Engessa looked a bit dubious, but he spoke with the leader of their escort, and the Atans gratefully melted back into the forest.

‘What now?’ Kalten asked.

‘How about some lunch?’ Sparhawk replied.

‘I thought you’d never think of that.’

‘Have the knights and the Peloi draw up around the carriage and get some cooking fires going. I’ll go tell Ehlana.’ He rode back to the carriage.

‘Where’s the escort?’ Mirtai asked brusquely. Now that she was an adult, Mirtai was even more commanding then she had been before.

‘I’m afraid they’re late,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘I thought we might as well have some lunch while we’re waiting for them.’

‘Absolutely splendid idea, Sparhawk,’ Emban beamed.

‘We thought you might approve, your Grace. The escort should be here by the time we finish eating.’

They were not, however. Sparhawk paced back and forth, chafing at the delay, and his patience finally evaporated. ‘That’s it!’ he said loudly. ‘Let’s get ready to move out.’

‘We’re supposed to wait, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana told him.

‘Not out in the open like this, we’re not. And I’m not going to sit here for two days waiting for some Atan clan-chief to mull his way through a message.’

‘I think we’d better do as he says, friends,’ Ehlana told the others. ‘I know the signs, and my beloved’s beginning to grow short-tempered.’

‘-Er,’ Talen added.

‘You said what?’ Ehlana asked him.

‘Short-tempered-er. Sparhawk’s always short-tempered. It’s only a little worse now. You have to know him very well to be able to tell the difference.’

‘Are you short-tempered-er right now, love?’ she teased her husband.

‘I don’t think there is such a word, Ehlana. Let’s get ready and move on out. The road’s well-marked, so we can hardly get lost.’

The trees beyond the open space were dark cedars with swooping limbs that brushed the ground and concealed everything more than a few yards back into the forest. The clouds rolling in from the east grew thicker and the light back among the trees grew dim. The air hung motionless and sultry, and the whine of mosquitoes seemed to grow louder as they rode deeper into the woods.

‘I love wearing armour in mosquito country,’ Kalten said gaily. ‘I have this picture of hordes of the little blood-suckers sitting around with teeny little hammers trying to pound their beaks straight again.’

‘They won’t really try to bite you through the steel, Sir Kalten,’ Zalasta told him. ‘They’re attracted by your smell, and I don’t think any living creature finds the smell of Elene armour all that appetising.’

‘You’re taking all the fun out of it, Zalasta.’

‘Sorry, Sir Kalten.’

There was a rumble far off to the east.

‘The perfect end to a day gone sour,’ Stragen observed, ‘a nice rousing thunderstorm with lots of lightning, hail, driving rain and howling winds.’

Then, echoing down some unseen canyon back in the forest there came a hoarse, roaring bellow. Almost immediately there came an answer from the opposite direction.

Sir Ulath swore, biting off curses the way a dog tears at a piece of meat.

‘What’s wrong?’ Sparhawk demanded.

‘Didn’t you recognise it, Sparhawk?’ the Thalesian said. ‘You’ve heard it before – back at Lake Venne.’

‘What is it?’ Khalad asked apprehensively.

‘It’s a signal that it’s time for us to fort up! Those are Trolls out there!’

CHAPTER 22

‘It’s not perfect, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring said a bit dubiously, ‘but I don’t think we’ve got time to look for anything better.’

‘He’s right about that, Sparhawk,’ Ulath agreed. ‘Time’s definitely a major concern right now.’

The Peloi had ranged out into the surrounding forest in search of some defensible position. Given their nervousness about wooded terrain, Kring’s horsemen had displayed a great deal of courage in the search.

‘Can you give me some details?’ Sparhawk asked the shaved-headed Domi.

‘It’s a blind canyon, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring replied, nervously fingering the hilt of his sabre. ‘There’s a dried-up stream-bed running down the centre of it. From the look of it, I’d say that the stream runs full in the springtime. There seems to be a dry waterfall at the upper end. There’s a cave at the foot of the dry falls that should provide some protection for the women, and it’ll be a good place to defend if things get desperate.’

‘I thought they already were,’ Tynian noted.

‘How wide is the mouth of the canyon?’ Sparhawk asked intently.

‘The canyon mouth itself is maybe two hundred paces across,’ Kring told him, ‘but when you go back in a ways, it narrows down to about twenty paces. Then it widens out again into a sort of a basin where the falls are.’

‘The bad thing about a canyon is that you’re down in a hole,’ Kalten said. ‘It won’t take the Trolls too long to go up to the canyon rim and start throwing rocks down on our heads.’

‘Do we have any choice?’ Tynian asked him.

‘No, but I thought I’d point it out.’

‘There’s no place else?’ Sparhawk asked the Domi.

‘A few clearings,’ Kring shrugged. ‘A hill or two that I could spit over.’

‘It looks like it’s the canyon then,’ Sparhawk said grimly. ‘We’d better get there and start putting up some sort of fortification across that narrow place.’

They gathered closely around the carriage and pushed their way into the forest. The carriage jolted over the rough ground, and on several occasions fallen logs had to be dragged out of the way. After about five hundred yards, though, the ground began to slope upward and the trees thinned out.

Sparhawk pulled Faran in beside the carriage.

‘There’s a cave ahead, Ehlana,’ he told his wife. ‘Kring’s men didn’t have time to explore it, so we don’t know how deep it is.’

‘What difference would that make?’ she asked him. Ehlana’s face was even more pale than usual. The bellowing of the Trolls far back in the forest had obviously unnerved her.

‘It might be very important,’ he replied. ‘When you get there, have Talen explore the place. If it goes back in far enough or branches out, you’ll have a place to hide. Sephrenia’s going to be with you, and she’ll be able to block the entrance and hide any side-chamber so that the Trolls can’t find you if they manage to get past us.’