“Spannuth Grane! I know you!” he yelled.

The sword halted in mid-swing. Calling his enemy by name had earned Tol a brief respite. “Who are you?” the man asked, voice muffled by the visor.

Tol stood up. “Tol of the Juramona City Guards.”

“Guards? You mean the footmen?” Lord Morthur Dermount laughed in his helmet. “You fight well for a hireling!”

“Where is Lord Enkian?” Tol demanded.

“He will join you in death soon!” The sword came up again.

He attacked, raining heavy blows like a hammer breaking stone. Tol’s knees quavered under the onslaught. He ducked a vicious sideswipe, saying desperately, “You’re lost, my lord! Your powers have failed you!”

Morthur laughed loudly, but checked his swing. “What do you mean, meddling stableboy?”

“You tried to hex me in the Great Green, remember? I didn’t collapse. Your hireling left every man and beast from Juramona sleeping in the road, everyone but me. Now you have felled your own men. Why not me?”

Morthur gave his words thought, but the respite was shortlived. Up came the terrible sword.

“I’D divine the answer from your bones!” he roared.

He forced Tol back with savage thrusts, scything his sword upward in terrific two-handed uppercuts. Their blades collided, and when the force of Morthur’s attack shivered down his arms, Tol spun away under the impact. Thinking Tol was going down, Morthur stepped in, dropping his left hand as he prepared to bring his blade down for the final overhand slash.

Tol continued his spin, rotating in a complete circle on the toe of his right foot. He brought the curved edge of his saber down on Morthur’s right wrist. Iron cut through bronze scale and leather, into the flesh of Morthur’s arm, and then through bone. His hand, and the sword it still gripped, fell at Tol’s feet.

Morthur staggered back, screaming. He clapped his left hand over the stump of his right, trying to staunch the coursing blood. Tol took careful aim. He thrust the slim saber into the gap between Morthur’s visor and the gorget at his throat. The high-born sorcerer uttered a horrible gurgling groan. When Tol recovered his blade, Morthur fell to the ground.

Breathing hard, Tol planted a foot on the man’s cuirass and flipped the visor up with the tip of his sword. Morthur Dermount’s pale face, thin black brows, and slender, almost delicate nose had not changed much in seven years. Now, his black eyes were open and lifeless.

Men came stumbling out of the tents. Tol shouted defiance and prepared to fight in spite of his exhaustion. With enormous relief, he realized he faced Lord Enkian and four of his lieutenants. Morthur’s death must have released them from the spell that had held them captive.

“Tol!” said the marshal hoarsely. “How did you get here?”

Tol explained the wagon caravan’s encounter with the magic-wielding rider. “His spell didn’t work on me for some reason,” he finished. “I captured him, and forced him to bring me here. I found…”

Tol stepped to one side and gestured at the dead man.

Enkian looked from Morthur Dermount to Tol, and back again. “In the name of Draco Paladin,” he breathed. “You bested him!”

The marshal ran thin hands through his hair, trying to take it in. He said, “We were stopped on the road. Next I knew, I was in this tent, awake but unable to move. I heard Morthur conferring with someone I couldn’t see. A well-born man, I think-his speech was refined, though I did not recognize his voice. Morthur said he would use magic to take on my appearance and replace me at the conclave in Daltigoth!”

Tol wondered what Morthur had hoped to gain from such a deception. The marshal couldn’t say, but neither of them doubted the dead sorcerer had intended treachery of the blackest kind.

They found nothing of interest in the camp, only the normal supplies and a small bag of Ergothian coins. When Morthur’s four henchmen came to, they found themselves looking down the blades of Enkian’s lieutenants.

“They’ll tell us plenty,” the marshal said grimly.

Before long, riders from Enkian’s escort found them. Awakening from the spell, they’d immediately set out in search of the marshal and had followed the tracks to Morthur’s camp. Enkian sent them to sweep the countryside for any more of the sorcerer’s minions.

Tol squatted by Morthur’s severed hand. The golden sapphire ring it wore seemed identical, though larger, to the one worn by the first man Tol had fought, the lone rider on the high road. The wide gold band, incised with angular symbols, held a single sapphire larger than the ball of Tol’s thumb. Within the oval stone, sparks seemed to flicker.

“Why was I alone unaffected by his spells?” Tol mused.

“Thank the gods you were,” said Enkian. “None of us would be breathing now if Morthur’s evil scheme had succeeded.”

He picked up the bloody hand and wrenched the ring free, offering it to Tol. “Morthur was my cousin, but you deserve the spoils of combat,” he said.

Tol accepted the ring and put it in his belt pouch, where it kept company with a few silver coins and the ring of braided metal and black glass he’d found in the Irda ruin above the Caer River two years earlier. No one in Juramona had been able to say what the artifact was or what it meant, not even the wise Felryn. His only advice had been to get rid of it, since relics of the cursed Irda were likely cursed, too. For once Tol hadn’t heeded the healer, but carried the ancient relic as a cherished token of his first campaign.

When Tol, Lord Enkian, and his entourage returned to the wagons on the Ackal Path, they found everyone there also awake and unharmed. Kiya and Miya, Narren and the foot guards, and the wagoners and their beasts were all well. Whatever spell Morthur had used, it seemed to have no lasting ill effect.

Lord Enkian ordered the body of Morthur Dermount put in a keg of vinegar to preserve it. The marshal intended to present the corpse to the emperor, as proof the long-hunted traitor was at last dead.

Tol’s rescue of the marshal had a profound affect on Enkian’s view of him. The marshal had always regarded Tol as a peasant favored above his station-good fodder for the city guards, but hardly the equal of warriors born to ride with the Great Horde. His successes in the Great Green, Enkian felt, should be attributed to luck, nothing more. A caprice of the gods had allowed him to capture the Silvanesti agent, Kirstalothan, and the Dom-shu chief. He was nothing special.

However, his own rescue and the death of Morthur Dermount changed all that. During the rest of the journey to the imperial capital, Lord Enkian turned the incident over and over in his nimble mind. He kept arriving at the same conclusion.

Tol of Juramona was a very dangerous man.

A cold drizzle had been falling all night and day. The paved road made traveling easier, but there was no shelter for those on foot. Tol tramped along at the head of his men, cloaked to the eyes, his whole body soaked. There seemed little prospect of getting dry short of Daltigoth.

The Juramona delegation reached an enormous stone bridge spanning the eastern tributary of the Dalti River. Twice the width of the road, the bridge was nonetheless clogged with anxious and irritated travelers. Horses, mules, oxen, and people struggled in the chill rain, trying to force (in both directions) three hundred carts and wagons through a space meant for a third that number. On the walls along both edges of the bridge, men of high rank stood, shouting orders at the teeming mob at their feet. They might as well have tried to command a cloudburst; no one paid them the slightest heed.

Lord Enkian was losing his temper. Normally cool-headed, his impatience at the delay was exacerbated as he was pressed on all sides by soldiers, traders, emigrants, and foreigners of every race. He was about to order his riders to draw swords and force their way through when he spied Tol and waved him over.