Besides, he thought-the reasoning of a White Raider, Ingold would tell him, but he was a White Raider, and the reasoning was logical-bandits might have weapons and horses that could be appropriated.

Instinct made him seek the trees as quickly as he could. From the stones called the Four Ladies at the glacier's foot one could see all the clear land of the Vale. He worked his way carefully under cover of the woods up to the round meadow where Linok and Hethya had camped.

He did not seriously think that anyone was watching from the Four Ladies, but there was no point in giving anyone a hint of his movements or intentions.

He had not seen tracks of bandits yesterday, he thought, nor the day before. The watchers on the Tall Gates that guarded the lower pass to the east had not sighted them, either.

Odd.

From the edge of the trees he scanned the pale sky northward, orienting himself. His upbringing in the Real World had taught him to learn every facet of his surroundings, tree by tree, gully by gully, mudflat, spring, and stone. He knew Renweth Vale as well as he knew the ranges of his childhood, the Haunted Mountains and the Night River Country.

Had the sky-shadowing devil-birds of legend carried him off and set him down anywhere in the range of the Talking Stars People, he would have been able to determine where he was, where the nearest cover lay, where to find water and in what direction to walk to come to the steadings and horse herds of his people were it winter, or their summer hunting camps wherever they might be, depending on the rains and the grass.

Therefore he knew exactly where the lightning-scarred elm tree and its three sisters lay.

And above them, there were no carrion birds.

Scrupulous bandits? In his experience bandits didn't even bury their camp garbage, let alone their dead.

When he wanted to, the Icefalcon could travel very swiftly, but the terrain here was rough, cut with streams and dotted with pale boulders among the trunks of pine and fir. It took him over an hour to reach the place, and when he did the sun was barely a hand span above the marble-white knife of the Great Snowy Mountains in the West.