III.

       Baiyen Gap

      By morning, true to Luhaine’s promise, the two horses Dakar had picked for hard journeying had exhausted the last of their stamina. Dismounted, as wearied himself from breasting the pocketed gullies and crossing ridges cloaked with stunted trees, Arithon paused to take stock. His night of brisk riding had carried him well into the Skyshiel uplands. Here, the forested foothills of the coast gave way to slab-sided ravines, notched with the gashed seams of past rockfalls and spindled thickets of fir. The relentless winds funneled through the high gaps, driving plumed streamers of snow. The steep vales yielded poor prospect of shelter, deserted except for the pine sparrows that chirped and fluttered in the branches, dauntlessly pecking for seeds.

      Bone tired and chilled, with his boots sodden from crossing a fast-flowing stream, Arithon acknowledged his stark need for rest. He had descended from the scoured stone of the heights, driven by threat of exposure; the subtle inroads carved by exhaustion could creep up on a man unawares. Cold dulled the wits. Many a traveler perished in these wilds, lulled into the stupefied peace of fogged judgment. Every gut instinct for survival, and the seasoned experience of woods wisdom, urged Arithon to find a snug hollow and hunker down.

      Yet the forbidding, flint spine of the Skyshiels balked preference. The terrain offered no secure cranny. He required dry ground, a windbreak, and a fire, and a fold in the hills where two horses could be tucked out of sight.

      Arithon rested his forehead against the steaming crest of the gelding that had borne him through most of the night. ‘Onward, brother,’ he whispered. Wary, even here, since incautious sound might travel an untold distance, he addressed the back-turned ear of the packhorse lagging behind. ‘I promise we’ll stop at the first safe place. You’ll both get the grain and the rubdown you’ve earned.’

      He tugged on the lead rein, heart torn as the wearied animals resisted his effort to urge them ahead. Yet now was no time to hang back out of pity. Jaelot’s patrols would be dogging his track. Should they overtake, the chase would be short. Exhaustion had claimed all his resources. His best chance to grant his horses reprieve lay in keeping the lead seized during the night.

      With his bandaged hand cradled in the crook of his left elbow, Arithon firmed his tired grip on the reins. ‘Bear up, little brothers.’ He used voice to coax the recalcitrant horses and prayed he would not have to goad them. The buckskin released a long-suffering sigh, then yielded a molasses step forward. The packhorse complied out of ingrained habit, its flagging stride muffled amid pristine snowdrifts.

      Arithon broke the ground before them on foot, prodded by bald-faced urgency. The wound in his hand languished in sore neglect. The angry, stinging pain of fresh injury had long since progressed to the pounding throb of edema. His stopgap field bandage was dirtied and blood-soaked, frayed the more ragged each time he bent to chip the balled ice packed in the horses’ shod hooves. No wound fared well under such constant usage. He had lost the immediate, opportune chance to flush the clean puncture with spirits. Warned by the onset of harsh, fevered heat, and swelling that strained at the dressing, he fretted. Inflammation would have already set in. Arithon fought the blind urge to curse fate. His hands shaped his Masterbard’s skill on the lyranthe. At the earliest moment, he must draw the infection with infusions of heat and strong poultices.

      He cajoled the horses across the next ridge. Unfolded beyond lay the glacial scar of another rock-strewn valley. The space was too open, as evinced by the circling flight of a hawk, and the indignant chitters of a red squirrel startled to rage by his trespass. Overhead, the sky shone lucent turquoise, serrated by the snowcapped boughs of rank upon rank of tall fir trees. Game was not scarce. Arithon noted the lock-stitched tracks of hare. Later, he flushed an antlered stag. Beside the black current of another mountain freshet, he carved a parallel course with the pug marks left by a khetienn, the compact, northern leopard that hunted the deep wilds of Rathain.

      The drifts on the bank lay piled waist deep. Forced to carve a tortured course back to the high ground, where the north gusts flayed off the snow cover, Arithon winced to the report of shod hooves clanging over bare granite. He cast a sharp glance down his back trail. Although he detected no sign of pursuit, he dared not bide in complacency. His narrow lead must be carefully hoarded, each hour snatched from the jaws of adversity his margin for rest and recovery.

      Noon found him atop a raked notch in the foothills. The frigid air knifed his laboring lungs, and the geldings, heads drooping, puffed beside him. The vista ahead showed no promise of surcease. Downslope, and northwest, the land sheared away into weathered ledges of rimrock. The disused Baiyen trail that the centaurs had built hugged the scarp, a narrow ribbon cut into forbidding, black granite. The firs clung in pruned patches, culled by ice and storms until their whipped trunks jabbed the slopes like stuck needles. Sun sheened the drifts to pearlescent silk. Defined by the altitude’s rarefied clarity, a deer could not move unseen by the eyes of a hunter.

      Shivering against the cut of the breeze, Arithon searched to find a descent with some semblance of trustworthy footing. He could ill afford a turned ankle himself, far less risk laming the horses. Exhaustion had slowed his reflexes to poured lead. The smallest misstep might trip him. Unable to find a secure passage down, he veered westward, a moving target framed by clear sky, with the shod horses slipping and scrambling over the weather-stripped slabs of worn bedrock.

      Two arduous hours later, he traversed a ravine bordered with lopsided hemlock. He picked his way, gasping with pain each time the horses jerked on the reins to snatch for a mouthful of forage. The needles were poison, and would induce colic. Yet the demand of their empty bellies overrode the precaution of instinct.

      Beneath jutting rock, striped in the shadow of a spindly stand of birch, Arithon stopped. He broached the supply packs and scrounged out the nose bags, then measured a sparing ration of grain. The horses munched. He took stock, perils and assets, while the sun dipped in the sky to the west, and a quilting of shade crept across the timbered valley. Daylight waned strikingly fast in the high country. Already the wind gained an edge. Under darkness, the gusts turned unbearably bitter. Though to choose the sure route down the Baiyen trail would leave tracks for oncoming patrols, Arithon bowed to necessity. He had to find shelter before sundown. None would be found in this vista of steep cliffs and raked scree, which harbored no shred of ground cover.

      A zigzagged descent down a snow-clad embankment disgorged horses and rider onto the ancient, shored causeway that traversed the Skyshiels to Daon Ramon. Here, the incessant blast of the wind had mercifully raked off the drifts. Arithon turned