Octobers Baby by Glen Cook Page B

with large blank borders where the forest still stood. It was to this that Bragi and Uthe went. Haas pointed out the location of the shaghun, then of nearby horsemen. Bragi traced an approach route with one heavy forefinger.
    “Did you see his colors?” Ragnarson asked. “Did you recognize them?”
    “Yes. No.”
    “Guess we couldn’t tell much anyway. Bound to have been a big turnover. Most of them died before El Murid gave up and went home. Well, I don’t know what else I can do. Wish I’d known he was out there when it was still dark.”
    He grabbed Elana, kissed her swift and hard. “Uthe, if it don’t work, you take over. Wait for Mocker. He’s bound to come-though how much good he’ll be I don’t know.” He kissed Elana again.
     
    II) His regiment arrives
    The ground was cold. His leg ached. The dew on the grasshad soaked through his trousers and jerkin. A breeze from the south did nothing to make him more comfortable. His hands were chilled, shaking. He hoped they wouldn’t ruin his aim. There was little chance he would get a second shot. The shaghun would have a protective spell ready for instant use.
    A hundred yards more, at least, before he dared a shot. And they the hardest since he had slipped out the tunnel from the cellars. There was no cover but a fencerow.
    Where was Mocker? he wondered.
    The yards slowly passed under his belly. He expected an alarm at any moment, or the cry of the shaghun ordering an attack.
    It was light enough to storm the house. Why were they waiting?
    From the end of the fence he would have to trust luck to cross five yards of naked pasture to a ditch.
    They would get him there for sure.
    A sudden outcry and stirring of horses startled him. He almost let fly before realizing the horses were moving away. He raised his head.
    Mocker had come.
    And how he had come. The column emerging from the forest, both horse and foot, was the biggest Ragnarson had seen since the flareup with Prost Kamenets. At their head, fat and robed in brown and astride his pathetically bony little donkey, rode Mocker.
    They were not Royal troops, though they were disciplined and well-equipped. Their banners were of the Mercenary’s Guild. But Ragnarson knew few of their names could be found on Guild rosters. They were Trolledyngjans.
    The desert horsemen, after first rushing toward the newcomers, retreated. Even a shaghun was no advantage against such numbers.
    Their flight passed near Ragnarson. The shaghun, in a burnoose as dark as night, was an easy target.
    One shaft, from a bow few men could pull, flew so swift its passage was nearly invisible. It burst through the shaghun’s skull.
    For a long minute Bragi watched the riders gallop off.
    In an hour they would have disappeared without a trace. They came and went like the sandstorms of their native land, unpredictable and devastating.
    “Hai!” Mocker cried as Bragi trotted up. “As always, one believed old fat windy fool, self, arrives in nick, to salvage bacon of friend of huge militant repute but, as customary, leaguered up by nearest congregation quadra-plegic. Self, am thinking same should admit same before assembled host...”
    “Speaking of which,” Ragnarson interrupted, “where’d you turn this crowd up?”
    “Conjuration.” The fat man grinned. “Self, being mighty sorcerer, wizard of worldwide dread, made passes in night, danced widdershins round yew tree, nude, burned unholy incense, called up demon legion...”
    “Never changes, does he? Blows hard as a winter wind.”
    The speaker was a man even more massive than Ragnarson, mounted on a giant gray. He had the shaggy black hair of a wild man, and behind his beard a mass of dark teeth.
    “Haaken! How the hell are you? What you doing here?” Haaken Blackfang was his foster brother.
    “Been recruiting. Headed south now.” Without alcohol in him Blackfang was as reticent as Mocker was loquacious.
    “Thought that was where you were. With Reskird and Rolf. Speaking of