Turgar sat watching the council from his secret spot on the peak. Voices carried up the cliffs, but not loud enough to make out the words. He had no doubts it was an unconventional exchange: Black Lancers were hired sometimes to train or organize cavalry, to lead contingents of knights, or, usually, to serve as champions in single combat. Never had Turgar heard of them being dispatched under a truce flag to talk with the enemy.

If single combat did occur, Turgar had an excellent vantage point. So far as the legends went, no champion from the Order had ever been defeated. Also, something in their code prevented them from ever combating another Lancer.

If anyone had a chance of standing shield-to-shield with a Black Lancer and surviving, Turgar mused, it was one of those giant warriors below.

Turgar hadn't seen the smoke rising along the rocks--his nose alerted him to it.

He could see the bloodstained defile was empty, save for Dijol's skeleton force of swordsmen. The bulk of the army was camped just outside the pass and, if they had managed to find dry wood, the drizzling rain would certainly prevent the smoke from drifting far from the fire.

Turgar slowed his breath and listened. He isolated the conversation between the Lancer and the Brukite, and shoved it to the back of his perception. He did the same with the noise from the Dijolian skeleton force. Also the sound of the rain. The tinkling of rivulets streaming down the rock. The rustling of a bird back in the thicket where Mountain Wind was sheltered. Archers having breakfast back on the ledge.

Then he heard it. A faint, repetitive throbbing not unlike a water mill in a steady current. With this sound isolated, he studied it.

It was a human voice, chanting something low and redundant. Careful to keep his silhouette minimal, Turgar bellied over the summit and climbed down the far slope. It was easy going until the slope fell straight down, becoming the cliff which walled the defile. The chanting was more easily discernible here, though Turgar could make no sense of the syllables. He still could not see the source of the smoke or the chants, but it seemed they were directly below him.

Gripping a dimple in the rock with one hand and hooking his foot on the trunk of a berry bush, Turgar inched himself forward to spy down the cliff face.

Below was yet another small outcropping, almost directly over the funnel. No trail leading to it was visible from Turgar's position, but it was occupied. The smoke curiously ascended from a small iron cauldron on the rock shelf, though no flames were visible in or under it. A thin figure in a burgundy robe shuffled around the cauldron in endless circles, bowing, twisting, making strange gestures, and muttering some redundant incantation. Draped over the robed figure's back and around his arms was a thick, red serpent.

Turgar liked this not at all. How could the men below fail to notice this bizarre scene above them, with the movement and unnatural smoke, if magic were not afoot? Yet none of them so much as glanced up the cliff. Perhaps Turgar would also be blinded to it, if the sorcerer were aware of his presence. Turgar shivered and eased himself back to relative safety.

No, he liked this not at all. This bode of treachery. His stomach knotted just as it had back when he discovered the betrayal by his warrior-brother...back when he was a loyal troop chief in the armies of Gabom's Chieftain Supreme.

Turgar blinked away the images that accompanied those ugly memories.

There were more hidden trails in the cliffs, unless this sorcerer flew up to the outcropping like some great bird. Turgar would find these trails, if they could be found.

Cemarites were mostly peaceable folk, who preferred to avoid violence. They fought when necessary, but producing was what most of them dedicated their energies to. Most worked the land, producing crops. Some raised livestock, producing milk, cheese, meat and hides. Some collected silk or cotton to weave fabric. Others worked metal. In Cemar proper, people produced poetry, music, fanciful tales...and ideas.

Javo had been different. His boyhood was spent dreaming of battle. When he grew of age to make his own way, he hunted down that dream.

Javo respected Krag. The giant had a rough honesty about him, a lack of pretense, which was rare in men Javo had met. Obviously, his prowess in combat was exceptional, and Javo respected this even more. Still, even during a conversation Javo found far more pleasant than most he'd had in less adversarial circumstances, he couldn't help imagining what it would be like to fight Krag to the death.

As they spoke back-and-forth, Javo visualized slices, thrusts, parries and counterstrokes in a thousand different combinations.

"The alternative to these terms," Krag said thoughtfully, "is for us to choose a champion to meet you in combat."

Javo nodded.