Episode 4
Returning to the Loud Earth clan with their news of the prisoners, Shade and Asta are begged to render help once again. Hoping to spare her kinsfolk an attack on the fortified garrison where the women are held, Wealsenthi asks Shade and Asta if they can free the women, while she and her best warriors go to free the men. They agree to time the attack to the third night of the full moon.
Two men of Loud Earth, Salvi and Big Seve, volunteer to go with Shade and Asta and render what help they may. On the first night of the full moon, Wealsenthi and her folk descend the mountain to free the men. On the second night, Shade and Asta, with Salvi and Big Seve, return to the High Plains, cross the mighty Asalath, and journey through the newly conquered Kingdom lands.
They come on the garrison just as the third full moon rises. Once again using her enchanted jewel, Asta views the camp, and sees the women held inside a large central palisade. Many are old and some are injured. Two soldiers keep watch from the top of the wall. She looks again, and sees another palisade, where twelve soldiers sleep, and one watches. She looks again, and sees another palisade, richly appointed, in which a captain sleeps, and a soldier watches. She looks again, and sees a fourth palisade, in which eight soldiers sleep, and one watches. She looks a fifth time, and sees a fifth palisade, in which sleep two dozen soldiers fell and mighty, and one watches.
A plan is quickly formed, and Seve, and Salvi storm the garrison, running from the cover of the river and the night. From the river a stout branch comes flying, directed by Asta's potent gaze. It strikes the watcher on the palisade of eight, and knocks him from the wall, then braces itself between the ground and the door of the palisade of two dozen. A moment later, Shade, in the form of a mountain lion, springs on the watcher of the palisade of one dozen, and knocks him from the wall. Seve locks the dozen inside with another branch, and a third, sent flying by Asta, locks inside the eight.
In a moment, the main palisade where the women are held is opened, and Salvi goes inside to set them free. The battle is one-sided, Shade leaping onto the tops of the palisades and flinging their foes to the ground, Asta seizing their weapons and pelting them with stones. The captain gives fight briefly, before he is bested by Shade and Seve together. Then a clever soldier inside the palisade of eight climbs over the wall, and frees his comrades. A shout goes up, for they are close by the palisade of two dozen, and if those are freed, the battle might quickly turn. Fortunately, Shade bounds quickly into their path, and cuts loose with a terrifying scream that turns the soldiers aside. This gives Salvi enough time to join the battle, and Asta to run up from the river, and, for the first time, Asta strikes a mortal blow.
Unknown to Shade and Asta, seven of the women refuse to flee. They know they are too ill or injured to flee, and fear slowing their comrades in the race to the river. One, however, decides to attempt it anyway, and before they have gone half a mile she is near to collapse. Shade, back in her human shape (so as not to frighten the women), carries her another couple miles, but this wearies her, and then others show signs of weakness. The burden is distributed through the band and they continue.
Asta's Strange Horse Riders
An hour later, one of the women says she can feel the drumming of horses through the ground. Asta gazes through her jewel back at the garrison, but sees nothing. She tries to look farther, but finds herself gazing on strange people, copper skinned horse riders in a dry country attacking a weary band of Nami. Some of the riders wear horse skulls on their heads, and breastplates made of bone splints and leather wrapping, others wear copper helmets shaped like vulture skulls, and copper bowls over their bellies. Mystified, she gazes no more.
Shade takes on her lion form, and runs back the way they have come, until she sees, descending from the Water Gap, a contingent of cavalry charging their way. She races back, and meets the women at the river, just a few miles from where the kinfolk are waiting with rafts and bows. A distraction is needed. One of the women has the gift of being able to plow the earth with her hands. Another can call rain. A third can kindle fire from her fingers. The third woman turns aside and kindles a fire by the river's edge, the second calls a gentle shower, and the third plows up several furrows, hoping to distract and slow the cavalry. No sooner is this done than the band sees the cavalry coming, and they flee after their comrades.
The women reach the rendevous point, and rafts are, even now, making their way across the river, but the soldiers have passed through the muddy field, and have been to the fire and found it false, and are again closing quickly. Shade and Asta and the fire-starter move to intercept, hiding in the brush along the river's edge. As the cavalry draws alongside, the fire starter hurls flaming brands, and Asta throws sticks and stones, and Shade, in her lion shape, rips the throat out of one of the horses. Fearing an ambush, the startled soldiers turn aside into the thickets once more, and the three run before them, battering, screaming, starting fires, and showing themselves quickly to keep the pursuit in the thicket. Before long the women have boarded onto the rafts, and begun to cross the river, so the rear guard abandons the soldiers and swims to safety.
Returning in triumph to the Loud Earth clan, Shade and Asta find a strange man, who looks to belong to no known people, and wears clothes from many different tribes. People call him the Tinker, as he is known to come from time to time and fix pots and pans and other items in need of fixing, make toys for the children, and tell stories. Asta amazes Shade when the Tinker recognizes her, and remembers making her a tin doll when she was a child, which Asta used to enact a sword-fight. Later, Shade amazes Asta by telling her who this man really is: one of the Seven Pilgrims sent by the Heralds of the One Who Made the World to guard against the return of the Shadow.
Wealsenthi has not yet returned with the men, but there is disturbing news. Horse riders, like to those Asta saw through her jewel, have visited the Loud Earth clan. They were the Morhirrim, who rule the Dry Plateau behind the Front Range (map), and suffer none to pass but by their leave. They said that they found Nami doing just that, the rest of the Loud Earth folk, and they would return them only on payment of ransom, which the impoverished refugees cannot now afford. Sheno says she must now leave to find Uri, and she hopes that Shade and Asta will accompany her. They agree.
