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horse when I was hardly big enough to walk. And I remember my father laughing as he plucked me out of the mud. I was annoyed with myself for falling off, and even more annoyed with my father because he laughed at me, but he picked me up and set me back on the horse, mud and all. Made a terrible mess of the saddle. He made me clean it off by myself later.” He swung up into the saddle. “Time to go. The horses are rested enough now, I think.”
    We progressed at a less arduous pace, keeping the horses to a brisk walk, only occasionally allowing them to break into a canter. Cullin rode easily, back straight, one hand on his hip. I watched him in mixed curiosity and puzzlement. The stories I had heard about Tyran clansmen did not lead me to believe they went around rescuing runaway slaves simply because they hated the idea of slavery. He was clearly in a hurry to get to Honandun on the coast of Isgard, but he had taken the time out from his journey to let me rest and recover a little from the exhaustion of running. I wondered why he bothered to bring me along with him, particularly why he offered me employment. I had no skill with a sword or a bow. In order to be of any use to him, someone was going to expend a lot of time and trouble to train me. He had to have a reason.
    “You still haven’t told me why you rescued me,” I said, pulling the sorrel up closer to his stallion. “Or what language that was.”
    “Tyran,” he said absently, scanning the low hills around us. “I was testing out a theory.”
    “A theory?”
    He turned and flashed a grin at me. “Your hair,” he said. “I thought you might very well be Tyran. I wondered if your mother was Tyran and taught it to you, or if you remembered it if she did.”
    I stared at him for a moment. Finally, I said: “And I answered you.” I shook my head. “But I don’t know what you said, or what I said, either.”
    He grinned again. “I asked if you’d slept well, and you said you had.”
    He suddenly pulled his stallion to a halt and dismounted. He dropped to one knee to examine the dust of the road carefully, then rose and looked off toward the low hills in the east.
    “Trouble,” he said quietly.
    “Trouble?” I repeated.
    “We’ve been following a troop of riders for the last league or so,” he said. “They met someone else here. Look at this.”
    I got down beside him and looked at the marks on the road. It was obvious, even to me, that a scuffle had taken place here, and not that long ago, either. I bent and brushed my fingers across a dark stain in the dust of the track. Blood. Thick splashes of it were still sticky in the grass along the side of the road. But whoever shed the blood either rode off with the mounted troop and their captives, or was carried away because there was no sign of any bodies.
    Cullin stood on the side of the road, looking first at the blood, then in the direction the tracks led. East. Not west toward Honandun and his business there. The sun glinted off the copper gleam of his hair and limned his beard with flame. His hand went to the hilt of the sword at his back in an automatic gesture, loosening the blade in its scabbard. One of his eyebrows quirked in speculative consideration.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “Maeduni mercenaries, I think. They took three people here.” He caught the reins of his stallion and swung into the saddle. “Those Maeduni are becoming entirely too arrogant, I think,” he said softly. “It might be time someone taught them a few manners.”
    Maeduni mercenaries, employed by the Royal House of Falinor, had made several visits to Lord Mendor’s Landholding. I watched them strut insolently around the yard, demanding and getting the best from the kitchens and wine cellars, and the best looking of the slave women to warm their beds at night. Some of them preferred boys, and got them, too. In any large company of them, there was always one who stank of magic, a warlock whose job it was to ensure