was largely uneventful. Periodically, we would encounter a pair of our scouts and receive a hurried and largely uninteresting report as we again picked up speed. Only as we neared our low-lying hill did the reports vary: individuals from the fleet were trading with most of the nearby farms, usually for food and whole cloth. Whether caravan or invasion, they paid in a strange gold coin and could speak our language, however accented. One other point was more ominous. Our low-lying hill was now their low-lying hill and used for much the same purpose: as a lookout that could also hide cavalry.
“There’s no point in approaching stealthily,” Eric argued. “Their watchmen will see our dust a mile before we’re within sight ourselves.”
“So much the better,” grumbled Gonnaban, “if it means answering these questions.”
He had already sent riders to the East Guard, as well as four more to circumvent our visitors and to get word from the forts themselves. If an attack were underway, we would be forced to choose between leaving the forts to defend themselves or leaving Abringol at the mercy of the strangers. A part of me admired the cunning of the plan, but another part warned that we didn’t even know if a plan existed and only chance had delivered these demons to our shores.
“And if there’s no stratagem here, no invasion,” Eric had said when we told him of our fears, “then for nothing we will have sent part of your East Guard to camp in the upper north, where the plague was fiercest.”
I had no response for him. Soldiers were meant to die, whether a lowly footman or his High General. A soldier pays his debts with blood, no matter the rank. Instead, I sent a rider to my father asking that his troops be positioned to defend Abringol. It would take a day to deliver the message and another two or three before Father’s Central Guard could reach the city. Meanwhile, a potential enemy lay three hours north of one of our largest cities and our most important port.
With all this in motion, time was drawing close to parley with the dark fleet. With our vantage point taken over, we quickly arrayed ourselves to ride directly to the outskirts of their encampment. The 500-man vanguard became our entire escort while Gonnaban stayed behind with the rest of the men. As we neared, we sent several pairs of cavalry to gather information from the countryside and watch the north and east sides of our visitors’ temporary quarters.
Resuming our trot, we approached our former spy post. If soldiers were watching, they were expertly hidden. As we passed, however, a small band of perhaps fifty dark-skinned cavalry came into view behind the little ridge. My own forces strung themselves out to the rear, providing an earlier defense against the dark horsemen. Our visitors’ cavalry made no move toward us.
A vast sprawl of tents was a blaze of color in the early morning light. Those few hundred tents of last night had grown to several thousand, and the smells of morning meals and foreign spices carried on the breeze. The main road had been left uncovered, but tents bordered it to either side and stretched for miles until the horizon was cloth roofs and the smoke of cooking fires. The few original houses of the village peeked over a sea of tents, and each house had space left around it out of, I hoped, a sense of neighborliness. A swath of red cloth fifteen feet wide lay on the ground and surrounded the massive group of tents. I noticed that the dark-skinned denizens stepped gingerly around it.
Two ships were moored at the quay, vessels larger and grander than any we had seen before, ships that dwarfed the single dock jutting out into the water. Guards stood at the foot of each ship’s gangplank.
As we drew nearer the tents, we could see children darting in and out of the spaces between them. Their laughter came to us over the sound of the waves. Periodically, mothers came out of tents and shouted stern warnings.
“Children? What sense does that make of our theories?” Eric asked the salt-scented air.
“It at least confirms that they are not all soldiers,” I said. “If we must fight them, we know they will be burdened with protecting panicked civilians.”
“True, General,” Eric said simply.
“Those tents will offer little protection from our arrows,” I continued. “Some well-placed fires would do good damage and draw their troops from the