“It will not be two seasons, Olikea. I hope it will not be much more than two days. This I have decided. Tonight we send word to Kinrove and Dasie. I will take the force that we have, and we will attack Gettys. We will make the cold and the snows our allies.”

He looked around at their disbelieving faces and smiled grimly. “Fire will be our primary weapon. This is the plan. I will take our forces back to the western side of the mountains. We will go prepared to endure the cold and snows, but only for a short time. We will quick-walk down to Gettys in the darkness of the deepest cold of the night. Some will hide in the town around the fort. Others will help me dispatch the sentry on the gate. Quietly. Then we will enter. I will make maps of the key places to set the fires. At my signal, the town fires will be set, also. As soon as the archers outside the walls see the flames rise, they will let fly with their arrows, to start fires on the upper walls and watchtowers where the soldiers cannot easily douse them. I only wish that we had more than a dozen of the basket arrows.

“It will be crucial that we free the prison laborers. They have no love for their wardens and their release will add to the confusion. With luck, they may turn and attack those who have treated them so cruelly. We will set many fires, too many for them to fight. When the soldiers flee the flames into the street, we will have a chance to kill many of them while they are panicked and unarmed. That state will not last long, but while it does, we will take advantage of it.

“When they begin to rally, we will fall back. As we move through the town, we will kill any in our path. We will quick-walk our retreat, vanishing into the night. We will wait, giving them time to battle the fires and exhaust themselves. Then, when they think the crisis is over, we will quick-walk again into their midst, to kill again. If we have time, we will set more fires.”

He fell silent. No one spoke, staring at him.

“If once is not enough, we will return three days later. We must be prepared to keep a guard on the road to the west. No courier must ride out to report what is happening. Gettys must simply disappear. After we have killed all of them, every structure there must be burned completely to the ground. Completely. When the supply wagons come next spring, they must find nothing there, not a wall, not a bone. Nothing.”

He said it as calmly as my father would speak of clearing a field of stones or of doing the autumn slaughter. Those around him nodded, heartened by his speech, as if there were no human deaths involved at all.

Jodoli spoke hesitantly. “But what of your previous proposal? That we would negotiate with them, perhaps with a treaty that appealed to their greed?”

“Later,” he said coldly. “I have decided that will come later. When they decide to try to rebuild Gettys. Then will be the time to confront them. For now, the plan is simply to kill. And when Gettys is destroyed, Kinrove will have no further need for his dancers. They will be free.”

Olikea took a breath and spoke hesitantly. “Can you truly do it so quickly? Can you bring Likari back to us?”

I felt the doubt that he dared not bare to them. Aloud, he spoke with confidence. “I can. I will.”

I feared that he was right.

CHAPTER TWENTY

BATTLE PLANS

It was dark in the mountain passage, and cold. Images of the passing terrain blinked before me like pages in a book, turned before my eyes could focus on the print. Only torches lit our way as we quick-walked. Ropes of ice twined and coiled down the stone walls. Horses’ breath stood out in plumes of steam. The Speck warriors, unnaturally bundled in furs and wool against the cold, walked awkwardly on the slick ground. The waterway that had gurgled to one side of the passage the last time I had traversed this pass was frozen solid.

The sounds of our passage came in pieces. Creak of leather and clop of hooves and resounding echoes were stuttered with silence. Murmurs of complaint from the men and the occasional harsh laugh or curse. The distant crash of a falling icicle, big as a man. Soldier’s Boy’s army was on the march toward Gettys and slaughter.

He had kept his word to Olikea. Scarcely three days had passed since they had gathered around the fire to discuss Likari’s fate. The events of the following days had occurred so swiftly that whenever I thought of it my mind spun. Jodoli and Soldier’s Boy had called a meeting with Kinrove and Dasie. Both of the other Great Ones had been startled by their demands for immediate action. The Specks, I discovered, dreaded cold, and both Kinrove and Dasie argued against the wisdom of sending their warriors forth to fight their first battle in such an alien environment. But Soldier’s Boy had prevailed, pointing out truthfully that if they struck now, the deep cold of winter would do half their work for them. He spoke earnestly of burning the supply houses and barracks and as many homes and stores as would catch fire. In detail, he explained how the intruders’ food supplies would perish, along with the tools and the men who could use them. Destroy the ability of the Gettys folk to rebuild, and they must either flee back down the King’s Road into the barren winter weather and impassable snows or stay where they were, to freeze and starve. Either way, the cold would make an end of them, decreasing the work for the warriors.