to escape Ke and River. This is one print. One hatchling. How many others might there be? We have to take that into account.”
Nettle had a point, but sometimes you didn’t have time to reconnoiter and strategize. “If you’d been in my shoes this morning,” said Talen, “River and Ke would have had you before the chase began because you’d still be deciding which way to run. Sometimes what’s required is immediate action.”
“Yes, just do the first thing that comes to mind. That will win wars and conquer nations.”
Nettle heard a lot from his father and his men about battle. But just because his father was a man of battle tactics didn’t elevate Nettle to the same level. “You only get a perfect plan after the fact, Nettle. A good plan, boldly executed now, is far better than a perfect one next week.”
“If they’re Sleth,” said Nettle, “then a hasty plan will get us both killed. I just want to make sure we do this thing in a way that will show everyone what we’re capable of. Not a way that backfires on us.”
Nettle was right, but that didn’t make his resistance any less annoying. “Fine. Then let’s look for more spoor, or are you just going to stand there dripping on the bricks?”
Talen and Nettle found two other sets of prints: one by the privy and the second in the mud by the pigpen. Nettle had just measured the one by the pigpen with his hand and concluded they had found prints that belonged to two different people, not one, when a man spoke from behind them.
“What have you got there, boys?”
Talen turned. A huge, armed man stood only a few paces away. His dark beard was long and unkempt like the fur of a shaggy dog. The tusk in his wrist tattoo marked him as Fir-Noy. But his tattoo had been extended. He’d seen that same design on the Fir-Noy that had set the Stag Home villagers on him. But even that tattoo had been extended. The man’s belt and leather cuirass drew Talen’s attention. A blue hand was painted on the right breast of the cuirass. Each of the Nine Clans had many orders; the blue hand was one of the smaller Fir-Noy orders, but it was not made up of common men. This was an armsman, a professional soldier. His military belt with its ornate buckle and honor disks confirmed it. Only an armsman was allowed to wear that belt and the leather apron straps signifying his seniority.
“Armsman?” Talen asked. “Zu?”
How had this man sneaked up behind them? The dogs began to bark, and the shock of this man standing here hit him. Talen stood in alarm and glanced to the fields and river, looking for others.
“We’re all about, boy,” the man said.
Talen had expected some reprisal from the Fir-Noy at Stag Home. But he thought it would come as a fine levied by the Shoka authorities. He didn’t think the Fir-Noy would send his men, and certainly not so quickly.
The cords of the muscles on his arms and neck stood out. Most soliders were levied from the ranks of the common people for a battle or watch, but it was always temporary; they served, and then went back to their lives. Commoners practiced regularly, it was true, but that could not be compared to the armsmen who did nothing but practice war. And not only was he an armsman, but the dark feathers in the tubes on either side of his untied helmet marked him as someone who held authority. Not a leader of a hundred, but a Hammer, someone marked for his performance in battle, someone who had proved himself and was marked for others to follow. Talen suspected this one had probably killed many men.
“Nothing terrible needs to happen here today,” said the man. “We just need your cooperation. You ought to start by calling your dogs before they get hurt.”
Talen didn’t believe a word of it. Somebody was going to get hurt. Something valuable was going to be taken.
The armsman had tied a piece of black cloth around his left upper arm. It signified he was a Sleth hunter.
“Call your dogs,” the man said again.
Talen called out for the dogs, but they did not come.
“What are you doing here?” asked Nettle. “This is Shoka land.”
It was rude for Nettle to address the armsman without the formal “Zu.” Uncle Argoth as a captain for the Shoka was a rank above this man. But