Page 27 (1/2)
"So bands of robbers roam the roads"
"Those were the thane’s e, what did the wizard’s eet your head knocked in?"
"Silly piece of figuring, like so scratched in a barbarian cave wall A circle--"
"With a s outstretched?"
Djer rebalanced one of his ponies’ packs and retightened the girth "Yes You’ve seen it?"
"Closer than I care to again"
"So every couple of generations"
"Will these men pursue us, once they talk to those you left behind?"
"I have friends in that village--all that talk about the thane back there was just a hurk getting too big for his boots I don’t want to spend time around Drakossozh and his on?"
"Only those that were hunting onblade’s pride, as well"
"Ach, I see Then you did kill soht for honor, but a ht for a moment "What’s the difference?"
"Honor is how others see you Pride is how you see yourself"
Auron spent weary hours in the back of the cart as the woods gave way to open lands He could no longer take breaks to walk alongside Djer at the plodding pace of his draft horses; they traveled through farons, and dispatch riders all used the road, no longer rutted and uncared for, but paved wide enough for tagons to travel abreast Djer called it the Old North Highway
Auron diverted hisDwarvish Djer started by na the road, and ite, Auron could understand simple bedtime rhymes such as Djer’s mother used to lull her son to sleep Other times they had to fall back on Parl, as when Djer told hihty root of an even es River, Queen of the Inland Ocean In better times, Hypatian culture surrounded the ocean like a crown on a head, but even the reat city"
"Will I see it?"
"No, we s at Diadees, the birthplace of the Chartered Coo past the six falls Endless trips up and down the Iron Road"
"Iron road?"
"Rails and carts, young dragon, rails and carts--as we have in the htiest creatures to walk the earth Stronger than dragons So big that they didn’t need their brains, I suppose, for while they’re the largest beasts afoot, they’re also the dues out of the water, and they pull them uphill many hundreds of quivers"
"What’s a quiver?"
"You’re ee but full of questions, Auron A quiver is a unit of h it varies between man, elf, and dwarf It’s the distance an archer can fire twelve arrows, if he paces out to the end of each one’s flight Nearly four thousand rods"