“I wish the moon would have kept its own company tonight,” said Sloat, as he glared at the offending crescent that crept above the horizon. “The more brightly it shines, the easier for the Droom to track us. If they follow us.”

Roland was too ashamed of himself to do more than blindly follow Sloat’s lead. If this latest ruse did not work, and Sloat plainly doubted that it would, Digtry and the others were dead. With Berch in tow they could never outrun the Droom, and neither Digtry nor Belfray would abandon the old farmer.

Who, then, would be to blame? Whose brain had frozen and let them run right into a Droom patrol? How could the same person who steeled himself to walk straight into the teeth of the Raxxar host completely lose his nerve over such a little, dumb mistake? How could “hero” and “coward” be such fluid terms? Were they both part of everyone’s makeup, surfacing unpredictably? He wondered, bitterly, if his encounter with the Raxxars were a fluke, and the true Roland had stepped from behind the curtain on the banks of the Glasswater.

Sloat led him up a steep bank, taking care not to dislodge the smallest rock from the loose sand. With a flick of his knife, he cut two leafy box elders and flung one to Roland. “Wipe out the trail as best you can,” he said.

“But we want them to follow us!”

“Yes. But we don’t want them to know that we want them to follow us. Believe me, no matter how we obliterate the trail, the Droom can track us. We will never shake them.” He glanced upwards again. “I just wish the moon would not make it so easy for them.”

They feathered away the evidence of their footprints as they backed off the sand onto harder ground. Tossing away his branch, Sloat said, “We have three hours until daybreak. Not to paint too grim a picture, but the distance we put between ourselves and the Droom in that time determines how long we will live.”

The night air blew through Roland’s wet clothing, chilling him until their activity could generate warmth. They ran at a brisk clip, keeping to the hard ground as much as possible. When they dipped into the shadows of the moonlight, they felt for the ground with their feet as they warded off low-hanging limbs with their hands. To keep the Droom guessing, they trotted along the tops of fallen trees and frequently doubled back on their trail. At once point they waded back into the river for a time further downstream and then looped away from it.

Shortly before dawn, they came to a trickle of a stream. They splashed through the middle of it for nearly a half mile before climbing out along an exposed basswood root. From there, they raced due east into gently rolling hills. Neither liked the fact that the woods were thinning with each step. The coarse, barren land they entered provided little cover to protect them from Droom eyes.

For a time, adrenaline fueled Roland’s effort so that he easily held the Tishaaran’s pace. But as the sun rose higher, he felt totally drained. They carried no food to replenish them and had to hoard the little water they carried. Climbing through canyons, clinging to the edges of the rock walls, scurrying under the protection of scattered screens of trees, they ran to the limit of Roland’s endurance before taking a break. Sloat said that he hoped they had bought enough of a cushion that they might pace themselves more conservatively for a time. He set a schedule of one hour of running and one hour rest. One stood guard during each break while the other slept.

When he awoke from one rest, Roland found Sloat in a crouch, studying the vista behind them. They had halted just beyond the peak of a bald cone overlooking the sagebrush steppe they had just crossed, and the even more desolate basin that lay before them.

As soon as Roland stirred, Sloat lifted his canteen and took a swallow. Pointing back over his shoulder, he smiled bleakly. “Good news. They are coming.”

Roland scanned the toasted land that spread to a distant horizon. Far down upon the plain a dust cloud rose and tailed off in the air. Below it, he could barely make out flashes of red and silver. He tried unsuccessfully to imagine any other conditions where the approach of such lethal warriors could be considered an answer to prayer.

“Then the plan worked,” said Roland, his anxiety rising. “The others got away.” Lucky them.

“That is more than I can say, begging your pardon,” said Sloat. “I see fewer Droom on our trail than I saw yesterday on the Down. Where do you suppose the others are?”

Roland had never expected that Lady Luck would let him off the hook so easily for his negligence. Of course. The Droom force had split up. They were hunting both groups. Either that or they had sent some of their party back home. “So where does that leave us?” he asked. “Can we get away from them?”

“We have but one chance,” said Sloat. He turned toward the northeast, squinting against the glare of sun. “If we can reach the Thousand Valleys, we shall be safe. Not even the Droom would openly trespass into that land.”

“How far is it?” asked Roland, pleasantly surprised to hear that there were any odds at all in favor of their survival.”

“Two days.”

He did not elaborate, but Roland could imagine those would be two very long and brutal days.

By midmorning of the next day, the disciplined ranks of the tracking party were clearly visible across the barren plain. Two columns of scarlet-robed figures in gleaming silver helmets rode two by two upon snorting brown steeds. Roland counted 32 Droom knights. Only 32. Too many for them to fight. Too few to confirm that their decoy had done the trick.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“What are the odds of us reaching the Thousand Valleys before they get us?” asked Roland. Out on the naked plain, under an empty blue sky, he felt as exposed as a fruit fly in a petri dish. The sight of the Droom grimly, steadily closing the distance between them made him almost eager for another running stint.

“I am not one to wager,” said Sloat, “and I have no gift of foreseeing the future. But I can say this. We have seen no water all day. Their horses cannot travel far without drink. They shall have to send them back soon. That is the good news. The bad is that we have no water, either. And, in the long run, Droom can go nearly as fast without horses. Horses need sleep; Droom do not. Yet, I would prefer more distance between us.” As always, he refrained from mentioning what idiot was responsible for their thin cushion.

For the first time, Sloat exposed the reservoir of gentleness that lay beneath his gruff exterior. ”You have done nearly as well as a Tishaaran so far,” he said, “but you cannot sustain the pace much longer. With so little water and sleep, I am not feeling so fresh myself.”

“Hey, I'm still good to go,” insisted Roland. He was determined not to be a drag on Sloat. He remembered the tongue-in-cheek motto of his cross country coach: “Run, run, run until you can’t run anymore. Then get up and run some more.” Yep, the old slave driver would be proud of him.

By the end of the next numbing three-hour stint, even the old coach would have been weeping with pity for him. Roland was wilting badly. His hands and feet swelled like bladders, his legs had turned to lead. His skin was crusted over from the caked sweat of the early morning. Sweat continued to leak from his pores; where in his wrinkled and desiccated body it came from he could not imagine. His saliva had dried to powder and his head spun. Only the images of hideous, sleepless eyes, the severed heads of unruly children, and his own burning flesh pushed one blistered foot in front of the other until Sloat finally stopped.

As Sloat had predicted, the Droom sent back their horses with a few of their number and followed on foot. The knights could not match the running pace of their quarry. But each time Roland and Berch rested, the Droom made up lost ground and then some.

Growing more haggard by the hour, Roland and Sloat plodded onto an arid ridge scored by a gridwork of steaming fissures. There was no avoiding these crevices that cut across their path, venting heat from the core of the earth. The worst of it was that the ruptures did not lay still. The ground shook continuously as the fissures snapped open and shut at random intervals like enormous jaws.

After a brief moment of indecision, Sloat leapt across the first shifting chasm. Taking deep breaths and planting his throbbing takeoff foot as close to the edge as he dared, Roland followed. As he leapt, he was nearly blinded by the brilliant orange glow and singed by the fiery blast that rose from the abyss. He was almost surprised to find himself land on solid ground at the other side, and he had to put out his hands to keep from falling. There was no time to celebrate his clearance of one crevice before another snapped open in front of them. He prayed that the rows of fissures would end, or at least become narrower, before his wobbly legs lost all their spring.

“The only good thing about this obstacle course is that the Droom will have to run it, too,” said Roland.

“Will run it?” said Sloat. “Begging your pardon, but they are running it.”

The Droom had drawn within shouting distance. They could hear the clink of their light armor as they bounded across the first of the gaps like a blood-red rapids cascading over a dry riverbed.

Roland flung himself across each of the last dozen fractures, his heart is his throat at each leap. With another glance over his shoulder at the pursuit, he staggered up a parched slope toward what looked to be a giant hedge. Lurching on rubber legs, he struggled to keep up with Sloat. The two of them plunged into a wall of thorny, leafless briars just as the Droom poured across the last chasm, shouting in triumph. Ignoring the deep slices into the skin, Roland and Sloat tore through the snarl of thorns until they emerged into an emerald valley.

The thorn patch formed a barrier that protected a lush paradise from the bleached, exhausted hell on the other side. Once through it, the fugitives broke out into graceful groves of oak, maple, birch, elm, and fruit trees, trimmed with meadows of grass, some higher and thicker than a ripe wheat field, others chewed down to the nub. The change in humidity was as bracing as if they had stepped into a sauna, and warm smells of growth and decay filled the air.

They dashed into a field of grass tthat waved in the wind. Fighting off clouds of leafhoppers and gnats for the cover of the nearest birch stand.

“The Thousand Valleys! We made it!” huffed Sloat. They slowed to a walk, weak with relief.

But moments later the crimson wave streamed out of the thorn hedge amid renewed shouts and pointed fingers.

“How dare they!” snarled Sloat, more enraged than frightened.

Roland gave up all hope. His legs were dead. He had done the best he could to draw the Droom away from the others. He had atoned for his cowardice. He could die now with a clear conscience, very soon by the looks of things. Yet he continued to push on, drivren past endurance through fear of fire burning his skin. He pumped his arms in an attempt to keep his numb legs moving as he trailed behind Sloat. He would run until he collapsed. With luck, he would drop dead of exhaustion and avoid further suffering.

They passed through an apple orchard, then stumbled downhill at the edge of a close-cropped pasture.

“Roland, the sheep!" Sloat pointed at a milling flock of woolly beasts ahead of them.

Roland was beyond even trying to figure out what relevance sheep had to anything at this point.

"Do you see? In trying to save our own skins, we are bringing these villains upon innocent herdsmen." Roland had no breath to answer even if had been so inclined. At the moment, he could not dredge up a pinprick of concern for any other potential victims.

He staggered past the motionless Sloat, only to be vaguely aware, some moments later, of the Tishaaran emerging at his shoulder as his moment of conscience passed. They crossed the pasture and veered around another windbreak of elms. Here they found a meadow filled with more sheep. Seeing that the Droom had fallen temporarily out of view, Roland grabbed at one last crazy notion. “Could we . . . dive in . . . hide . . . among the sheep? There’s so . . . many.”

“That would add but a few ignoble minutes to our lives,” said Sloat. “I tell you, they know how to track.”

“My stars! A Tishaaran!”

Roland wiped the sweat and crusted salt from his eyes. Before them stood a elderly man in a sparkling white robe held together by a golden cincture. He was short and broad of shoulder. Thin eyebrows arched high into his forehead, and he stroked a flowing white beard. In his other hand he carried a polished shepherd’s crook.

Sloat wasted no time on etiquette. “Droom,” he said, with a quick nod. “Closing fast.”

The stranger’s serene face erupted in surprise. Then it darkened and he shook with rage. “Droom! In the Thousand Valleys? How dare they! Quick! Through that maple stand and down the ravine. Find the third valley that breaks to the left,” he said, with a firm shove that nearly pitched the wobbly Roland to the ground. “Cover yourselves in the shelter you find there.”

They blindly obeyed his orders. Or so Roland concluded later. He himself had only one memory of the final leg of his flight. At some point, perhaps after reaching the maples, he found himself glancing backward. The old man was nowhere in sight. All he could see was a blur of sheep mingling like bees swarming a honeycomb. Goats streamed from another valley, their hooves obliterating the fugitives’ tracks.

Blinded by exhaustion, Roland lurched forward, pawing at the air until he could no longer stand. Sloat half-carried him to the wooden lean-to that stood where the valley branched into a dozen others. The next thing Roland recalled, the old man had joined them.

Without a word, he and Sloat each flung one of Roland’s arms over their shoulders and hustled him past the junction of several more coulees. They crossed more valley entrances than Sloat could count. Roland was past caring where they were or where they were going.