Gaelin helped himself to a good plateful of food. “Are Daene and Ruide readying the horses?” he asked.

“Aye.” Madislav reached over to poke him in the chest.

“You will get soft, letting others do your chores for you.”

“I hauled Sir Sienden’s armor around for four years, Madislav. I’ve done my time at squiring.”

Madislav harrumphed. “A warrior should be looking after his own weapons. Swords are jealous, no? If a man does not look after good blade, she might betray him when he needs her.”

Gaelin looked him in the eye. “Madislav, you know damned well that I’d travel alone if I could. I’m not going to look for an argument with the Mhor that I’ll lose. Besides, Ruide and Daene will help me to look the part of a nobleman and a knight. I don’t want to embarrass Mhoried by embarrassing myself.”

“Hmmmph. Excuses.”

“Excuses or not, I’ll take them. Now let’s get going. I want to be in Riumache in four days, snow or no snow.” Gaelin rose and walked out into the courtyard. The gray of morning was growing in the east, and the stars were fading overhead.

Near the front gate, Ruide and Daene were finishing their p reparations. Ruide was a portly, gray-haired man dressed in the Mhor’s livery. He was nearsighted and squinted through a pair of old Brecht spectacles. As Gaelin approached, the valet secured a small, blanket-covered crate of some kind to the horse’s packsaddle. He glanced up from his work. “Oh, good morning, Prince Gaelin. Your father suggested that we bring a pair of carrier pigeons with us, just in case you need to get in touch with him quickly.” Ruide grimaced and finished securing the case. “Have to be careful about where I put ’em.”

Gaelin suppressed a flash of irritation – it was a sensible preparation. “Good idea,” he observed, and turned to look after his own mount. He found that Daene, the squire assigned to him, had already readied Blackbrand. The squire was a strapping lad of nineteen years, with sandy hair and an honest face. He was the son of a minor lord of the southern counties, about halfway through his training with the Guardians. Gaelin had earned the privilege of a squire to look after his arms, gear, and a multitude of boring tasks, but in return he was supposed to teach Daene a thing or two about being a knight. He might have been intimidated by the responsibility, but he liked Daene and thought he’d become a fine knight without too much help.

Blackbrand nickered, stamping impatiently as Gaelin drew near. “Ready for a journey, eh?” Gaelin said, rubbing the horse’s neck and checking the saddle and blankets. Satisfied, he swung up into the saddle and looked over his shoulder.

Daene led a packhorse with Gaelin’s armor and weapons, while Ruide led another with the provisions. “Do we have everything?”

“I believe so, my lord,” Ruide answered. “I even brought an extra horse for Master Madislav’s breakfast, in the event the castle’s fare proved insufficient.” Gaelin grinned in the darkness, while Madislav swore in Vos.

“I’m ready, Sir Gaelin,” Daene said.

“Good.” Gaelin led as they trotted under the great gatehouse and out onto the causeway that climbed Shieldhaven’s crag. The wind was steady from the west, bringing a sharp edge of cold air across the snowy forests and fields below, and the white breath of both men and horses streamed away in the wind.

Gaelin tapped his heels against Blackbrand’s flanks, and the stallion snorted and picked up his hooves in a gentle trot.

“Come on, gentlemen,” the prince said. “Let’s put some miles behind us before the sunrise.”

By the end of the third day of their journey, the weather was beginning to warm again, but a steady daylong drizzle left them chilled and soaked to the skin. A number of inns catered to the traffic along the lower Stoneway, an old imperial road; Gaelin, Madislav, Daene, and Ruide enjoyed good dinners, mulled wine or hot cider, and warm beds each night.

Gaelin kept his identity a secret, preferring to travel as an anonymous Knight Guardian. No innkeeper on the Stoneway was unnerved by putting up a knight and his retainers, but hosting a prince was another matter entirely.

Early in the afternoon of their fourth day of travel, they arrived in Riumache. The town was the second-largest in all Mhoried and one of the busier ports on the upper Maesil. It was half-circled by an old wall dating back to imperial days, almost five hundred years before, and the river itself protected the rest of the town’s approaches. Gaelin planned to seek passage to Endier by boat, although he could also cross the Stonebyrn to Alamie and ride the rest of the way if he couldn’t arrange passage. The city’s harbor was full of independent captains and traders, so Gaelin sent Ruide to find a suitable vessel for the rest of their journey.

By morning, the servant had secured a good keelboat with enough room for his companions and all their mounts. Endier was another fifty or so leagues downriver, and the captain – a quiet, austere man named Viensen – hoped that they’d be in the Free City in two days.

Gaelin soon learned that traveling on the Maesil was no holiday in wintertime. While the river only froze once every ten or fifteen winters, a number of jagged cakes and sheets of ice remained. Some of these were large enough to damage a small vessel such as their own. It was very cold on the river, with little protection from the elements. As Viensen’s deckhands raised the boat’s sails and the gray walls and towers of Riumache slid away behind them, Gaelin and his friends abandoned the decks to the sailors and took shelter in the keelboat’s small deckhouse. They passed the rest of the day and most of the next with a deck of Brecht playing cards from Ruide’s belt pouch.

Late in the second day of sail, as the sun was setting, Viensen knocked on the cabin door and entered. “Excuse me, m’lords,” he said, “but it’s getting dark out, and I wanted you to know that I’ll be setting on shore for the night.”

“Where are we?” Madislav asked.

“Ghoere lies on the south bank, and Alamie on the north,”

Viensen replied. “I’ve got surer soundings on the south bank.”

The other men looked to Gaelin. He folded his hand of cards on the table, thinking. “We’d prefer it if you stopped on Alamie’s bank tonight, captain,” he said, “unless there’s significant risk to your boat involved.”

Viensen shrugged. “M’lords, if it was that difficult, I wouldn’t have asked your opinion. I can put us ashore now, or we can try for a landing in a town about an hour downriver, but it’ll be pretty dark by then.”

“Put us ashore, captain,” Gaelin said. He didn’t really think that stopping in an Alamien town would be a problem, but it couldn’t hurt to be careful.

Viensen brought the keelboat into shore skillfully and tied it up on a deserted stretch of riverbank. After checking on the horses and scouting the area around the boat, Gaelin and his companions took the deckhouse for the night, while the keelboat’s crew slept belowdecks. The captain posted two sailors as deck watches, and despite the dropping temperatures he ordered no fires above decks. After a bland meal of fish and hot porridge from the crew’s galley, the travelers settled down for the night. Gaelin drifted off almost immediately, the lapping of water against the boat’s hull soothing him to sleep.

He was awakened some time later by a touch on his shoulder.

Madislav’s whisper came from the darkness beside him.

“Something is happening,” the warrior said. “Another boat approaches. The captain’s sentries are speaking to them.”

Gaelin rose quietly and picked his way past the sleeping Daene and Ruide to peer from the cabin’s porthole. The moon was setting, so a thin silver gleam illuminated the decks and the water. Nearby, a yellow lantern shone over the river, bobbing up and down. He could make out the shape of a dark hull gliding nearer, but no one seemed to be on deck. While it was not unusual for boats to pass each other in the night – after all, the Maesil was the busiest river in all Anuire – piracy was also common, especially in the river’s lonelier stretches.