Now she looked up, tears of terror staining tracks in the dust on her face. Wordlessly, she nodded. Erak fixed her gaze with his own until he was sure the threat was fully understood.

"Then remember it if you start thinking about escape," he said coldly. "That's all that awaits you if you get away from us."

T HE P LAINS OF U THAL FORMED A WIDE OPEN SPACE OF rolling grasslands. The grass was rich and green. There were few trees, although occasional knolls and low hills served to break the monotony. Some distance behind the position occupied by the Araluen army, the Plains began to rise gradually, to a low ridgeline.

Closer to the fens, where the Wargals were forming up, a creek wound its way. Normally a mere trickle, it had been swollen by the recent spring rains so that the ground ahead of the Wargals was soft and boggy, precluding any possible attack by the Araluen heavy cavalry.

Baron Fergus shaded his eyes against the bright noon sun and peered across the Plains to the entrance to Three Step Pass. "There are a lot of them," he said mildly.

"And more coming," Arald of Redmont replied, easing his broadsword a little in its scabbard. The two barons were slowly walking their battlehorses across the front of Duncan's drawn-up army. It was good for morale, Arald believed, for the men to see their leaders relaxed and engaging in casual conversation as they watched their enemies emerging from the narrow mountain pass and fanning out onto the Plains. Dimly, they could hear the ominous, rhythmic chant of the Wargals as they jogged into position.

"Damned noise is quite unnerving," Fergus muttered, and Arald nodded agreement. Seemingly casual, he cast his glance over the men behind them. The army was in position, but Battlemaster David had told them to remain at rest. Consequently, the cavalry were dismounted and the infantry and archers were sitting on the grassy slope.

"No sense in wearing them out standing at attention in the sun," David had said, and the others had agreed. By the same token, he had set the various Kitchenmasters the task of keeping the men supplied with cool drinks and fruit. The white-clad servers moved among the army now, carrying baskets and water skins. Arald glanced down and smiled at the portly form of Master Chubb, his chef from Redmont Castle, supervising a group of hapless apprentices as they handed out apples and peaches to the men. As ever, his ladle rose and fell with alarming frequency on the heads of any apprentices he deemed to be moving too slowly.

"Give that Kitchenmaster of yours a mace and he could rout Morgarath's army single-handed," commented Fergus, and Arald smiled thoughtfully. The men around Chubb and his apprentices, distracted by the fat cook's antics, were taking no notice of the chanting from across the Plains. In other areas, he could see signs of restlessness-evidence that the men were becoming increasingly ill at ease.

Looking around, Arald's eye fell on an infantry captain seated with his company. Their minimal armor, plaid cloaks and two-handed broadswords marked them as belonging to one of the northern fiefs. He beckoned the man over and leaned down from the saddle as he saluted.

"Good morning, Captain," he said easily.

"Morning, my lord," replied the officer, his heavy northern accent making the words almost unrecognizable.

"Tell me, Captain, do you have pipers among your men?" the Baron asked, smiling. The officer answered immediately, in a very serious manner.

"Aye, sir. The McDuig and the McForn are with us. And always so when we go to war."

"Then perhaps you might prevail upon them to give us a reel or two?" the Baron suggested. "It might be an altogether more pleasant sound than that tuneless grunting from over yonder."

He inclined his head toward the Wargal forces and now a slow smile spread over the captain's face. He nodded readily.

"Aye, sir. I'll see to it. There's nothing like a skirl or two on the pipes to get a man's blood prancing!" Saluting hurriedly, he turned away toward his men, shouting as he ran: "McDuig! McForn! Gather your wind and set to the pipes, men! Let's hear 'The Feather Crested Bonnet' from ye!"

As the two barons rode on, they heard behind them the preliminary moaning of bagpipes coming to full volume. Fergus winced and Arald grinned at him.

"Nothing like the skirl of the pipes to get the blood prancing," he quoted.

"In my case, it gets the teeth grinding," replied his companion, surreptitiously nudging his horse with his heel to move them a little farther away from the wild sound of the pipes. But when he looked at the men behind them, he had to agree that Arald's idea had worked. The pipes were successfully drowning out the dull chanting and, as the two pipers marched and countermarched in front of the army, they held the attention of all the men in their immediate vicinity.

"Good idea," he said to Arald, then added, "I can't help wondering if that's an equally good one."

He gestured across the plain to where the Wargals were emerging from the Pass and taking up their positions. "All my instincts say we should be hitting them before they have a chance to form up."

Arald shrugged. This point had been hotly debated by the War Council for the past few days. "If we hit them as they come out, we simply contain them," he said. "If we want to destroy Morgarath's power once and for all, we have to let him commit his forces in the open."

"And hope that Halt has been successful in stopping Horth's army," Fergus said. "I'm getting a nasty crick in my neck from looking over my shoulder to make sure there's no one behind us."

"Halt has never let us down before," Arald said mildly.

Fergus nodded unhappily. "I know that. He's a remarkable man. But there are so many things that could have gone wrong. He could have missed Horth's army altogether. He may still be fighting his way through the Thorntree. Or, worse yet, Horth may have defeated his archers and cavalry."

"There's nothing we can do about it but wait," Arald pointed out.

"And keep an eye to the northwest, hoping we don't see battleaxes and horned helmets coming over those hills."

"There's a comforting thought," said Arald, trying to make light of the moment. Yet he couldn't resist the temptation to turn in his saddle and peer anxiously toward the hills in the north.

Erak had waited till the last few hundred Wargals were moving down Three Step Pass to the Plains, then forced his small group into the middle of the jogging creatures. There were a few snarls and scowls as the Skandians shoved their way into the living stream that was flowing through the narrow, twisting confines of the Pass, but the heavily armed sea raiders snarled back and handled their doublesided battleaxes with such easy familiarity that the angry Wargals soon backed off and left them alone.

Evanlyn and Will were in the center of the group, surrounded by the burly Skandians. Will's easily recognizable Ranger cloak had been hidden away in one of the packs and both he and Evanlyn wore sheepskin half capes that were too large for them. Evanlyn's short hair was bundled up under a woolen cap. So far, none of the Wargals had taken any notice of them, assuming them to be servants or slaves to the small band of sea raiders.

"Just keep your mouths shut and your eyes down!" Erak had told them as they shoved their way into the crowd of jogging Wargals. The narrow confines of the Pass echoed to the tuneless chanting that the Wargals used as a cadence. The sound ebbed and flowed about them as they half ran with the stream. Erak's plan was to move eastward as soon as they had cleared the Pass, ostensibly with the purpose of taking up a position on the right flank of the Wargal army. As soon as an opportunity presented itself, the Skandians would break off and escape into the swampy wilderness of the fenlands, traveling through the bogs and grassy islands to the beaches where Horth's fleet lay at anchor.