Storm Warning - Mercedes Lackey [192]
“There won’t be a next time, if we don’t,” Karal replied acidly. He looked down. “Florian, is he fit to ride?”
: Even if he weren’t, I am fit to carry him. That is why he is bound to the saddle,: came the reply. :We have no choice. Time is speeding.:
“So we had better speed ourselves.” He reined Trenor back and gestured. Florian knew the way without a map; he was the best guide they could have had. “If you would lead?”
He steadied Trenor, and Altra leapt up to the padded platform where a pillion-saddle would have been. Rris had sworn that his “famous cousin Warrl” often used such a contraption to ride behind the Shin’a’in warrior Tarma shena Tale’sedrin, and in the interest of making the best speed possible, Altra had agreed to try it. Trenor didn’t seem to mind too much, although he’d tried to buck a little the first time Altra had jumped up there.
Florian swung off into the deeper woods, and if he was following a trail, it wasn’t a trail that Karal could read.
Then again, I’m not a woodsman, am I?
There must have been a trail there, though, since Florian pushed through the brush and rank weeds with no real problem. He was making good time, too; not quite a canter, but certainly a fast walk.
Poor Trenor. Two days of this is going to wear him out.
But there was no choice; every mark that passed was a mark that brought the next wave nearer—and Natoli had confided to him that there were several small villages lying where interference-points would fall. The ones in Valdemar had been evacuated, of course—but there could be no such guarantees of the villages elsewhere.
They had to stop this wave. They had to be in place in time.
When we have done all we can, then it is time to add
prayer to the rest. That was one of Master Ulrich’s favorite proverbs. Well, they had done all they could; Karal shut his eyes, trusted to Trenor to follow Florian, and sent up fervent prayers.
Whenever Karal sensed that Trenor was tiring, they stopped for a brief rest, water, and food; other than those stops, they rode right on through the night and on into the next day. This country was all former farmland, now gone to weeds and desolation; Karal didn’t really want to ask why it had been left like this. He had an idea that the answer would involve the war with Hardorn, and the little he had learned about Ancar from An’desha did not make him eager to hear more.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. There isn’t much time.
The countryside was desolate in other ways, too; there didn’t seem to be a lot of wildlife. Birds were few, and mostly oddly silent. Although it was late fall and frost soon crusted every dried, dead leaf and twig, there should have been night sounds; owls, the bark of a fox, or the bay of a wolf. The only sounds were the noises they themselves made, and that very silence was more than enough to put up the hair on Karal’s neck. An’desha slept in the saddle, as he had since they left the area of the Gate; Altra was not disposed to conversation, and Florian had his mind on finding their way. That left him with nothing to do but half-doze, worry, and try another prayer or two.
When dawn came, it brought a thin gray light to the gray landscape, and matters did not improve much. Trenor was tiring sooner, now, and it hurt Karal to force him on, but he knew there was no choice. They only had until two marks after dawn tomorrow to get into place.
But not long after the sun rose, An’desha actually shook himself awake, and looked around.
“I remember this,” he said quietly. “This was land that Ancar held briefly, and he drained it while he held it. It has made a remarkable recovery.”
“This?” Karal replied incredulously. “Recovered?”
“You did not see it before,” the Adept told him grimly, turning in the saddle to face him. “Nothing would grow; nothing. By next year this may be back to the kind of land it once was.” His eyes were shadowed by other memories than of this place, and finally he voiced one of them. “Ma’ar made places as desolate as this. The truly terrible thing is that he thought he was doing right in creating