“We are.”
“When? We didn’t meet up with him after the river. You found a note that we were supposed to go somewhere else. A rock, wasn’t it? Some sort of landmark that would be obvious. How many days’ journey was that supposed to have been?”
“Six,” she said. “But we were chasing Alchiq, remember?”
“I thought we were looking for Istvan.”
Cnán shrugged as if to say those two things were one and the same. “We went north when we should have been going south.”
Yasper groaned. “I knew we should have stayed closer to the trade routes.”
“We’ll be there soon,” Cnán assured him.
“You still haven’t told me where there is.”
“Soon.” She nodded toward the horizon. “Can’t you see it?”
Yasper whirled in his saddle, leaning forward like a hunting dog catching a scent. He even quivered a bit in excitement. “Where?” he said, a tiny quaver in his voice.
R?dwulf pointed, and Cnán marveled at his eyesight. She knew the rock lay in that direction; she had felt the gentle tug in her belly earlier in her day that said she was going in the right direction, but she hadn’t spotted the lone finger of stone jutting up from the steppe yet. She had been looking for it, and even though the air was crystalline in its clarity, she couldn’t see it yet. But, apparently, R?dwulf could.
“A day’s ride,” the tall Englishman said.
Raphael glanced up from the tiny journal he was constantly scribbling in. “Only then will we be halfway,” he pointed out.
Yasper stood in his saddle, straining to see the tiny dot on the horizon that R?dwulf could see. “Next time,”—he sank back down—“can we pick a target closer to home?”
Cnán caught Raphael looking at her, an oddly gentle look in his eyes, and she gave him a wistful smile before ducking her head and kneeing her horse lightly to get it to trot a little faster. Home, she thought. Where is that for a lost little leaf like me?
“Oh, my friends, I did not recognize you!” Benjamin leaped down from his horse and approached the Shield-Brethren’s horses. The trader offered them a wide smile and a wider embrace, hugging each one of them in turn, except for Istvan, who deigned to get down from his horse. “The steppe has changed you,” he observed. “Well, most of you.”
“Only on the outside,” Raphael quipped, disengaging himself from the trader’s hug.
“It is a very clever disguise.” Benjamin fingered Raphael’s plain cloak, and the gleam in his eye said he had felt the ridged texture of the maille beneath the simple homespun cloth. “From a distance, you look like Kipchaks or Cumans, not altogether unusual in this region, and this one”—he indicated Cnán—“always adds a bit of Eastern flair to your company. Up close, I would still think Cumans, what with your garb and your saddles. Most would not think twice about who you were.” He tapped his forehead. “But I have traded this route too long to not notice the little things.”
“We did not expect to confound you, Benjamin,” Feronantus explained. “We only hoped to become invisible to the dull-eyed so that our passage would not be remembered or hindered.”
“It is a good strategy,” the trader nodded. “When you did not arrive at the caravanserai as immediately as we had planned, I suspected your mission had waylaid you. When the survivors of your encounter with the jaghun started to limp through, I knew you would not dare to meet me there. Fortunately, knowing your companion,” he glanced at Cnán, “I suspected you might be able to find this place.
He slapped Raphael on the shoulder. “Oh, but I have been enjoying the wild tales that have preceded you. I have heard a number of stories about Western devils rising out of darkness, spitting fire, and walking across water.”
Raphael laughed. “I suspect the last may be overly embellished.”
“It was not my place to dissuade these people of the errors in their stories. I am but a humble trader,” Benjamin said. “I would not dream of interfering with the fabrication of local legends.”
“What of Graymane?” Feronantus asked. “The one called Alchiq.”
“An elusive ghost, that one.” Benjamin’s face lost some of its levity. “As I came east, I made inquiries and heard very little. The few who spoke of him tended to whisper their rumors, as if they were worried he might hear them. Though I cannot imagine how, as everyone agreed that he was hurrying east, leaving a trail of dead horses in his wake. He asked many questions too as he rode—too many, in my opinion. He heard few satisfactory answers, which have led others to wonder about the cause of his ferocious curiosity.”
“How many days ahead of us?” Feronantus asked.