The Autumn Republic

“That’s all we need to know. Thank you,” Adamat said, getting to his feet. “I think it’s time we go. I appreciate your help a great deal.”

“Didn’t think we were much help,” Little Flerring said. “If you track down the samples Borin sold, let me know. I’d prefer they were destroyed.”

“You were a great deal of help. And don’t worry, I’ll tell you.” Adamat shook hands with Little Flerring, then tentatively grasped the Fist’s offered hook. A few minutes later and he and SouSmith were back in their carriage headed toward Adopest.

“Good to see him,” SouSmith rumbled.

Adamat barely heard him, deep in thought. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“Been a long time. Girl’s grown up.”

“Oh? You thinking of settling down, SouSmith?”

SouSmith chuckled. “Too young for me.” He paused. Then, “Why such a hurry?”

Adamat drummed his fingers on the head of his cane excitedly. “Because the Underhill Mining Coalition isn’t a mining company,” he said.

“Don’t follow.”

“They’re a club. A group of thieves and smugglers who call themselves businessmen. They meet to drink and play cards at an exclusive-and hidden-location in Adopest. Most people know them as the Underhill Society and I happen to be friends with one of their members.”

“Who’s that?”

“Ricard Tumblar.”

Nila and Olem hunted the Kez cavalry through the gorges and hills of Brude’s Hideaway for three days. On the first day a low cloud cover descended over the area, obscuring the peaks of the Charwood Pile to the west, and on the second day a heavy fog rolled in. Nila wondered if the fog had some kind of sorcery behind it, but neither she nor Olem could sense anything amiss in the Else.

It was just bad luck.

Nila couldn’t see the ends of their cuirassier lines as they swept the ridges and bends of the highlands. The sun was obscured and the whole world seemed gray.

She stood in her stirrups the third day, wondering how any man or woman could possibly stay in the saddle for hours at a time, let alone several days. Everything below her waist hurt, and most of the things above it. Her knuckles were sore from gripping the reins and her spine ached from the jolt of her horse’s stride. Her head spun from hour after hour of trying to maintain her vision of the Else, attempting to spot anything in the fog. Olem told her to drink more water.

Olem sat beside her at the top of a small hill looking to the south-or maybe the north, she couldn’t really be sure, with no point of reference. There was a white chasm at their feet where the earth dipped beneath the fog, and she couldn’t tell if this was merely a divot in the landscape or a valley a mile long.

“The good news,” Olem said, puffing on a cigarette, “is that the fog screws with them as much as it does with us. They’re left reading the ground and listening for echoes in the murk, same as us.”

Nila sniffed. He’d become progressively more optimistic as the hours rolled past. He seemed to hold the opinion that every minute they spent circling the Gurlish Wolf in the fog was another minute he wasn’t abusing the flanks of Tamas’s army. Which, she supposed, was true, if the Gurlish Wolf hadn’t slipped past them and was back on the plain already, attacking the Adran army.

“They have an advantage over us,” Nila said.

“Oh?”

“They can smell your cigarette smoke from farther away than we can see them.”

Olem took the cigarette from his mouth and stared at it sourly before putting it out on his ash-stained saddle horn and tossing it into the damp grass. “Damn it.”

They sat in silence for several minutes before Nila said, “How do they communicate in this?”

“Pit if I know. I haven’t heard a trumpet since the fog descended, so it’s not that.”

“Maybe they have a Knacked?”

“Maybe,” Olem mused. “Someone with very precise hearing. A few years back I heard a story about a pair of Knacked twins that could communicate over a hundred miles just using their minds. That kind of thing is rarer than a Privileged healer, I’d imagine.” He drew his tobacco and rolling papers from his breast pocket, stared at them for a moment, then put them back with a sigh. “No, I imagine they’ve done the smart thing and hunkered down in one of these valleys to wait out the fog.”

Nila studied the ground beneath their feet, looking at the horseshoe prints in the mud-horseshoes marked by a Kez blacksmith. The tracks led into the gully below them. The Kez had split up after being run from their camp three days before. Their tracks seemed to lead everywhere, crisscrossing and doubling back without any clear path to follow.

And like a hound looking for a scent, Olem had patiently been following every one of those trails. He kept his formations tight, his scouts plentiful, and never stumbled blindly into one of the fog-concealed valleys.

It all seemed very professional to Nila, but she wouldn’t have had any idea as to any of this if Olem hadn’t been explaining it to her along the way.

“You’re picking this stuff up quickly,” Olem said.

“What stuff?”