Just as Briant had been pallid and colorless, here was rich beauty, more than properly displayed since her tiring maid did not bother to pull tight breast laces. Instead the crone quirked a finger at Simon.

“This is your loot, bold fellow. Hoist the pretty on your shoulder, and if you grow tired of your burden — well, these other rogues will lend a hand. Play your part well.” She gave the seeming girl a shove between her shoulder blades which sent her stumbling into Simon’s arms. He caught her up neatly, swinging her across his shoulder, while the witch surveyed them with the eye of a stage manager and then gave a tug to strip the bodice yet farther from those smooth young shoulders.

Inwardly Simon was astonished at the completeness of the illusion. He had thought it would be for the eyes only, but he was very conscious that he held what was also feminine to the touch. And he had to keep reminding himself that it was indeed Briant he so bore out of the house.

They found Kars harbored many such bands as theirs that day. And the sights they had to witness, the aid they could not give, ate into them during that journey to the wharves. There was a watch at the gates right enough, but as Simon approached, with his now moaning victim slung over his shoulder, his raffish fellows slinking behind him, as if to welcome the leavings of his feast, the witch scuttled ahead with a bag. She tripped and fell so that the brilliant contents of her looter’s catchall rolled and spilled across the roadway.

Those on guard sprang into action, the officer kicking the crone out of his way. But one man had a slightly higher sense of duty, or perhaps he was more moved by Simon’s supposed choice of pillage. For he swung a pike down in front ofTregarth and grinned at him over that barrier.

“You’ve got you a soft armload there, fishguts. Too good for you. Let a better man sample her first!”

Koris’ pole with its rusty hooks snaked out, hooking his feet from under him. As he sprawled they darted through the gate and along the wharf, other guards in pursuit.

“In!” Briant was pulled out of Simon’s grasp, thrown out into the flood of the river, the Captain following in a cleancut dive to come up beside the draggling red and gold clad body. Vortgin took off at a stumbling run. But Simon, seeing that Koris had Briant’s hand, looked back for the witch.

There was a flurry down the wharf and a tangle of figures. Gun in hand he ran back, pausing for three snap shots, each taking out a man, dead or wounded. His rush brought him there in time to see that twisted gray-haired body lying still while a sword swung downward aimed at the scrawny throat.

Simon shot twice more. Then his fist struck flesh, crushed it against bone. Someone shrieked and fled as he scooped up the witch, finding her weight more than Briant’s. Bearing her over his shoulder he staggered to the nearest barge, his lungs laboring as he dodged among the piled cargo on its deck, heading for the far rail and open water.

The woman in his arms came to life suddenly, pushing against him as if he were indeed a captor she might fight. And that overbalanced Simon so that they went over together, tumbling to strike the river with a force he had not expected. Simon swallowed water, choked, and struck out instinctively, if clumsily.

His head broke the surface and he stared about him for the witch, to see a wrinkled arm, hampered by water soaked rags cutting in a swimmer’s stroke.

“Ho!”

The call came from a barge floating downstream and a rope flicked over its side. Simon and the witch gained the deck, only to have Koris wave them impatiently to the opposite rail into the river again, the craft serving as a screen between them and the city shore.

But here was a small boat with Vortgin sitting therein, Briant leaning over the side being actively sick into the water, while he clutched his red robe about him as if indeed he had been the victim of rapine. As they scrambled down to this refuge, Koris pushed them away from the barge, using the point of his hook spear.

“I thought you lost that at the gate!”

Koris’ ruffian face mirrored his astonishment at Simon’s comment. “This I would never lose! Well, we have us a breathing space. They will believe us hiding on the barge. At least so we can hope. But it would be wise to head to the other shore as soon as this has drifted far enough from the wharves.”

They agreed with the Captain’s suggestion, but the minutes during which they remained wedded to the barge were very long ones. Briant straightened at last, but he kept his face turned from them as if heartily ashamed of the guise he wore. And the witch sat in the bow surveying the far shore with searching intensity.

They were lucky in that night was closing in. And Vortgin knew the surrounding country well. He would be able to guide them inland across the fields, avoiding houses and farms, until they had put enough distance between them and Kars to feel reasonably safe.

“Thrice horned — yes, that sentence he can enforce in Kars. For the city is his. But the old lords have ties with us, and where they lack such ties or sympathy, they may be moved by jealousy ofYvian.They may not actively aid us, but neither will they help the Duke’s men cut us down. It will be largely a matter of their closing their eyes and ears, hearing and seeing naught.”

“Yes, Karsten is now closed to us,” the witch agreed with Vortgin. “And I would say to all of the old race that they should flee borderward, not leaving escape until too late. Perhaps the Falconers will aid in this matter. Aie… aie… our night comes!”

But Simon knew that she did not mean the physical night closing about their own small party.

They lay behind the winter pressed stack in the field, Simon, Koris, and Vortgin, wisps of the dank straw pulled over their bodies, watching what went on at the crossroads hamlet beyond. There were the brilliant blue-green surcoats of the Duke’s men, four of them, well mounted for hard and far riding, and a fringe of the dull-robed villagers. With some ceremony the leader of the small force out of Kars brought his horse beneath the Pole of Proclamation and put a horn to his lips, its silver plating catching fire from the morning sun.

“One… two… three…” Koris counted those blasts aloud. They heard them clearly, all the countryside must have heard them, although of what the Duke’s men said to the assembly afterwards they caught only as a mumble.

Koris looked to Vortgin. “They spread it fast enough. You’d best be on your way, if any of your kin is to be warned at all.”

Vortgin thrust his belt dagger deep into the earth of the field as if he were planting it in one of the blue coated riders. “I’ll need more than my two legs.”

“Just so. And there is what we all seek.” Koris jerked a thumb at the ducal party.

“Beyond the bridge the road takes a cut through small woods,” Simon thought aloud.

Koris’ pseudo-face expressed malicious appreciation of that hint. “They’ll soon be through with the chatter. We’d best move.”

They crawled away from their vantage point, crossed the river ford, and found the woods track. The roads leading north were not well kept. Yvian’s rule in this district had been covertly opposed by noble and commoner alike. Away from the main highways all passages tended to be only rough tracks.

On either side banks rose, brush and grass covered. It was not a safe place for any wayfarer, doubly suspect for anyone in the Duke’s livery.

Simon settled into concealment on one side of that cut, Koris chose a stand closer to the river, prepared to head off any retreat. And Vortgin was across from Simon. They had only to wait.

The leader of the messengers was no fool. One of his men rode ahead, studying every bush the wind stirred, every clump of suspiciously tall grass. He passed between the hidden men and trotted on. After him came the one who bore the horn, and a companion, while the fourth man brought up the rear.