Master (Book 5) by Robert J. Crane Page A

this one.”
    “Oh?” Andren asked, and Cyrus could see him out of the corner of his eye, tipping the tankard toward his mouth. A soft breeze whispered through the grass as the straw target rustled before him. “What’s that?”
    “Follow their path of patrol,” Cyrus said, “with a hunting party.” He let fly the arrow, and it struck the straw target squarely in the head. He looked at the skewered straw man, arrow jutting from where the forehead would be. “And fortunately, I know someone who can trace their path.”

Chapter 11
    They rode from the gates of Reikonos on the following day, crossing under the mighty wall that protected the city through the westernmost gate, called the Elf Gate because it guarded the roads leading to the Elven Kingdom. As they crossed under the wall, Cyrus stared up into the murder holes where soldiers looked down at him with little amusement through the slitted eyepieces of their helms. There was almost no traffic; trade had been severely diminished by the war.
    They rode with the sun overhead, the clear plains around them buffeted by gusty winds. Cyrus could smell autumn in the air, even without the presence of trees anywhere nearby to give a hint of the turning of the leaves. He could almost taste apple cider on his tongue, a vaguely familiar sense from his days as a child when he remembered the apples flooding in from the Northlands to the markets in Reikonos.
    He had a small army behind him, a thousand or so, roughly the size of the one he’d traveled to Luukessia with. The sun shone on his armor as he pondered that comparison briefly. Hadn’t thought of that when I made up the grouping . At least half of them were Galbadien Dragoons, masters of horseback combat. Their horses stamped along the rutted, dried-out road as they made their way toward a gradually setting sun. They made camp an hour after midnight, set out a watch, and Cyrus bedded down early—alone.
    In the morning they reassembled just after a breakfast of wizard-conjured bread and good hard cheese they carried in their packs. As Cyrus chewed on hard deer-meat jerky, he caught a sidelong look from J’anda, who was chewing on conjured bread and stroking his fingers through his greyed hair. He wore no illusion.
    “What?” Cyrus asked the enchanter.
    “Nothing,” J’anda said with a shake of his head. He disappeared under an illusion, turning his lined face into that of a much younger human. “I was just thinking how much more pleasant it is to be back in the halls of Sanctuary nearly every night instead of sleeping in the wilds and the woods like we did in Luukessia.”
    Cyrus caught the aroma of campfire smoke in his nose. “We’re never really going to outrun what happened there, are we?” He looked back at J’anda. “It left its mark on us all.” Cyrus chewed on the jerky and looked at the illusory face that the dark elf wore to hide his real one, the one that looked so much older than when he had left Sanctuary for Luukessia. “Some of us more than others.”
    “I notice your gorget hides that ugly scar on your neck,” J’anda said. His human visage wore a tight smile.
    “And your illusion covers your wrinkles and the discoloration of your hair,” Cyrus replied, suddenly no longer hungry.
    “I don’t think anyone who was with us in that land came away without some sort of mark to remember it by,” J’anda said, tossing aside the conjured bread.
    “No,” Cyrus said, looking at the army around him, the Luukessian Dragoons already saddling up. “I don’t think they did.”
    They rode west with the rising sun at their backs. Martaina was at the fore with Erith at her side, the healer following the ranger as though she might miss some critical clue at any moment. Cyrus watched it all with the eye of one who wanted little to get involved, but as the second day wore on and Erith’s horse never moved far from Martaina’s, he began to suspect that difficulty lay ahead.
    “Erith,” Cyrus said,