Hallsfoot's Battle Read Online Free PDF Page A

has.
    When they are through to the other side of
the woods, he pulls the stallion to a halt. As Ralph expects, he
tries to fight the command and maintain his gallop, but at the last
the Overlord is stronger-willed. He pats the horse’s neck once
more, whispers words of endearment and feels again the thrill of
Nightcloud’s colours in his mind. As he dismounts, looping the
reins over one arm and staring out at the mountains, the horse
whickers at him.
    The mountains are not what they once were.
Since his return here, even the shape of the horizon has changed.
Where once the southern hills reared their mystery at the Lammas
outer boundaries where none dared go, now their height is shattered
as if a great rock from the sky has blasted them out of existence.
That, too, is surely the mind-executioner’s doing. It occurs to him
that each of the battles fought, and the damage caused on the
journey they took in pursuit of the scribe and the Gathandrians,
has had an echo here in the Lammas Lands also. Is that true for all
the lands then? If so, there must be some kind of link, however
fragile, between them all. The thought of that makes Ralph shiver
and he turns aside, reaching into his cloak for the packet he has
hidden there.
    At the same time he is trying not to think of
it, forcing his mind to build its walls of defence as Simon taught
him. As distant from him as the mind-executioner is, Ralph is still
wary lest his enemy pick up the tenor of his thoughts. If he reads
them, Ralph has to hope that the executioner only understands the
broad stroke of his mind. As he brings the bundle out into the
morning light, Nightcloud snorts and tosses his head at him, but he
pulls back on the reins and whispers until the horse is soothed
again. It is impossible for him to know what Ralph is doing, but
Nightcloud must have picked up on his trepidation.
    He opens what he is holding and the green
rocks catch the light. He dares not look at them too closely for
fear of what he might find there—the seven Tregannon emeralds. A
secret kept hidden through the generations for fear of mockery and
death, and something bequeathed to him from his father, and from
his father before him. And so on, until the annals of the past
disappear entirely when none can discover them. Their strength is
untested and Ralph is not sure precisely how their power is
fathomed. But he believes in their wisdom, the one faith he has
kept from boyhood, and he intends to rely on their help now.
    Which is why, for the first time in many
year-cycles, he finds himself kneeling on the rough ground, out of
sight of all prying eyes, and whispering words of need and
desperation into their green clarity.
    “Please, our family legends say you are the
key that unlocks our salvation and I have nowhere else to turn. I
do not know how to use you, but I am asking for your help to save
my people and this land. Please, give me a sign that I can know you
have heard me. And show me what to do.”
    Ralph waits. For one heartbeat, and another,
and then another. Nothing happens, though he had not known what to
hope for. Still, he had expected rather more than clear sky and a
silence broken only by Nightcloud’s munching and the distant shriek
of a field-crow. A little more time drifts by before he struggles
to his feet, already cursing himself for his childishness and
feeling the unsteadiness of his leg again. Does he truly think a
mere legend can save them? This is real life and he cannot escape
it.
    And already time has flown faster than Ralph
wished for. In the east, dark clouds threaten the sky’s deep peace
and his heart thuds a warning. Soon the men in the fields will
begin to prepare themselves for rain, perhaps a winter storm. They
will be wrong. Because his mind is humming with a sound that he
knows will soon reach an almost unbearable intensity. There is
little time. He must ride back while he still can. He must prepare
himself.
    For before long his enemy will come on the
wings of the