Free In the Eye of Heaven by David Keck

high brows of helms all flashing under Heaven's Eye. A cavalcade of horsemen rode like something from a dream.
    "Knights," Durand breathed. As though his voice dispelled the dream, the column vanished, swallowed by some dip in the terrain.
    "Durand, what is it?"
    He waited for the glint of metal to bob back above the ridge, feeling the curl of his cloak in his fist Here, at least, was a chance at something.
    But the flash did not return.
    He wouldn't wait. "Follow me, skald!" he said, and plunged down from the headland across the patchwork mire of fields. This chance would not slip from his hands.
    Heremund chased him. "What in the Hells are you going on about? I'm not meant for vaulting bloody hedges."
    Durand jolted down the slope past toiling peasants who gaped or shouted curses. Finally, the gray swell of the river loomed up in his path. There must have been twenty paces of deep water, and, left or right, Durand saw no sign of bridge or ford.
    Heremund reeled up behind. "If you intend to escape me," he gasped, "you can't just stop here. I'm too quick for that." "We've got to get across!"
    "All right," the skald panted. "But I insist. Don't tell me anything. Not a word. Nothing that might Drive off the thought. Some fiend of the forest. Has taken hold of your troubled mind."
    The little man braced his weight on his knees, eyebrows up around his hairline, then gave up hope of getting an explanation.
    "Right," he said. "I reckon I know where we are."
    They squandered half an hour searching for the bridge, half the time walking backward. Durand kept his neck craned for a glimpse, but saw no more sign.
    Finally, the skald gestured to a broad expanse of turbulent water where a thousand small stones had forced the river out of its deep channel.
    "Here. The Ford of Coystril, I think," the skald said. "A battle was fought here long ago. Fetch Hollow's somewhere near." The little man peered up in turn at both flanks of the valley. The ruins of low walls mazed the slopes.
    Durand needed to hear nothing more. Weaving under the weight of his armor, he splashed into the river. By the time he had jogged up the far valley wall, blood and blackness crowded his vision. At the top, he found nothing but an empty road. The riders were gone.
    "There is some sign that men have passed here," said Heremund, sweating, and it did look as though something had churned up the road. "Not many," said the skald, "maybe a score. Some were on good horses, I think. Not peasants and oxen anyway. Shod hooves."
    Durand nodded. "This is where I saw them."
    "We weren't looking for oxen, then?" The little man paused. "Knights perhaps?"
    "Aye."
    "Glad you've seen fit to confide in me at last."
    The road forked near where they stood, one branch heading overland away from the river. Heremund waded into the morass, fingering the gouges and sockets cut in the mud by the passing horses.
    "We've got to overtake them," Durand said.
    "They've taken the Tormentil road. A fair-sized town hunkered on the edge of the forest a couple of leagues west of here."
    Durand checked Heaven's Eye, gauging that they had an hour or two before dusk.
    "Of course," said Heremund, "they could be stopping before then or turning up another road to go somewhere else altogether."
    'Tormentil," said Durand, feeling the sound of it. If it had a reputation, word of it had never reached him.
    "Big enough there's likely to be a tavern of sorts most nights. Decent place. Nothing else close."
    Durand allowed himself a crooked smile.
    "They're heading for Tormentil, then," said Durand, "or we won't catch them."
    "Three leagues!" exclaimed the exhausted skald.
    "Aye, Heremund, but maybe when the Eye goes down, there'll be beer."
    Dark and doubt came on.
    They slithered along the grassy verge of a track in full flood. Bald-faced rooks tumbled in bare branches, ill-omened things.
    Durand wondered what he was chasing. A band of knights might be some lord and his men traveling to Red Winding, but it could as