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.
If he had to be looking at a horse's ass, he'd just as soon it be riding next
to him.
Ian didn't know how to explain the fog thickening while simultaneously
becoming less cold and clammy, but it had done just that: he could barely see
ten feet ahead on the road, and there were times when waves of billowing
whiteness made even that impossible.
Branden del Branden gestured at the surrounding whiteness. "Do you see what I
mean? Could you remember the turns we have made?"
"Turns? We've just followed the trail."
Branden del Branden gave the sort of knowing smile that Ian never liked to
see on anybody's face, including his own. "Oh, there's been a few forks, here
and there. It's just a matter of taking the one that isn't obscured by fog. I
don't think an invading army would find such openings, and I'd much rather not
find out for sure." He gave a quick loosening pump to the hilt of his sword.
"Would you?"
They rode in silence through the milkiness for a long time, until with each
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step the fog seemed to thin, the radius of his vision widening.
"Ah." Branden del Branden kicked his horse into a faster walk. "Now I can
tell you that we'll be at the City soon, quite soon."
The road ahead widened and lengthened, and the sun broke through the clouds
so bright and golden that it dazzled Ian's eyes, bringing tears that clouded
his vision even more effectively than the fog itself had.
And then they were through the clouds and into star-tlingly clear air, a
billowy, cottony cloudscape obscuring everything below, the only solid thing
visible from horizon to horizon the mountain road that crossed the saddle from
the peak they were on and twisted up to the City high above.
A bell clanged somewhere above them, and on the high ramparts, the tips of
spears or bows could be seen moving quickly into position.
The Old Keep if it had any other name, that name had been lost in time as
surely as an invader would have been lost in clouds hadn't been built at the
top of the mountain; it had been carved from the top of a mountain by a master
artisan, who had made a keep out of what clearly had been a sharply pointed
and jagged peak, the highest of the spires, a turret that looked more like a
Moslem minaret than anything more familiar to Ian, and poked high into the
blue sky, while six smaller spires barely rose half its length.
The ramparts and balustrades were similar to the ones Ian had seen in Falias,
the City of the House of Fire, but the piazzas weren't roofs for lower levels
the way they were in Falias, but rather they projected out from the side of
what remained of the mountain, sticking out of the keep like ear mushrooms on
a tree. There were probably stairs inside as well, but dozens of stairways
twisted up the naked side of the dark stone, and while Ian could see no sign
of railings, forms moving up and down them made it clear that they were in
use, and not just decorative.
Patches of greenery filled slashes in the side of the mountain, rimmed in a
way that made it clear that they had been left by design, not by accident.
Ian would have liked to have turned to Hosea and congratulated him on the
job, but that would have been, at best, imprudent.
There was no gate that Ian could see: the wide road across the narrow saddle
between the two peaks vanished into a dark, wide hole in the side of the
mountain wall.
"Rather something, isn't it?" Hosea said as he came abreast of them, Branden
del Branden's horsemen making no motion to bar his passage.
"I was thinking that myself," Ian said. He would have asked Hosea something
to the effect of,Are you looking for a pat on the back?
But it wasn't wise to assume that nobody listening could speak English, not
if he didn't have to.
As Branden del Branden had pointed out to him, assuming wasn't always a good
idea.
As they crossed the saddle between peaks, Ian considered the steep slope on
either side that vanished in the clouds below. It would be a long fall.
He shook his head. It was just as well he wasn't this Promised Warrior, it
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would take more than a prophecy even if he believed in prophecy, something he
would have said he didn't a year ago to make him want to cross this road under
opposition, even assuming that he could have found his way up through the
clouds to the road.
The men of the Dominions were an awfully superstitious lot, if they were
worried about an invasion through this route.
But, no, that wasn't it. Control the bottleneck, and nothing gets into the
bottle without your permission. A tiny force could hold this road indefinitely
against a huge invading army. It didn't matter if you outnumbered your enemy
ten-to-one, not if you could only confront him one-to-one, with his
reinforcements coming from nearby, while your supplies and reserves had to
follow you up a long trail.
No, they weren't afraid of an invasion on this route. For all Ian knew and
presumably for all they knew a Hidden Way leading from, say, the Seat in
Vandescard to the Dominions popped up in the Scion's bathroom, and the
Promised Warrior could at any moment and without the slightest of warnings
lead a division of Vandestish swordsmen and archers up through His
Altitude's or whatever they called him bathtub.
It was easy to make fun of that fear, at least within the confines of his own
mind, but he understood how frightening an attack through a Hidden Way could [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]