still have the advantage. If the dead Lantiff have been found, the peer knows you have horses, and she is lying awake nights wondering which way you went. North, south, east, west, you could have covered a lot of ground while the hunt was getting organized. No matter what oaths her border guards may swear, she will fear you slipped through one of the passes before word of your escape reached them. In that case, you are already in Easlon, and her massive hunt is a farce.”
“If one-name foresters found the dead Lantiff, the peer will never find out what happened to them,” Roszt said. “The foresters know from bitter experience that the nearest villages would be pillaged on principle if they left the bodies for the peer’s army to find.”
“Whether they were found or not, the peer won’t rest until she catches me,” Egarn said resignedly. “She will use torture to make me restore the weapons to her, and then she will have me killed in the most painful way she can think of. She will do the same with you three, of course.”
“She will have to catch us first,” Bernal said cheerfully.
“You know how to take care of yourselves. She wouldn’t be able to catch you if you didn’t have me to look after.”
“Nonsense. There is nothing wrong with your legs, and anyway, we have the horses. As soon as you get your strength back, we will run for it.”
Egarn stretched out languidly on his rough bed and remained silent for a time. Then he said, speaking slowly and hesitantly, “I wish I were able to tell you things—and show you things—just in case you escape and I don’t. If I die without telling anyone, my life has been wasted.”
Bernal waited silently.
“It is difficult to explain,” Egarn said. “Can you grind a Honsun Len?”
Bernal chuckled. “I wouldn’t know how to begin.”
Egarn’s voice took on a note of puzzlement. “I thought all one-name boys learned len grinding. They do in Lant, and med servers take the most talented as prentices. This civilization couldn’t survive without Honsun Len grinders. There is an oddity about the len I have never been able to figure out. Whether it is used or not, in time it loses its effectiveness. Medical lens have to be replaced every sike and sometimes oftener—which is why med servers must become expert len grinders. That is also why the peer believed me when I told her the weapons needed new lens. They didn’t, but eventually they would have. Lant’s med servers are always looking for prentices. Are things different in the Ten Peerdoms?”
“No different,” Bernal assured him. “My schooler taught len grinding to the younger boys, and a med server looked in on the classes and gave special lessons to those who had ability. He didn’t include me. Probably the talents that made me a successful scout also made it impossible for me to sit for long hours grinding meaningless ripples in glass.”
Egarn said regretfully, “Then you have never ground even one Honsun Len.”
“According to my schooler, the mutilated objects I produced didn’t bear the faintest resemblance to one. Those ripples required a precision that seemed inhuman to me. Only a few boys had both the patience and the ability, and they were sent to a special school. When we next saw them, they were wearing their prentice smocks and bragging about their futures as high servers of the peer. I wonder what they think of those futures now.”
“Don’t Easlon crafters have confidence in the future?”
“Perhaps len grinders do. We scouts know Lant will turn westward as soon as it conquers its other neighbors.”
“So it will,” Egarn agreed. There was a note of bitter sadness in his voice. He was silent for a moment, and then he returned to the subject of len grinding. “Did your schooler tell you anything about the Honsun Len?”
“That was for the students who became prentices.”
“He should have told you as much as he knew. It has shaped your entire life. It will shape the lives—and deaths—of your children. It made your civilization what it is, and it will also destroy it.”
“We scouts aren’t much given to deep thinking,” Bernal said cheerfully. “We have to be able to do the right thing quickly without thinking at all. But perhaps if you would explain what you mean—”
“I am sorry,” Egarn said. “I would like to, but I wouldn’t know how to begin if you don’t know anything about the Honsun Len. Perhaps Roszt or Kaynor—”
“They are as ignorant as I am, but don’t worry yourself about it. If we were expert len grinders, you might be able to make us understand, but we wouldn’t have the slightest notion of how to get you out of Lant. What you need right now are expert scouts, and you have them. When you are safely across the mountains, you will find plenty of len grinders to talk with.”
Egarn’s arm was healing. He would never be able to use his hand again, but he was much more fortunate than most victims of the Lantiff’s dogs. As he became stronger, the three scouts began planning their next move. It promised to be very dangerous indeed—so risky, in fact, that Bernal brought up the subject of Egarn’s strange weapon.
“I don’t want you to use it,” he told Egarn soberly. “If you do, and there is a survivor, the peer will know exactly where we are. Her armies will stop chasing all over western Lant and start looking where they are likely to find us. On the other hand, the Lantiff have filled the forests with traps, and we haven’t time to scout out all of them. It would be far better to use the weapon in order to escape than to not use it and be captured or killed.”
“I will give it to you,” Egarn said. “You can use it when you think it is necessary.”
“But I don’t know how,” Bernal objected.
“It is easily learned. The Lantiff had no trouble with it, and what the Lantiff can learn in a week, any one-namer can master in an hour. It takes a bit of practice be accurate with it, and I don’t suppose we can risk that, but even without practice you will be at least as good as I was. If I had aimed better, that last dog wouldn’t have got to me.”
The weapon did indeed seem easy to use. One pointed the correct end at the enemy and moved a small lever back and forth—an astonishingly simple manipulation for such an overwhelming result. Bernal tried it once, inside the cave, and marveled at the smoking hole it bored through solid rock.
When Egarn was finally ready to travel, Roszt and Kaynor went to search out a safe escape route. They reported that Lantiff were building encampments all along the frontier.
“I am sorry to hear that,” Bernal said. “I was hoping the peer would have a message from the south by now about a corpse found with Egarn’s clothing and pack.”
Roszt shook his head. “I told you at the time—there were far too many corpses and far too many human vultures plundering the dead. Only an incredible stroke of luck would have got that body identified as Egarn’s before the looters stripped it completely.”
“I thought there was a fair chance,” Bernal said. “These encampments mean the peer is combining the search for Egarn with preparations to invade Easlon, and that doubles our problems. We must get out of Lant quickly.”
A trek through the mountains would have been difficult for an elderly cripple even in the best of circumstances, and they would travel in darkness, on rugged, little-used tracks known only to the scouts, and
