer through a tiny iron grid in one of the doors to see who had entered their domain. "Josarian!"

"Josarian?" said a muffled voice behind Emelen.

"Where?" came a voice through the grid on the door facing Emelen's.

"Josarian!" someone cried further down the corridor.

"Quiet," he ordered as more familiar faces pressed up against the tiny grid of each of the dungeon's six heavy prison doors. Horror engulfed him at the thought of his friends and relatives enduring the past few days in this sunless, airless, fetid hole. He started pushing keys into the first lock, desperate to get the men out of here, even if only to die in the open air as they attempted to escape the fortress. "I don't want the Valdani to hear us. We haven't much ti— Ah!"

The lock turned, the door opened, and Emelen and two other men poured out of the cell. Josarian handed Emelen one of the swords, picked it up when his bewildered brother-in-law dropped it, and ordered him to use it. Then he gave his two yahr to the two other men and started unlocking the next door.

"Keep an eye out!" he ordered. "If any Outlookers come down those stairs, let them come all the way down, then take them by surprise. Kill them and take their weapons. Take their swords."

Attempting to swing the sword like a yahr, Emelen nodded and led the other two armed men down the dark passageway. Three more prisoners burst free from a cell as Josarian unlocked the door. They spread his instructions from cell to cell as Josarian attacked the next lock with his keys.

"Lann," he said, upon freeing a boyhood friend, "make sure everyone knows the plan. We kill everyone upstairs first, get as many weapons as we can before we go outside. That's important: Get their weapons and use them. Do you understand me? And the archers are still up on the ramparts and will fire when they realize we've escaped, so watch out for them!"

"Right, Josarian!"

Another door opened. Josarian moved on to the next one. "Set the supply building on fire. Set everything that can burn on fire—give them plenty to worry about besides us."

He opened another door. More men poured into the corridor. Josarian finished in a rush, "As you leave the fortress, go off in all directions, no more than two or three men at a time. Make them split up to chase us. Don't go home, it's the first place they'll look. We'll all meet tomorrow night at the Dalishar Caves." It was an ancient holy site, famous among Silerians; even hunted men who'd never been there before should be able to reach it by this time tomorrow.

He unlocked the final cell and was shocked by what he found there.

"Zim!" His cousin's pretty face was bruised and battered, his tunic was torn and covered in dried blood, and he held his left arm at an awkward angle. "Zimran..."

One of Zimran's eyes was swollen shut, but the other sparkled with excitement. "What took you so long, cousin? I was supposed to meet a lady two days ago."

 

 

Tansen had never liked relying on horses when his life was at stake, but this one was holding up well. If he lived, maybe he'd even keep it. He led the Outlookers through a series of winding passes, some of them quite steep with sheer drops on one side. As sunset turned to night, he slowed his pace accordingly so that he wouldn't lose the Valdani who followed him.

A scream in the distance made him suppose that some Outlooker's horse had misstepped and sent him hurtling to his death. That made one less whom Tansen had to kill.

He wondered if Josarian had succeeded in freeing the hostages—and if he were even still alive. Their plan lacked precision. They were too uncertain of what lay beyond the high, forbidding walls of the Valdani fortress. A better plan would have been for Josarian, who knew these mountains so intimately, to lead the Valdani on this chase while Tansen, who was more likely to survive close combat with so many Outlookers, infiltrated the fortress, but the circumstances made such a plan impossible. Now he could only carry out his part of the scheme and hope that his bloodbrother—his friend, he realized with surprise—survived. He wouldn't know until he reached the Dalishar Caves.

He continued following the path Josarian had guided him over last night, keeping an eye out for the landmarks his friend had pointed out for him to memorize. Numerous trails and paths intersected, criss-crossed, and paralleled each other along this route; choosing the wrong one at any moment would mean he'd miss the abandoned Kintish quarry and fail to execute the plan. If the Outlookers following him caught him or else gave up and turned back, then they would be free to pursue the escaped hostages upon returning to the fortress and learning what had happened there. The fewer Outlookers who were searching for them, the better chance the shallaheen had of disappearing and reaching safety.

If Tansen made a mistake and missed the quarry, he could still elude a pack of clumsy Valdani in the mountains after dark, but he would let down Josarian and the hostages.

These thoughts weighed heavily on his mind as he reached a three-way fork in the path that he was sure hadn't been there the night before.

Which way? he wondered, hearing the Outlookers behind him.

Stay calm. Think it through. A shatai was cool in combat, clear-headed in danger, free of emotions that shackled lesser men to failure and death.

The path looked wholly unfamiliar. Had he taken a wrong turn earlier? Surely Josarian wouldn't have failed to point out this three-way junction to him. Surely he himself wouldn't have overlooked it last night. What was wrong? Why didn't he know which way to go?

Which way, damn it?

He heard the jingling of bridles as the Outlookers came over the rise at his back. He dismounted and examined his choices on foot, hoping this more familiar perspective would help him recognize or remember something. The sound of men and horses grew louder as his pursuers drew near, and even in the dark, he knew he had only seconds before they spotted him.

Which way, Josarian? Which way?

 

 

Myrell was outside, issuing orders to another search party when he heard angry shouting from inside the command building. More annoyed than alarmed, he ordered two Outlookers to go inside and stop whatever brawl had erupted among his men when there were far more important matters for them to attend to.

It was only after he had issued the order that some vague alarm stirred inside him: nothing even as strong as suspicion, merely an uneasy feeling that something wasn't quite right. He finished instructing the search party, then turned to follow his men into the command building and put his mind at ease about the situation there. Faced with the excitement of pursuing Josarian, everyone had momentarily forgotten about the prisoners, who had been the focus of—

He stopped in his tracks, horrified beyond thought, as twenty shallaheen poured out of the big, elaborately carved door of the command building and raced down the broad stone steps, their shaggy black hair absorbing the light cast by the newly lit lanterns. Myrell barely had time to realize they had escaped before a new and even more appalling fact struck him: They were armed. Swords flashed in some of their hands, striking out at the first two Outlookers the mob encountered at the bottom of the steps.

Swords! Where, by the mercy of the Three, had the prisoners gotten swords? And how had they escaped? Josarian was somewhere out there in the mountains, with over half of Myrell's men chasing him. Who had freed the prisoners?

He drew his sword as the swarm of barbarians split up to attack, shouting in their thick-tongued native language, baring their teeth in savagery as they launched themselves at their astonished captors. An unarmed man flew into him, striking his sword aside with... No, not unarmed! Myrell had seen a weapon like this once before, a couple of sticks joined by a piece of rope. He struck at it with his sword as it swung toward his head, then made a thrust at his opponent. He missed, but then managed to slash the man's face.

The man jumped back and stared at Myrell with fierce dark eyes, circling him and swinging his childish weapon wildly between them in a series of loops. Myrell had removed such toys from a number of detainees over the past couple of years, including some of the prisoners he now faced in combat. It had amused him to learn the shallaheen placed great value upon their pathetic bundled sticks and seriously believed they could defend themselves, and even kill a man, with such a device.

It didn't seem nearly as amusing now, when the thing came flying at his face. If he hadn't ducked, it might have broken his nose! How had the prisoners gotten out of their cells? What had happened to the guards? He realized with a chill of shock that the prisoners must have killed everyone inside the command building. How else could they have gotten their hands on the swords that many of them carried? How else could they have seized the wooden weapons which had been confiscated and left carelessly lying around?

Only a few of Myrell's archers remained up on the ramparts. There was little they could do up there after sunset except act as sentries. Besides, in the confusion that had followed Josarian's escape, Myrell had ordered most of them to fill other posts left vacant by the men he had sent out after the outlaw. The archers who were still up there would be trying to pick off the prisoners, but they'd be reluctant to fire into the fray; the shallaheen and the Valdani were too closely intermingled for a safe shot. Even worse, the peculiar fighting style Myrell observed in his opponent made him a difficult target for an archer, even at this close range, for he kept circling and circling Myrell; if an archer got off an arrow, he'd risk missing the ever-moving target and perhaps even hitting one of his own men. If all the shallaheen were as slippery as this one, the archers wouldn't be of much help where they were. Myrell had to kill this man quickly so he could order the archers down into the combat area to fight.

He lunged hastily and missed. The swinging stick caught him on the side of the head. He was shocked at how much it hurt. When he looked up, another blow caught him right across the nose; he heard it break before he felt the pain. He backed away and stumbled. The shallah pushed him down, and the searing pain crashing down on his skull was the last thing he knew before he passed out.

 

 

Josarian was the last man to escape the fortress, fighting awkwardly with the sword he held in one hand and more skillfully with the yahr he held in the other. Somewhere during the fighting, he had taken the yahr from the gutted corpse of a shallah, then set the dead man's clothing on fire with the same torch he'd used to ignite the supply depot next to the shrine. He prayed that the shallah would burn, the fire purifying him for the journey to the Otherworld.

Knowing that he must escape now or die here, too, he fled through the main gate and into the darkness beyond. He kept to the shadows, eluding the Outlookers who were already regrouping from the battle to hunt down the escaping prisoners. Seeing that his wounded cousin was in no shape to fight, Josarian had ordered him to get outside the fortress walls before anyone else. Now he was startled to hear Zimran's voice in the shadows.

"Josarian! Over here!"

He found Zimran in the dark. "Damn you! I told you to get away!"

"I didn't want to go all the way to Dalishar without knowing if you'd escaped," said Zimran.

"And if they catch me now, they catch us both."

"Then I suggest..."

"Let's go!"

Since Zimran's legs still worked well enough, they were able to cross the open ground around the fortress fairly quickly. They heard thundering hoofbeats behind them, but the direction kept changing, and the riders' shouts gave clear evidence of their confusion. On a twin-moon night, he and Zimran would have been easily spotted as they headed for the lemon groves east of the fortress, but no one saw them tonight. Once they reached the trees, full of shadows and hiding places, they were safe.

They didn't pause to rest, however. They needed to be well away from here by morning. They moved silently through the night, always alert for any sounds of pursuit. After they believed themselves to be well out of reach of danger, exhaustion kept them quiet, and only their will kept them going.

They had gone east upon leaving the fortress and must now circle to the south to reach the Dalishar Caves. Josarian wondered if Zimran, with his injuries, could keep up the pace. Before long, his question was answered. Zimran started losing strength, moving slowly and stumbling often as they ascended through a heavily-wooded forest in the dark.

"We'll rest here," Josarian said upon finding a fallen tree trunk to lean against.

"No. I can..."

"No, you can't."

Josarian saw the vague shadow that was his cousin suddenly sink to the ground. Unable to see his expression, he reached out to touch his skin, checking for fever. Zimran's forehead was burning hot and drenched in sweat.

Zim slapped his hand away. "I'll be fine in a moment."

Josarian said nothing. He followed when his cousin, breathing harshly, rose and continued their trek through the syrupy darkness of the forest. As he expected, it wasn't long before he heard Zimran stumble and crash to the ground, crying out sharply and then falling silent. Moving with mountain-born instincts, Josarian found his cousin's still form in the dark. Zimran had fallen on his injured arm, and the pain had apparently combined with the exhaustion and the fever to push him over the edge into unconsciousness. While this certainly didn't make matters any easier, it at least relieved Josarian of the burden of hearing him suffer so.

Cursing the Valdani who had done this to Zimran, Josarian hauled his cousin's dead weight off the rough ground and slung him over his shoulders. His legs quivered briefly in protest as he continued his steep uphill climb, then they obeyed his will with weary resignation. Doubting that he could carry Zimran all the way to Dalishar, at least not without more rest than he had time for, Josarian started trying to figure out where he could safely deposit him between here and there. The nearest Sisters were in the other direction, and with Zimran on his back, he couldn't go there and still reach—He stopped abruptly when he heard a noise up ahead. There shouldn't be anyone up here, especially not at this time of night. Every nerve in his body tensed as he strained to hear another telltale sound. He'd been crashing through the forest noisily, convinced he was well beyond the reach of the Outlookers. He hadn't considered the other dangers he might face tonight: bandits, mountain cats, a lone assassin or waterlord on some secret business...

He listened intently, silently cursing the darkness, praying that Zimran wouldn't groan or gasp. After a moment, his patience was rewarded: he heard tentative footsteps, moving stealthily. Whoever was here knew that he was here, too, and was coming for him. He was just about to deposit Zimran's body on the ground so he'd be ready for combat when a torch appeared out of nowhere, flaring in his face, startling and momentarily blinding him.

"A shallah?" It was the voice of a man, surprised and suspicious.

Keeping his sword between himself and the stranger, Josarian stepped back and twisted away. He heard the stranger gasp in surprise as the light fell on Zimran's unconscious face.

"Who's that? What's wrong with him?"

"My cousin. He's been injured."

"He's been beaten." There was a pause. "Outlookers?"

"Yes."

"Of course." The voice sounded more assured now. "If it had been an assassin or another shallah he'd be at home with his wife or mother, or perhaps in a Sanctuary. But not being hauled up the side of a mountain in the middle of the night."

"A good guess," Josarian said cautiously, squinting against the glowing light, unable to distinguish the dark form beyond it.

"And you, I see, have killed an Outlooker." The voice sounded educated, but not foreign. "Unless you're going to claim some Outlooker simply handed you his sword?"

"Who are you?" Josarian stepped to one side, trying to see past the flames.

"Not a Valdan." The voice was dry now. "Don't worry."

"Your torch is in my eyes," Josarian said tersely.

"You still haven't told me who you are, shallah."

Even as the words were spoken, Josarian's vision finally adjusted enough for him to see that the light came directly from the man's palm, flames soaring up from human flesh.

"A Guardian?" Josarian asked, relieved.

"Yes. And if you've brought Outlookers upon us for some petty crime..."

"They haven't followed me here," he said with certainty. "And my crimes... aren't petty."

"What have you done?" the faceless Guardian demanded.

"I've just freed twenty prisoners from the Valdani fortress at Britar."

He heard the Guardian's sharp intake of breath. "You're him, aren't you?"

"Word spreads fast," he observed cautiously.

"Josarian."

"Yes," he admitted, taking the risk. "Can you help me?"

The flame wavered for a moment, then the hand holding it swept to one side. Josarian looked into the stranger's face. The firelight flickered and shimmered on Silerian features: about his age, but aristocratic-looking. The man's dark hair was braided in the intricate style of a toren.

The two men gazed curiously at each other. It took Josarian a moment to realize that the flame-colored glow of the stranger's eyes was no illusion of torchlight, but the glowing fire-gold gaze of a demon.