Birgis weaved merrily through the legs of the uneasy horses, his thoughts no doubt on squirrels and his freedom. Indeed, there were several occasions when the dog wandered completely out of sight, and then, for the first time in my recollection, the dog whistle Brithelm had given me came in handy, bringing the beast back over the rocky terrain at full waddle, lugging along a stick or a bone or whatever else had struck his foraging fancy.

I watched him approach merrily and marveled at how even the most obscure and apparently useless things- whistles, it seemed, and certainly opals-came into their power if you endured their keeping long enough. Perhaps I would feel that way about Shardos and his dog soon.

Behind this unlikely trio-Shardos and Oliver and Birgis-came the rest of us. The trip had reached that juncture when adventure wears off, when the first blush of excitement fades into fears and the drudgery of making daily mileage. Dannelle complained as though she carried all our belongings, horses included, on her own back. Dannelle di Caela was no trooper, as we were learning to our discomfort and chagrin.

As the path ahead of us wandered through country long favored by troll and bandit, my traveling companions were also rapidly growing tired of my hand at the helm of things. As if all of that weren't ominous enough, there were the visitors that Oliver saw in the distance, pacing northward parallel to us far down in the waterlogged lowlands. We did not think they were following us at first. At least such thoughts did not occur to Shardos or Ramiro, and since it is a bad Solamnic habit that Knights seldom consult with squires or women, nobody knew or even cared what Dannelle and Oliver thought.

So when we first sighted the Plainsmen a mile or so east of us, wading through ankle-deep water at the edge of the foothills, most of us were alarmed. After all, our history with Plainsmen had not been good of late.

They outnumbered us at least three to one. And they moved like specters or wraiths, gliding smoothly across the rough and forbidding landscape east and below us.

"How do they keep going at that speed, Ramiro?" I asked. "I beg-oh, the Plainsmen. Where are they now?" The big man looked behind us and far to the right of us, squinting. "Not there. Look parallel to us, Ramiro." He shifted in the saddle. The horse grunted and staggered a bit before recovering its pace.

"By the gods, you're right! I don't like the looks of this at all, Galen!"

Of course, Ramiro was ready to move upon them full tilt, regardless of odds. He had his sword drawn, his shield raised defiantly, and would have been galloping out of the foothills heedlessly had Shardos not laid a deft old hand on the stallion's reins.

"Look to the south of them, son," the juggler whispered.

"Then consider the… arithmetic of this whole adventure."

We were sighted and had not known it, but the old man was right. Another dozen or so Plainsmen were rushing to join the others.

The numbers involved cooled even the most Solamnic ardor. Ramiro sheathed his sword and drew instead a cheese. He gnawed on it uneasily as we took to the road again. As we all had expected, the Plainsmen pitched camp when we did. From our vantage point, we could see them, shadowy and tall, milling about in the business of building a fire. It was Shardos who suggested that we establish contact to see who they were and what they wanted.

Ramiro had tired of the monotony of riding and waiting, and had started pulling at the wine flask. Given a man of his size, wine took a terribly long time to splice the main, as they say in Kalaman. Nonetheless, he was remembering songs by the time the juggler suggested negotiations, and by the time our fires were blazing, he felt somewhat belligerent and otherwise invulnerable. In full bluster, his sidelong glance on Dannelle, he volunteered himself as our ambassador of peace. "Or worse," he said ominously, "if it comes to that." "I'm not so sure that's altogether wise, Sir Ramiro," I cautioned. "You're much too… valuable a member of this party to lose if the lot of them-and remember, there are a lot of them-decide on mayhem."

"Then you will go with me, sir," Ramiro commanded merrily. Then, remembering Bayard's sickbed orders, he changed his tone and bowed comically in the saddle, his horse grunting and rolling its eyes.

"That is, if such embassage is to your liking, Sir Galen." Well, it was not. I had seen enough of Plainsmen in the last week to take me through several years of knighthood and whatever journeys came with those years. Nonetheless, I had cornered myself in leadership. Now I could not back out of the little jaunt he had in mind without saying to him, to Shardos, to the world attendant, and especially to Dannelle that the threat of Plainsmen was a bit too much for my liking.

I sat back, scooting to the edge of the saddle, almost on Lily's haunches, as though backing up on the horse would get me out of what I had to do anyway.

"These are day travelers," Shardos said quietly. "Not the bunch that carried off your brother Brithelm or… or killed your brother Alfric."

"And what tells you such things, grandfather?" Ramiro asked with an icy smile.

"The whiff of 'em, boy," Shardos replied calmly. "Aloft on an easterly wind, can't you smell it, boy? Why, the horses i can, I'll wager you."

I looked closely at the old man, who cocked his head like an enormous owl, listening down in the lowlands for movement. Could he know what he claimed to know? I had always heard, of course, that a blind man's other senses intensify.

If Shardos was right, and these were a different lot of Plainsmen entirely, I might learn something. As Ramiro said, most Plainsmen generally meant no harm to the likes of us, and I was eager to find out what had brought these so far north and why they kept to the plains alongside us. If they were friendly, at worst I would return to an easier night's sleep.

If they were unfriendly… well, the odds were that they would find a way to close with us after nightfall anyway. Then it would be on their terms and in their choice of terrain, and with companions like Ramiro, the outcome could be disastrous.

"Do you speak their language, Shardos?" I asked. "I beg your pardon?" "Do you speak Plainsman?"

"Well, young fellow, that's a tall order, for many's the kind of Plainsman to speak-Que-Shu, Que-Teh, what have you. What you call your dialects."

"But with all of those, there's a sort of common Plainsmen, isn't there? Else one tribe couldn't talk to the other, and-"

"Yes, yes," Shardos interrupted, waving his hand. "And I speak it passing well."

"I see. Well, Ramiro, if there is no other recourse, things should take place the way the leader of our party suggests, and he suggests as follows: You stay in the foothills with Dannelle and Oliver, while Shardos and I descend to dialogues."

"If you say so, Sir Galen," Ramiro said ambivalently, no doubt relieved to be off the hook but sorry for the missed chance of braving it before the lovely Dannelle di Caela.

As we left the trail for points downward and east, seeing the look of concern on her face was a prize worth having.

Worth having, but not worth dying for. I shuddered as I handled the reins of Shardos's pony and made for the low fires east of us.

One of the Plainsmen ahead of us-a young man not quite my age-watched us from the time we broke from our companions. I saw him crouched in a cluster of rocks above his fellows but still a great distance below us. He was dressed in a loincloth, armed only with a sling. As we approached, he moved off into the open, amid low brambles and downed ferns, as if he did not care at all whether we saw him.