Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,14

hilts of main-gauches or other secondary blades.

No enemy showed itself on the surrounding field, no damage scored the walls, but the men and women who stood watch appeared to be defending against a full-on siege.

“What do you think?” Shins asked, then shook her head almost before the image of the cyclopean beast faded. “No, I don't think so. I don't see any signs it's gotten anywhere near the city, and the Houses sure as all fungus aren't going to close the gates over a rumor. For pastries’ sake, even if that thing or something like it had gotten here? My one shot couldn't drop it, but I'm pretty sure a whole fusillade or a cannonball would, yes?

“No, something else is going on here. That thing, or things, on the road was part of it. Were part of it? Does language have half-plurals? Anyway, that thing's part of it—too much of a coincidence for it not to be—but there's more.

“Heh. Mystery, confusion, and violence. Must be Davillon.”

Still she stood. Studied. Soaked in the rain.

And then decided to play a hunch.

“Home!” She dropped the bridle and gave the roan a light slap on the haunches. “Home!” she shouted again.

Without a single look back, the horse trotted forward, head hunched against the weather, making for the gate.

The voices of the sentries rang out in challenge, falling quickly into a confused babble as they realized the animal was riderless. Several guardsmen braved the rain, emerging from the shack to examine the peculiar traveler.

And examine it they did. Shins had never observed as thorough a search of entrants to the city—human, animal, or vehicle—as she saw now. They removed the tattered bits of harness, checking carefully beneath. They examined the horse's teeth, its shoes. A short argument erupted, and only when one young sentry shuffled around, sullenly and nervously, to grip the beast's tail did Shins realize where else they were searching.

“I am going to turn away, now,” Widdershins announced, as she did just that. “And you are going to swear to never, ever, put that image back in my head, or I will find a priest to bless a cabinet and so help me, I will lock you in a drawer.”

She knew full well that Olgun's silence meant only that he was humoring her, but she decided it'd do.

The horse would be fine, if perhaps somewhat mortified. Either they'd find some kin to the owner, if the torn harness gave them enough to go on, or they'd take it for use by the city. Probably the latter. Shins didn't have any particular attachment to the animal, but she was still inordinately proud of having saved it.

So, what next? Shins was fairly certain that any search the guards subjected her to wouldn't be as—invasive—as the horse's. Nevertheless, they were clearly on higher alert, more meticulous about visitors, than she'd ever known them to be, and she wasn't keen on the notion of being interrogated in general, or in trying to explain her professional tools in particular. And that was assuming none of the guards recognized her. Widdershins wasn't precisely one of Davillon's most notorious criminals, but she was a known Finder, and she'd lost her only real friend in the Guard when—

No. Don't think of that right now.

Well, there really was only one option. If she wasn't willing to risk the procedure for passing through the wall, she'd just have to go over it. Not as though it'd be the first time.

“Aw, come on,” she said to Olgun's surge of protest. “What's the worst that could happen?”

When his reply took the form of an image in which Widdershins was blasted clear off the wall by a volley of musket-fire, she merely grumbled something even the god could neither hear nor interpret, and wandered back down the road to wait for nightfall.

Heavily wooded as the region was, the grounds surrounding Davillon were largely flat and empty. What few trees remained all stood alone, or at most tiny copses, providing no hiding spot or significant cover for any attacking force. Not that Davillon had faced an attacking force since the nation of Galice was born, but one never knew.

During the day, approaching unobserved was quite impossible, assuming the sentries were semiconscious and had remembered to bring at least one eye with them that morning. At night…well, thanks to whatever had the place on such high alert, it was barely possible.

Men and women of the Guard walked the walls, stood by every gate, watching for any sign of