“Sure. Until it decides to balk at something like a leaf or arabbit, and I’m flat on my back in the middle of the road!”

“My Eddis, please. This just now was not a leaf, was it?”

“I-all right, it wasn’t.”

It had raised the hair on her neck: A pale slash of road suddenly darkened and sticky with blood, and a dead pony in the ditch, just around a bend in the road, where it would startle anyone, never mind an idiot horse.

“I, myself, was caught by surprise,” M’Baddah admitted. “Somuch blood, still fresh-an ugly riddle.”

“Hardly that, M’Baddah. I’ve always thought that stretch ofroad looked like a good spot for an ambush.”

“I agree. Likely the caravan that has stayed half a day aheadof us since the pass. I would say from the signs that those who laid the trap lost the battle.”

“No broken, burned-out wagons, anyway. Whoever they are, theymight have shoveled some loose dirt over the mess they left.” She shivered as agust of wind billowed her cloak. “I thought our novice there was going tofaint.” She sighed angrily. “Wretched horse. I could’ve broken my neck!”

“It takes time to bury such a mess, my Eddis. You know that.Perhaps those folk had no choice but to flee the area at once. I think we will learn what happened at the Keep.”

“No doubt,” the woman said dryly. “In other words, we shouldget moving, right?”

M’Baddah shrugged, a wide and graceful gesture of his hands.She glanced over at the priests. The novice stood with his head bent as the elder held out a cloth-wrapped bundle and murmured a prayer over it or to it-shecouldn’t tell which. Each day at this hour, he’d broken the thing out forprayers, and it took time. Just now, she was cold and cross and ready to reach the gates up there and be done with riding for the time being.