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36

NOONTIME SUN BEAT DOWN ON THE DUSTY ROAD. THERE WERE NO mountains in sight to the south at all—a situation that seemed wrong to Dosh, as if a necessary part of the world were missing. Thargvale was very big, the army very small. With the scouts and foragers and skirmishers spread out amid copses, hollows, and hedges, five thousand men could vanish into the landscape. Trudging up the road with Ysian at his side, he could easily disbelieve in those five thousand men.

That was a delusion, a fancy. In fact Talba's squad was just ahead, out of sight over the rise. Beyond the hedgerows, patrols flanked the army's progress on either hand. Gos'lva and his cavalry troop were close behind—unfortunately.

Since Lemod the cavalry traveled on foot, like everyone else. They were close enough to call out ribald remarks, usually about the incongruity of the pervert squiring the battlemaster's concubine. Away from the city, out in the field again, Dosh was no longer one of the boys. Jittery men needed a butt for nervy humor, and he was an obvious target.

"Hey, Pogink Lancer?" bellowed a voice.

"Yes, Koldfad Lancer?" roared another.

"Tell me, Pogink Lancer, why Dosh hath no spear?"

"I don't know, Koldfad Lancer. Why hath Dosh no spear?"

The punch line was predictably obscene. The cavalry's humor had never been of the best; descent to ground level and the status of mere mortals had not improved it. Their current blisters, fatigue, hunger, danger, and other tribulations must be very good for their souls but were obviously failing to keep their primitive minds from carnal fantasies.

Dosh bore no weapons because D'ward still used him as a runner. He probably traveled twice as far as the rest of the Army did in a day. He didn't usually let the abuse worry him, and didn't know why he was feeling the bite now.

"Hey, Koldfad Lancer?"

"Yes, Pogink Lancer?"

"What do you think of the way those hips move?"

"Which hips are you admiring, Pogink Lancer?"

"You don't have to stay here and listen to them," Ysian said quietly.

Dosh glanced down and saw a puzzled look in her big, clear eyes—the eyes of a child. She had been limping along at his side in silence for some time, apparently paying as little attention to the humorists as he did . . . paying, it must be admitted, very little attention to him either. The pack she bore was as big as any man's, her boyish form bent almost double under it. Every man in the army was half again as big as she was, but she kept up. She never complained, so far as Dosh knew. He sought her out and escorted her when he wasn't running errands, but the two of them rarely spoke much. The only thing they had in common was that they were both misfits.

A runner could not carry a pack, either. Ysian had shared her rations with him.

"They're just getting randy," he muttered, and then wondered if she would even understand what he meant.

Apparently she did. "This rape and pillage expedition hasn't produced much of either so far, has it? And they are not as perceptive as you are."

"Don't let them vex you. D'ward had his own reasons for bringing you. It's none of their business. Want me to carry that pack for a while?"

Ysian shook her head, hefted the pack higher on her shoulders, and continued to limp along.

D'ward was bringing up the rear, as he usually did. He had given himself the task of inspiring the stragglers, the wounded and the weakest, although every day men would drop in their tracks and perforce be abandoned to the doubtful mercy of the Thargians. Golbfish was in the van, leading the rout.

The land was deserted. The Thargians had burned the houses and driven off all the livestock. There were no women to rape and precious few goods to pillage—which mattered little, as the invaders had no pack beasts to carry booty. Whenever the weary foot-sloggers did manage to catch a stray zebu or auroch, it went straight in the pot. The rations brought from Lemod were exhausted; the spring fields were bare. A few more days of this, and hunger would bring the army to its knees.

Thargwall to the north was a glittering parade of ice and fresh spring snow. Somewhere behind it the Thargians must be marching too. Mountains loomed to the east also, closer every day. Within those crags lay Saltorpass, the road home, but could the weary, starving invaders ever hope to force it, and then Siopass after? This campaign seemed destined for fame as one of the greatest military blunders in Valian history. Joalia had sacked Lemod, thanks to D'ward, but otherwise all it had achieved was to force the Thargians into wasting a strip of their own homeland. Dosh found that a very small consolation indeed.

Like the peaks of Thargwall, massacre and surrender loomed ahead, ever closer, and the survivors would go to the silver mines. The two misfits could hope for nothing better. Dosh was serving his chosen god, and to die for Tion would guarantee him an eternal place with the blessed among the constellations, but the girl had no reason to be there. She had been useful as a guide in Lemodvale—why had D'ward not left her there? Had he no gratitude at all? Dosh would have expected better of the Liberator, somehow. The Filoby Testament never mentioned any Ysian, as far as he could remember. That meant nothing; the prophecies were very patchy.

He was on top of the rise now, with Talba and his men in clear view ahead. He stared around at the countryside—half expecting, as always, to see a second Thargian army advancing in wrath. Specks in the far distance were some of their scouts, lancers on moas. They rode circles around the invaders, watching like buzzards, pestering like mosquitoes, and yet now they had stopped attacking at all.

A temple!

A cluster of trees and ancient stone buildings standing all alone, halfway up a hillside in the middle of a pasture, where there was no visible reason for any sort of settlement at all—that could only be a sanctuary of some sort. The trees' spring foliage was beaten gold, but so was the glint of the central dome, and gold said Tion. Dosh could not resist that call. He did want to; he was eager to serve his master.

"Better see if D'ward needs me," he muttered, and stepped to the verge.

Gos'vla and his men marched by; he gave them the finger and they shouted obscenities at him. As soon as they had gone past, he dived through the hedge. He sat down in the weeds and waited for the rear guard to pass. The last troop went by him singing lustily, which was reasonable evidence that D'ward was with them, encouraging and inspiring as only he could.

Dosh stayed where he was a little longer. Then he scrambled to his feet and began to run across the fields.

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