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learned eye found plenty of clues nonetheless. The mare was a sound beast but no prize of the herd, only a few steps above a cull, but she was well shod for hard riding over bad ground. Who would buy such a poor beast and then shoe her so well? Who would have been riding out here, away from the road? She was certainly no soldier’s mount. And what manner of fool left riderless on Bregond’s plains would have stripped no meat from the carcass, not even the prized heart and liver, yet bothered to carry the heavy tack away?
    Then again, perhaps the rider had walked to the garrison. It would be sensible for a stranded rider to carry his weapons and supplies with him for that journey. But again, why carry the heavy tack? Thievery couldn’t possibly be a concern, not when the nearest human beings were the soldiers at the garrison.
    Then Peri’s eyes swept over the scene again. Scattered droplets of blood and crushed grass bespoke a struggle, and the tracks of at least four more horses led into the grass, toward the spring rather than the garrison. Peri’s heart pounded as fiercely as Tajin’s had.
    Someone fought hard and lost. Someone was carried away.
    Without thought, Peri bent low in Tajin’s saddle and urged her mount slowly forward along the trail, her ears straining, her nose sifting through the scents Mahdha brought her. When her instincts told her to dismount, she did, sliding from the saddle and giving Tajin the three pats to signal him to stand. Her sword, well oiled, slid silently from its scabbard and she almost absently tested the draw of her knives.
    There was a camp by the spring, a tiny, smokeless peat fire, carefully screened. The five figures around the fire did not speak, wore simple cloaks that concealed their clothing; but the movement as one of them reached for the pot over the fire exposed a swarthy hand and wrist and the sleeve of a black leather tunic studded with bone beads, and the sight of that tunic and hand told Peri all she needed to know. A shock ran through her.
    Sarkonds!
    Sheer amazement almost startled a gasp out of Peri. Since the alliance between Agrond and Bregond, the Sarkonds to the north were Bregond’s only enemy—and since the war, since the Barrier, even they had ceased to be a threat. Raids by the vicious nomads that swept down from the Sarkondish steppes to steal horses and supplies were rare now, partly because the Barrier foiled any attempts to scry out Bregondish patrols or rich targets, partly because of the border garrisons maintained by Agrond and Bregond alike, and partly, it was hoped, because Sarkond had taken such a beating in the war that they no longer dared attack.
    But here were Sarkonds in Bregond again.
    Bright Ones, what in the world are they doing here? Not a raid, not with just five of them. And there’s nothing out here but the garrison, nothing to raid, anyway. Are they spies? Saboteurs? Assassins?
    A low moan drew Peri’s attention to a sixth figure she hadn’t noticed before, huddled on the ground a few feet away. The moan sounded male, but it was impossible to tell—the figure was almost completely swathed in cloth and bound in a tight web of ropes, one of the ropes connected to a stake driven deep into the ground.
    Abductors!
    Peri’s breath shortened. Whoever had been riding the mare, despite his pitiful mount, he was apparently important enough to rate five Sarkondish soldiers to hunt him down—five Sarkondish soldiers willing to ride within sight of a Bregondish garrison. The Sarkonds had bound their victim tightly in time to keep him from suicide so far; possibly they could prevent it long enough for him to fulfill whatever purpose had made them seek him out in the first place—certainly long enough to subject him to the tortures for which Sarkonds were renowned. But if he could be rescued ...
    A great warrior could do it. Someone MEANT to be a warrior, destined to follow the sword. Anybody would have to admit that. Even High Lords and