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."How many?""Many, many.Twice times us, maybe.""Not good.Shoptaw, that's not good." He thought of the caves, whose mouths he had for years been trying to locate and seal.Ragnarson had a knack for discovering his enemies' weak points.He would know about the caves."Shoptaw, old friend, you know what this means?""War here." The winged man shuddered."We fight.Win again.As always."Carolan hadn't missed their uncertainty."You'd better tell Aunt Mist.""Uhn." The Captal didn't like it, though.She would want to bring in her own people.There were more Shinsaners in Maisak now than he liked, a half-dozen grimly silent veterans who were training his troops and keeping their eyes on him.iv).And the thing they fear comes upon themThe first troops came through next day, immediately behind Mist and several masked Tervola.She had said she was bringing six hundred.The stream seemed endless to a man who had often heard what terrible soldiers they were.Yet she was honest.He counted exactly six hundred, most of whom left the fortress immediately.Mist was considerate of his sensibilities.And before long Ragnarson encountered the Captal's little ambushers.The Captal followed the reports in quiet sorrow, standing rod-stiff in the darkness atop Maisak's wall.It was murder, pure and simple.The little people couldn't cope with the hairy men.He could console himself only' been with the knowledge that none of them had conscripted.They had asked for weapons.There was a fierce, bloodthirsty determination in the enemy's approach that startled and frightened him.It didn't seem characteristic of the Ragnarson who had swept the lowlands.Then he learned what had been done to Ragnarson's scouts.He was enraged.His first impulse was to confront Mist and her generals.But no, with their power they would simply push him aside and take over.He did order his small friends to cease disputing the pass.In a small way, in lessened readiness and increased casualties, Shinsan would pay for its barbarity.Ragnarson didn't come whooping in as expected, as past performance suggested he would.Many of the Captal's friends, and a startling number of Mist's troops, died before the Tervola felt ready to commit Carolan's men.Mist visited his station on the wall, from which he watched Shinsaners being harassed by bowmen."We're ready." She had sensed his new coldness and was curious.He had already told her he wouldn't discuss it till the fighting ended."You're positive she'll be safe?""Drake, Drake, I love her too.I wouldn't let her go if there was a ghost of a chance she'd get hurt.""I know.I worry like a grandmother.But I can't help feeling this man's more dangerous than you think.He knew what he was up against when he came here.Why'd he keep coming?""I don't know, Drake.Maybe he's not as smart as you think.""Maybe.If Carolan gets hurt."Mist wheeled and'went below.Soon she and Carolan, leading Kaveliner recruits, departed Maisak's narrow gate.When the swift-sped arrows dropped from the darkness, he said only, "I knew it.I knew it," and plunged down steps to ground level.In moments he was beside Carolan."Baby, baby, are you all right?"Subsequent events seemed anti-climactic.He bickered with Mist, dispiritedly."Sometimes, Drake," she once murmured, "I wish I could give it all up."iv) What does a man profit?Winter came early, and with a vengeance.The Captal had never seen its like.In normal times it would have been cause for distress.But there were no late caravans to be shepherded through the Gap.Hardly a traveler had crossed all summer.The Captal welcomed the weather.He would have no trouble with Ragnarson before spring.Mist damned it.She foresaw them facing a united Ravelin next summer.The Captal kept his winged creatures watching the lowlands.Ragnarson seemed unable to avoid success— yet each redounded to the Captal's benefit.Ever more Nordmen turned to his standard.Because of his power, he thought.Because he was the one enemy Ragnarson hadn't been able to reduce.He realized these new allies would abandon him the instant the loyalists collapsed, but that was a problem he could solve in its time.For the" present he had to concentrate on old enemies.Though his couriers brought news consisting entirely of lists of towns and castles and provinces lost, he began to hope.In the free provinces several hitherto uncommitted Nordmen were turning rebel for each turning loyalist.The edicts flowing from Vorgreberg had changed the root nature of the struggle.The issue, now, was a power struggle between Crown and nobility, one which would preserve or sweep away many ancient prerogatives.And it had become a class war.The underclasses, bought by Crown perfidy, strove to wrest privilege from their betters.The Captal contacted Baron Thake Berlich inLoncaric, a recidivist who had been captured by Ragnarson in the Gap and paroled by Fiana.The man's response had been to raise stronger forces for the rematch.He had been one of the Krief's commanders during the wars.He was the logical man to bring Ragnarson to heel.But he was a conservative of a stripe judged bizarre even by his own class.Through Berlich, using the Baron's interlocutors— whom he kept in careful ignorance of the messages they bore—he reached Sir Andvbur Kimberlin of Karadja, in Breidenbach.Kimberlin had publicly voiced displeasure with the Queen's tepid social reforms.The Captal invited the knight to help him build a new society, hinting that while he controlled Carolan, he wasn't long for this world and was looking for someone who understood, who could carry on after he was gone.As winter lugubriously progressed toward a spring that was no spring at all in the Gap, the Captal grew less and less pessimistic.The rebel coalition, spanning the extremes of political dissatisfaction and opportunism, waxed strong, reaching into Vorgreberg itself.That fell apart."Stupid, greedy pigs!" the old man grumbled for days."We had it in our hands.But they had to try cutting us out." Even Carolan stayed out of his way.He decided there was no choice but to bring in eastern troops, to give the rebels backbone.And, to use a little wizardry.News of the sudden shift at High Crag (where the ruling junta had for a decade discouraged mercenary involvement in actual warmaking), that had led to an offer of three veteran regiments to the Crown, again pushed the Captal toward despair.It was contagious.Mist became a sad, resigned woman.She returned to Shinsan to prepare a legion for transfer to Maisak when the snows melted.The Captal, self-involved, overlooked her mood.Burla, Shoptaw, and Carolan understood Mist's unhap-piness.The man she had lost, and his brother, had reappeared.In Ravelin.Working the other side again.v) Glitter of an enemy spearThree men crouched beneath an ice overhang and, when not cursing the temperature, considered the fortress west of them."It'll work," promised the one with a single eye."They can't sense us.""The spells.The spells," another grumbled
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