Blade was standing in ankle-deep grass by the edge of a shallow drainage ditch now filled to the brim with muddy water. On either side of him rose thick tangles of vines. The leaves were long and thin with a white stripe down the middle. The fruit was the size and shape of grapes, but bright blue.

The vines rose ten feet high on either side of Blade and stretched away in both directions. In front of him they seemed to go on forever, until they vanished in the rain and the mist. He turned, and saw the vines ending fifty feet away at a waist-high wall of roughly dressed stone. He started walking toward it.

The earth underfoot was rich, black, and clinging. Judging from the smell that reached Blade's nostrils, it had been recently manured. Along the edge of the drainage ditch the earth was turning to mud, and several times Blade sank up to his ankles. The grass between the vines had been weeded recently and in places showed signs of careful cutting. Blade saw nothing he could hope to use as a weapon.

He was halfway to the wall when he heard a loud metallic honk from somewhere out of sight. The damp air distorted the sound so that it was hard to be sure where it came from.

Several more honks sounded in a ragged chorus, followed by unmistakable human voices shouting in wordless anger and the soft squishing of hooves in mud. The sounds were coming closer. Blade went down on his belly and crawled the rest of the distance to the wall on his hands and knees. From the cover of the wall and the vines, Blade watched the travelers ride past him.

There were seven of them, all mounted on animals that looked like thick-legged antelopes covered with long white hair. The heads were broad and slab-sided, with large eyes set well to either side. From in front of each hairless pink ear a two-foot horn jutted forward. The points were sharp as needles, and the horns of the lead rider's mount were gilded.

The leader himself was dressed in armor that might have come straight out of some museum's medieval or Renaissance collection. It was mostly plate, with a sort of skirt of chain mail and more mail in the armpits to let the wearer move his arms freely. The helmet was a massive affair, almost completely round, with a hinged visor of close-set metal bars. The visor was raised, and the face it revealed was olive-hued and heavily mustached.