The Crimson Sky by Joel Rosenberg

Author:Joel Rosenberg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 1998-12-22T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Sons of Fenris

It all depended on your point of view, Ian supposed: either clouds or fog were rolling in. Did it matter? Well, maybe not, but it was nice to know the right names for things. He would have asked Ho-sea, or Valin, but — undoubtedly through no accident — Branden del Branden had put Hosea and his tired brown mare at the front of the party and Valin on his preposterously large but spiritlessly plodding black gelding in the back.

Ian turned to the soldier riding at his side. “Are those clouds or is that fog?” he asked.

The question, like all of Ian’s questions, was bluntly ignored. Apparently, the Promised Warrior could take any information — like, say, when they were going to stop for lunch — and turn it into a plan for a Vandestish invasion of the Middle Dominion.

The familiar — if only vaguely familiar — outline of the House of Fire was, if he figured it right, going to be obscured behind him, and he would have been hard put to retrace the twisting trail even on the clearest of days.

Which this wasn’t going to be.

Off in the distance, past the jagged horizon that concealed Vandescard and the gray Gilfi below, an unseasonal thunderhead rose like a white mountain. Every once in a while, there was a flash of lightning that lit it up brightly against the darkening sky, but it was far too far away for him to hear any thunder.

Well, thank goodness for small favors: the cloud bank — or fog bank; Ian refused to make a choice if the locals weren’t going to give him the full information — rolling in looked like it might well be thick and dark and wet, but there was no sign of lightning.

It covered them more suddenly than he thought it would. One minute he was riding in bright sunshine, looking at the fair hills, and the next he was surrounded by a milky whiteness, perhaps a ten-yard ring of visibility surrounding him, eerily reminding him of the gray glow of the Hidden Ways.

He had never been in such a thick fog, and he was surprised to find that it didn’t interfere with his hearing the way it did with his vision. He could still hear the clopping of the hooves of the horses out front and behind him; he just couldn’t see them.

He hadn’t seen any woodland ahead, but maybe he had missed something: he found that he had to duck under low-hanging branches that seemed to sweep out of the mist faster than the slow pace of the plodding horses.

For a moment, he idly considered leaping up into one of the trees, just to see what would happen, but...

What would that do?

Branden del Branden called for a break at an ancient stone piazza that stuck out from the side of the road, a disk perhaps twenty yards across, rimmed by a low stone lip, hanging out over damp white emptiness. They — or at least

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