This was not supposed to happen.
"Aracus," she whispered.
DAWN ROSE ON THE DELTA, and with the return of the light came swarms of gnats. They were merciless, descending in dark clouds, settling on sweat-slick skin already prickling in the heat, taking their measure of blood and leaving itching welts in trade. Turin waved his arms futilely and swore.
It didn't matter.
Nothing mattered. Mantuas, quick-witted, loud-mouthed Mantuas, was dead, drowned in a sucking mudpool. It happened so fast. Even Hunric, who could track his way through a Staccian blizzard, hadn't seen it coming. There hadn't been a thing they could do. Slithering on their bellies, poking branches; Mantuas, take hold, take hold! He couldn't free his arms from the muck, could only blink, desperately, as it covered his nostrils. He sank fast. Turin had turned away when the mud reached his eyes. By the time he dared look, only a few locks of hair lay atop the burbling muck.
Farewell, Mantuas.
A good job they'd turned the horses loose.
Lord Satoris might be wroth, but Lord Satoris should have known. This was the place that had engendered him. Had it been fair, once? Hunric said old trackers' tales claimed as much. Well, it was foul, now. All the muck and foetor that fouled the Verdine River crawled straight from the stinking heart of the Delta.
"Hold." Ahead of him, Hunric paused, probing the watery passage with a long stick he'd cut from a mangrove tree. "All right. Slide along here."
"I'm coming." Turin followed his lead, slogging through waist-deep water along the edge of a clump of mangroves. His waterlogged boots were like lead weights on his feet, slipping on the slick, knotted roots that rose above the swamp. Only fear of snakes kept him from removing them. A few feet away, a basking lizard blinked at him and slithered rapidly in his direction, flicking a blue tongue. "Gah!" Turin recoiled, flailing his arms as the heavy pack strapped across his shoulders overbalanced him.
"Steady!" Hunric caught his flailing wrist, bracing him. "It's just a lizard, lad. It won't harm you."
"All right, all right, I'm all right!" Turin fought down his panic and shook off the tracker's hand. Was his gear secure? Yes, there was his sword, lashed sideways atop his pack. He reached behind him, felt the reassuring bulk of the supplies he carried. There was gold coin there, Lord Vorax's gift, useless in this place. Arahila willing, the bannock-cakes were secure in their oilcloth wrappings and they would not starve just yet. "All right. Let's go."
"Here." Hunric scooped a handful of muck from the bottom of the swamp. "Plaster it on your skin. It will help keep the gnats off."
He pushed away the proffered hand, dripping mud. "I don't want it on me."
"Turin." There was a despairing note in the tracker's voice. "Don't make it harder. I'm sorry about Mantuas, truly. I don't know the terrain and the Delta is harder than I thought. I'm doing my best."
"Hunric?"
"Aye?"
"They're not coming, are they?" Turin swallowed, hard. The words were hard to say. "Lieutenant Carfax, the others… you've been scoring trees, marking the safest route, ever since Mantuas died. I've watched you. If they were following, we'd have heard them by now."
"Mayhap." The tracker's eyes were shuttered in the mask of drying mud that coated his face. "If they captured Malthus' Company… if they did, lad, it may be that they found more pressing business lay elsewhere. Mayhap they seek to catch the Dreamspinner's thoughts, aye, or his ravens, to make a report to General Tanaros, aye, or Lord Satoris himself."
"Mayhap." Waist-deep in water, Turin tilted his chin and gazed at the sky, a heated blue against the green leaves of the mangroves. Birds roosted in the treetops, but only the kind that were born to this place. High above, the sun blazed like a hammer. Haomane's Wrath, beating down incessantly on the birthplace of Satoris Third-Born, who had defied his will. Banewreaker, the world named him, but he had always honored his word with Staccia, ever since Lord Vorax struck his bargain over a thousand years ago. What other Shaper had done as much since the world was Sundered? If matters went awry now, it meant something had gone grievously wrong. And Turin had a bad feeling that it had. "I don't think so, Hunric."
Water splashed as the Staccian tracker shifted, settling his own pack on his shoulders. "Well, then," he said, his voice hardening. "We'll have to press on, won't we?"
* * *
FOURTEEN
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A HUNDRED BANNERS FLEW IN Seahold.
There was the trident of Duke Bornin, of course, argent on a sea-blue field. And there were others; a dozen of his liege-lords, the barons and earls who held fiefdoms in the Midlands. There was the spreading oak of Quercas, the gilded stag of Tilodan, the harrow of Sarthac, all declaring their allegiance with pride. All had been seen in the city of Seahold, though never at once.