"The men need a rest," he said, as if explaining himself to his captains and Marshal Crish. "I'll give you a few moments, sir, and then we have to be moving again. This enemy doesn't rest."

Torgan nodded.

At a barked command from Stri Balkett, the soldiers broke formation. Some sat on the grass; others remained standing but pulled out food or waterskins. Jenoe, Hendrid, and several of the captains, including Enly, Gries, and Tirnya, clustered around the merchant.

"Now, what is it you believe you can do for us, Torgan?" Jenoe asked. "Quickly."

"As I told you," the man said, his voice low, "this plague was spread by cursed Mettai baskets. At one point the white-hairs who held me prisoner found a sept that had been destroyed by the plague. Apparently when the Qirsi are sickened they lose control over their magic and it destroys everything in sight. It's something to behold, I'll tell you. Fire magic, shaping: those white-hairs-"

"Is there a point to this?" the marshal demanded.

Torgan licked his lips. "Yes, of course. Forgive me, Marshal. The point is this: While we were in that ruined village, I found a piece of one of those baskets. I still have it with me."

At first, no one said a word. They just stared at the merchant, who stared right back at them, waiting for some sort of response, an expectant smile on his scarred face. As the moments passed, and no response came, the smile faded.

"Let me see if I understand this," Jenoe said at last. "There are cursed baskets out there that have spread this white-hair plague across the plain. And you have one of them? With you?"

"Not a basket," Torgan said. "Just a scrap. A piece of one of the baskets that brought the plague to this village we found."

"A scrap," Jenoe repeated, clearly skeptical. "And what do you propose we do with it?"

Torgan opened his mouth, closed it again. He eyed them with unconcealed consternation. "Isn't it clear?" he said. "Do you really need me to explain this to you?"

"You want us to use the plague as a weapon," Tirnya said. "You think that this scrap of basket can spread the illness to more settlements."

"I know it can," Torgan said. "That's how I got away from the Fal'Borna in the first place. I sickened the white-hairs who held me prisoner and then I left them. Whatever curse the Mettai first put on this basket is still there. It still works."

Tirnya looked at her father, clearly troubled. Enly was relieved to see this. Over the past few turns, as she pushed for this invasion and then for the alliance with Fayonne and her people, Tirnya had seemed to transform herself into someone he hardly even recognized. He had feared that even if she and her father managed to regain their family's ancestral home, she would have to sacrifice too much in the effort. He had feared for her humanity.

But seeing the look of fear and disgust on her face, seeing the way she regarded Torgan, Enly was reassured. He fully expected that her father would send this one-eyed merchant away. It was bad enough that they had to rely on Mettai magic in this war. But to use the white-hair plague as a weapon was unthinkable. Enly wasn't even sure he thought it possible. Fayonne seemed certain that the merchant was lying, and while Enly didn't regard her as the most reliable source of information, in this case he was inclined to agree with her. He'd never heard of any magic-Qirsi or Mettai-being able to create an illness of this sort. He couldn't begin to imagine the evil that would conceive of such a thing. But whether or not this curse was real, Enly wanted no part of the merchant or his basket.

He couldn't have been more surprised when the marshal said, after several moments' reflection, "We'll need to discuss this further. For now, Torgan, you'll ride with the army."

"Father?" Tirnya said, as if scarcely believing what she'd heard.

Jenoe glowered at her. "We'll discuss this later, Captain." He wheeled his horse away from the rest. "I want these men moving again," he called over his shoulder.

Tirnya glanced at Enly, her expression grim. But she didn't say anything more, and after a moment she steered her mount after Jenoe's.

"You heard him," Hendrid said. "Let's get these men moving."

"Make war on a demon," Gries muttered, "and you'll become a demon yourself."

It was an old expression, dating to the earliest years of the Blood Wars. "That may be the only way to win," the captain added.

Enly looked at him. "I'm not sure victory is worth it."

Gries raised an eyebrow. "Careful, Enly. Talk like that can get a man hanged."

"You disagree?"

Fairlea's lord heir gave a faint smile, though the look in his eyes remained deadly serious. "I never said that."

They fed him, which for the moment was all Torgan really cared about. They would use his scrap of Mettai basket, or they wouldn't. They'd offer him protection until this damn war ended, or they'd send him on his way, leaving him to fend for himself and avoid the Fal'Borna as best he could. For now he'd done what he could to convince these soldiers to accept his aid. The rest was up to the marshal and his captains, and Torgan couldn't bring himself to care what they decided to do.

He was exhausted and cold and hungrier than he could ever remember being. It had taken him the better part of a day to find Trey again after his encounter with Jasha's ghost. And then it had taken another half day to convince the horse to let him approach, much less ride. Not that Torgan could blame the beast. Those wraiths had left him shaken, too. He couldn't sleep for several days after.

With the moons waxing again, he tried to travel by night, but he was starting to grow weak with hunger, and suddenly his blanket and overshirt seemed no match for the cold. Progress came slowly; every unexpected sound made him jump, made his heart race. He couldn't say with any certainty which he feared more: the Fal'Borna or Jasha and his fellow shades.

Now, though, the Fal'Borna couldn't reach him, at least not without first overpowering several thousand of Stelpana's finest warriors. And despite the dread that gripped him whenever the sun set, he knew that the wraiths couldn't haunt him again, either. Not until the last night of next year's Memory Moon. If he lived that long.

He hadn't been looking for the Eandi army. He didn't know for certain where they had crossed the Silverwater or which way they would head once they were in Fal'Borna land, though he could have guessed that they would march toward the Horn. He wasn't even entirely certain that the rumors of their approach were true. He had been trying to sleep in a shallow hollow when he heard them. At first he'd trembled with fear, convinced that a Fal'Borna army had come, and that they would find him at any moment. When he realized that he was hearing his own people rather than white-hairs, his relief was so profound that he nearly wept.

He didn't wish to let on just how scared and desperate for their protection he was. Nor did he want to give them cause to doubt his version of what happened to Jasha. So he silently thanked the gods for this singular stroke of good fortune and behaved as though he had been searching for the army.

And he ate. Dried meat, hard cheese, stale bread. It was hardly the meal he had imagined again and again over the past several nights, as he tried to ignore the ache in his hollow belly. But it was better than air and water. After he had eaten his fill-he remembered being able to eat more than this; where had his appetite gone?-he began to feel more like himself. He also sensed the kernel of an idea forming in his mind, one that took him far beyond a bit of protection and a meal or two. One that might well put him on the path to regaining the prosperity he had lost.

Since hearing that an army of Eandi warriors intended to attack the Fal'Borna, Torgan had wondered what their leaders could have been thinking. The Fal'Borna were savage warriors and skilled sorcerers. No one knew better than he how merciless they could be with their enemies. And no one with any knowledge of the Blood Wars could doubt that they were more than a match for whatever army the sovereignties sent across the Silverwater.