The Warslayer(64)

Back to Square One. And back to this being a waiting game, or as much of one as you could play while ambling up a mountainside on ponyback at a brisk clippity-clop.

Fortunately, it was in the nature of mountain trails to curve, and eventually this one did, but unfortunately she'd been wrong about it going around the mountain. Instead, it turned at a right angle to itself and sent them parallel to the city, several hundred yards above it. Instead of sheer walls of granite on both sides of them, the one on their left was gone, and by now the trail had narrowed appreciably. They proceeded single file along an uncomfortably narrow path with a sheer cliff to their right and a sheer drop on their left, more-or-less in plain sight of anyone who cared to look up.

But the view was magnificent.

Beyond the burnt scar that had been Great Drathil, the vast prairie of Serenthodial the Golden stretched outward to meet the sullen sky. Somewhere out there were the last of the Allimir, counting on her to save them. The more fool they.

Closer at hand were the enemy nightmares. They'd reached the city and were swarming over the ruins as if searching for something. She could hear them shouting at each other angrily, and wondered what they were looking for. Unfortunately for her curiosity, she still couldn't see them very well. Great Drathil itself seemed to be their goal, any how, which was some small relief.

"I am going to be sick," she heard Dylan enunciate crisply behind her, and recalled guiltily that Dylan wasn't terribly good with heights.

"Sorry," she said, half turning on Felba's back to talk to him. Dylan's face was a greenish color and he clung to the leather strap about his mount's ribs like grim Death. "Just close your eyes and try not to mind. We'll be at the top soon." I hope.

Dylan followed her advice and addressed several feeling remarks to the ambient air, of which "insensitive Colonial trollop" was perhaps the most complimentary.

Glory spent the rest of the ascent worrying. She started with the probable and likely perils: the enemy forces, the weather, the state of their supplies, and then with enforced leisure, moved onward and outward: the possibility that one of the ponies would slip and hurl itself and its rider over the cliff, the prospect of a sudden ice storm or monsoon, the chance that they would be set upon by giant killer eagles or radioactive mutant bats. Somewhere in the middle of her worries she dug around in her bag and pulled out Gordon. Cuddling the stuffed elephant made her feel better, and it hardly mattered if she looked ridiculous.

When she had exhausted all the possible and improbable disasters that could happen during their ascent, she prepared to start in on what would happen when they got to the top of the mountain, but then she realized she really didn't need to. Her imagination was exhausted. When they got to the top of the mountain, they were all going to die. She believed that absolutely. She was certainly going to give interfering with that outcome her best shot, but she knew that so far she'd only seen the Warmother's warming-up exercises, and even those were good enough to squash her like a bug.

Still, giving up wasn't in her. You went out there and tried—and tried your best, because anything less was cheating yourself and your opponent. Winning wasn't as important as doing your best—the lessons of a thousand gymnastic competitions, drummed into her from the time she could barely walk, came back to her now. Outgunned, but never outclassed, that was what her coach Ross always used to say to her. "C'mon, Glory-gel, y'wanna live forever?" And the answer she'd learned to give—if only inside her head—as she grew was always the same: "I choose glory over length of days . . ."

They'd been climbing steadily for what seemed like ages, but with the switchbacks and the angle of the trail, it was impossible to see any distance ahead, and hard to tell how much farther they had to go. It was only when she reached the last of the switchbacks that she realized it was the last one, or near it, because ahead the trail was blanketed with a dense fog. Clouds. She remembered that the top of the mountain had been shrouded in mist.

She hoped Dylan still had his eyes closed.

She reached out her left hand and let her fingers brush against the rock. It was wet. They ought to dismount and lead the ponies, but the trail now was too narrow and much too slippery even for that. She didn't know if Felba would walk on if he couldn't see the trail in front of him, or how slippery the mist would make the bare stone beneath his hooves, but this was no time for second-guessing. She wound her free hand in the pony's mane, clutched Gordon tightly against her side, and held on, wishing she could pray, but she couldn't bear to close her eyes.

Felba walked on into the mist at the same placid unhurried pace at which he'd covered the rest of the ascent. The mist settled around her, wet and chill, until she could see nothing—not her outstretched arm, not the animal beneath her. The sound of the ponies' hoofbeats, so clear and sharp a moment before, jumbled and faded away into an echoing arrhythmia.