The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [172]
“I can hardly deny it,” Laz said, grinning. “Does that make you want to dispose of me in Alshandra’s holy name?”
Drav spat into the dirt. “Better a mazrak than a hypocrite.”
“Indeed. Tell me more.”
“Look, I never much believed in all this Alshandra talk at first. It was just a way to keep the Horsekin in line and obedient. But then I started thinking, well, maybe there’s something to it. The men under my command believed, and it gave them fire and courage. Good enough, think I.” He paused, then began to underline his points by stabbing one thick finger into the callused palm of his other hand. “But then the priests got to the rakzanir. First they chased Exalted Mother Grallezar out of town. Didn’t like that. Then they started talking about killing slave women to make the Lijik Ganda shit their brigga. Really didn’t like that. Then they started running good men onto the long spear just for grumbling about their orders. Couldn’t put up with that.”
“I see,” Laz said. “If you stayed, could you have been raised up on the haft yourself?”
“Pretty damn likely.” Drav grinned, exposing pointed teeth. “And all those damned Horsekin, parading around, the stinking bastards. They don’t understand discipline. Never will. Resent it if you give them direct orders. Cursed if I’m going to bow and scrape and beg the pardon of a lot of stinking Horsekin.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Laz said. “How do you feel about the Ancients?”
Drav shrugged. “Never known any,” he said, “I’m willing to wait and see if I like them or not. The rest of the men here most likely feel the same.”
Since Faharn had managed to steal some extra horses as he’d led the men east, Laz had a mount when they broke camp and headed south. Every morning, however, he assumed the raven form and flew ahead of the band, simply because no one was exactly sure of where they were. Judging direction by the sun’s position allowed them to head roughly south and little more. When Laz flew high he could see the lay of the land for miles and choose landmarks that they could sight upon to keep traveling in a reasonably straight line.
The barrows provided many a good mark, but by the second day he saw fewer and fewer of them. By the third day, he realized that they were coming close to the last of the graves. He flew up high, then leveled off, looking to the south. A handful of mounds stood, widely scattered, on the grassland. Off to the east he could see woodland, hazed with blue in the hot sun. To the west, the ground swelled and rose into downs, natural hillocks unlike the barrows. Straight ahead to the south, the grassland began to narrow, caught between the downs to the west and patches of forest cover toward the east. At the far horizon he could just make out a sharp line of intermittent hills, the beginning of the broken tableland and its thick forests and canyons that marked the border between the Northlands and the plains of the Ancients.
Laz flew back to his men, circled low so that they could see him, considered landing, then stayed in raven form. He didn’t like the look of the forest just ahead. A stand of old growth, dark and tangled, stretched for some miles. At the edges it bled out into a straggling collection of second-growth saplings and brush among old pines, many of them stunted and twisted by the constant winds blowing off the Ghostlands. All his dweomer faculties seemed to have gone on alert, whispering of danger. He turned toward the east and flew lower, swooping over the trees.
Just at the forest verge he saw a caravan, a merchant caravan, judging by the long line of mules and the heap of pack panniers. Men wandered among the trees, picking up deadfall for firewood. No danger there—Laz flew higher and decided to follow the broad dirt road that wound eastward through the old forest. A few miles on he saw another camp, and the sight turned him cold even as he flew above it in the summer sun.
In the middle of a clearing stood a red banner, tattered, stained with smoke, but bearing the gold hunting