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Chapter 29

‘The beach has changed, friend Sparhawk,’ Kring was saying ‘When you get close to the cliff, there’s about a mile of what used to be the sea-bottom that’s out of the water now’

‘It looks as if Bhelliom pushed the land to the north of the break underneath the rest of the continent,’ Khalad added ‘It sort of slid under and pushed this side of the crack upward to form the cliff That’s what raised the sea-bottoh, so the sea went a couple ofup out of the water The break was clean and straight back where hen the earthquakes started, but there were a lot of landslides out here on the coast There are big rocks sticking up out of the water north of the cliff’

‘Where are those Edomishmen you mentioned?’ Vanion asked

‘Up near the top of the cliff, s down to the edge of the water That’s where they’re building the rafts’ Khalad paused, his expression slightly critical ‘They aren’t very good rafts,’ he added ‘If the Trolls try to coet their feet wet’

‘He’s his father’s son, all right,’ Kalten laughed ‘Why do you care whether or not the Trolls get their feet wet, Khalad?’

‘If you’re going to do soht, Sir Kalten,’ Khalad said stubbornly ‘I hate sloppy work?’ Vanion asked ‘What was its naessa replied ‘It’s over in Atan’

‘What are they doing?’

‘It’s a little hard to tell from the top of the cliff’

‘Where’s the border between Tamuli proper and Atan?’ Tynian asked

‘There isn’t any real border, Tynian-Knight,’ Queen Betuana told him ‘It’s just a line drawn on theup here on the North Cape A land where the sun goes down in the late autu and where the trees freeze and explode in midwinter doesn’t attract too many settlers The western part of the cape’s supposed to be in Astel; the middle’s in Atan; and the east is called part of Tas like that The land belongs to anybody foolish enough to live this far north’

‘It’s about a hundred and fifty leagues to Tzada,’ Engessa told theood week’s travel for a Troll,’ Ulath said ‘How far along are the Edouess that they’ve got a good ten more days before they finish’

‘And in ten days the pan-ice out to sea should be thick enough to hold the weight of the Trolls,’ Ulath concluded

‘Cyrgon willso,’ Bevier noted ‘The Edomishmen will have their piers coh to walk on, and if the Trolls set out froet here just when everything’s ready’

‘We have all sorts of options here,’ Vanion said ‘We could destroy this southern pier and leave the Trolls stranded out on the ice; we could just wait and i’s ships to assault them while they’re on the pier itself; or we could…’

Queen Betuana was fir, your Majesty?’ Vanion asked her

‘We don’t have thatis the daylight here now, Engessa-Atan?’

‘Not much more than five hours, Betuana-Queen’

‘In ten days it won’t even last that long Do ant to fight Trolls in the dark?’

‘Not even a little bit, your Majesty’ Ulath shuddered ‘The point is that we don’t really want to fight thenore all this construction work here on the coast, you know Sorgi’s ships could ferry us around these work-gangs and put us ashore far enough north of the escarpment so that Bhelliom won’t set off a new batch of earthquakes, and then we could have it carry us directly to Tzada’

‘That’s a good plan, Ulath-Knight,’ Betuana agreed, ‘except for the ice It’s already for out there, you know’

‘Aphrael,’ Sparhawk said to the Child Goddess, ‘could you melt that ice for us?’

‘If I really had to,’ she replied, ‘but it wouldn’t be polite The ice is a part of winter, and winter belongs to the earth The earth is Bhelliom’s child, not mine, so you’ll have to talk to Bhellioed ‘Why not just leave that up to Bhelliom? Tell it that the ice is a probleot a lot to learn about the etiquette of these situations, Sparhawk’

‘I suppose so,’ he ad that doesn’t come up every day, so I haven’t had much practice’

‘You see what I reen logs lie so low in the water that you couldn’t lead a donkey along that pier without getting him wet all the way up to the hocks’

‘Hoould you have built thes – one layer across the top of the other’ The two of the the Edo on the rafts The first part of the pier was already anchored in place, and it jutted about a quarter of aadded to the outer end as quickly as they were coe man in a bronze mail-shirt and horned helht with hi those poor peasants to the point of exhaustion Rebal’s running around waving his ar to look ie The peasants don’t see to them by hand’ Khalad scratched his short black beard ‘You know, Sparhawk, if we killed hihts would chase Rebal and his peasants half-way back to Edoet close enough to kill hih, Sparhawk I could kill hiht here’

‘He’s two hundred and fifty paces away, Khalad Your father said that the e with a crossbow is two hundred yards – and even that involved a lot of luck’

‘I’m a better shot than father was’ Khalad lifted his crossbow ‘I’ve thened the arh, believe raphic picture Let’s go talk with Vanion’ They slid back down the back of the knoll, mounted their horses, and rode back to their hidden encampment Sparhawk quickly explained his squire’s plan to the others

‘Are you sure you could hit hie, Khalad?’ Vanion asked a bit skeptically

Khalad sighed ‘Do you want a demonstration, my Lord?’ he asked