Hardan rode close to the stranger and uncovered the shielded features. He shrugged and shouted across to Kern Rensom.
"I might have known," he laughed. "It is Ylda."
"Why should I not go?" she demanded. "Perhaps it is my father or my brother who commands the soldiers. They were to be assigned to the Aba River command this term."
"So!" Hardan nodded. "You tire of us and wish to go with them. Or perhaps you wish to find them so we can mate."
The high color that flooded Ylda's downy haired cheeks was answer enough. Her chin elevated proudly, but she said nothing. And Hardan too hoped her father was serving his year, every sixth year a Consar was supposed to enter the armed forces of Tarn, for that much the sooner could they be mated.
Through the gate they rode and up increasingly dry barren slopes until they reached the jumbled hell of ridges, splintered crevices, and ragged gorges that lay above the crater's rim. They rode through the midday heat, pausing but once to soak their dehydrated garments of padded vurth in a cave-hidden pool, and then onward again until the shadows on their right grew long and dark.
"It is near," the Aarthman who guided them said. He dismounted. "Here we must leave our maars and proceed on foot if we are to surprise the sarifs."
The little party obeyed, glad of the opportunity to stretch cramped stiff limbs. They followed along a narrow shallow gorge to where it opened into a larger sunken pass. Down there, in a rock-strewn boxlike cavity, they saw movement.
"We are too late," Hardan muttered to Ylda. "Shiny leather shells and metal caps are those of Wetland soldiers. It is they who are trapped in that hollow."