The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [154]
“Never would I stand in your way if Dallandra’s behind this,” Garin said, “but if you’ll come to Lin Serr, we can give you an escort to the island.”
“That’s truly generous, but I’d best take my leave of you. I can get to Haen Marn faster on my own.”
“What?” Garin said. “You’ll be in danger the entire way, a lone horseman out in wild country.”
“I’ll be leaving our horses with you.”
“What? But—”
Brel turned and shouted something in Dwarvish that made Garin wince. Laz could guess that it was some variant of “He can fly, you idiot,” since both the warleader and the envoy knew about his raven form.
“You know your own mind best, Laz,” Garin said in Deverrian. “We can give you some food for the trip, at least.”
“That would be a blessing, and I thank you. I’ve been an outlaw for years, you know. I’m good at slipping through wild country unseen.”
“Very well.” Yet Garin hesitated.
What would he do, Laz wondered, if I told him the truth? Or is that what Brel shouted at him?
“If you’re certain you’ll fare well?” Garin said at last.
“Certain I am, good Envoy! And my thanks for your aid.”
With a sack full of supplies, Laz left the dwarves as they began to wrap up the bodies to take home to Lin Serr. He walked to the top of the hillock, looked around, and saw a ravine leading off to the east. He followed it, climbing over boulders, avoiding the tangled brush and thorny shrubs as best he could, until he could be sure that he was out of sight of the Mountain Folk. He took off his clothes, winced at his shirt, stained with Faharn’s blood, and stowed them in the sack along with the dragon book. He tied it securely with his belt and laid it on top of one of the largest boulders.
With a cry, Laz transformed into the raven. He shook his wings, picked up his sack, and flew. He circled the camp once in farewell, then headed off for Haen Marn. As he gained height, he was wondering if the silver wyrm would forgive him for whatever ancient fault it was that lay between them, now that he’d retrieved the book. He hoped so, because he feared that even in human form, Rori would make an enemy that no man would want ranged against him.
After some days of searching, Rori had found the mob of Horsekin emigrants, with their wagons, herds of cattle, horses, and slaves, a good distance away from the ruined fortress. Where the Northlands plateau began to rise into the foothills of the Western Mountains, they’d made a fortified camp. Although the fortifications only amounted to dirt heaped up along ditches, they troubled him, implying as they did that the emigrants were planning on spending some days behind them. He circled overhead and made a rough count of the soldiers scattered here and there in the camp—less than half as many as he’d seen before, another troubling detail.
The camp lay on the banks of another river, this one flowing south. Perhaps the leaders of this Horsekin horde were planning on following it to some goal and had sent some of their armed riders out as scouts. To test this assumption, he followed its course, but he’d not traveled more than a few hours when he found another camp, this one laid out with military precision and swollen with soldiers, far more than he’d seen all summer long, as many as two thousand by his rough estimate. As he circled above, he realized that the terrain around the camp looked familiar. In the hills to the west, not far away at all, lay his and Arzosah’s summer lair.
Surely the Horsekin had no idea that the dragon caves lay so close. Would they attack the great wyrms—of course not! Cerr Cawnen! The name burst into his consciousness. This river ran through canyons until it reached the flatlands again, then meandered down to the marshes around Cerr Cawnen, a town that the Horsekin had coveted before. When the war at Cengarn had left them too weak to take it, they had tried to win its citizens over to a false alliance—but failed.