Willard herded the ponies onto the open deck of the remaining ferry. The shouts and scurries of its deckhands choked off the moment they sighted Molly and knew it was their fate to carry her across the water. Several retreated to the dock, while others hid in nooks behind the engine rooms; the woodmen dumped a hurried load of firewood in the holds and departed as soon as Molly's hooves drummed past them to the foredeck, where Willard reined her in with his ponies and mysterious passenger. At Willard's signal, the pilot rang his bell, the toolers engaged the engines, and the ship set out at full steam in Kogan's wake.

A glance back at shore confirmed that Sir Green and his company were descending the valley for the dock.

Ahead of him, Kogan's ferry plowed along, heavy in the water with peasants and beasts. Their boarding had been rushed, or Willard would have given orders for them to follow him across. He hadn't expected Kogan to signal the departure.

Willard shouted to the pilot above the din of the wheels. "Pull ahead! I must land first."

The pilot's pale face appeared above the bridge rail, nodded once, and disappeared into his booth. A bell rang. More bells answered in the engine rooms, and the rhythm of the engine beams increased, churning the wheels even harder. The ferry drew up on the stern of Kogan's vessel, which labored low in the water, then veered to pass on the downstream side. As Willard's boat drew abreast, a spine-ripping shriek erupted from its starboard engine house. Brilliant steam burst up through its roof, splintering planking and blasting it into the air.

The starboard wheel halted. The ferry swerved downstream, staggering Molly and the ponies sideways. Thankfully the ponies were too weary to spook, but Molly whirled and snarled and pawed the planks.

Bells rang, men shouted, toolers ran from one engine house to the other as the ferry lost way and spun wildly down the current among the shoals.

The pilot managed to slow the port wheel and correct with the rudders enough to halt the spin and turn it upstream. By the time he had matched speed against the current, however, they held position many boat-lengths down the river, and Kogan's ferry was far ahead and nearly at the harbor landing.

Willard's pilot appeared before him on the deck, hat in hands. He bowed from a respectful distance. "Begging your pardon, Your Holiness," he said, voice trembling. "A hot-pipe blew. Lucky the whole kettle didn't go. That would've done for us all. We'll make it across, I reckon, but only just."

Willard nodded. The man bowed, backed, and scurried up the ladder to his bridge.

"Things go from bad to worse," said the ambassador. "Look. Your friend's ferry has landed, but Sir Green's master moves ahead of us."

The Sapphire's ship, which had been churning steadily up the opposite shore as Willard's limped along, now crossed their path to the landing, at a distance of two or three bowshots ahead.

"Black Moon take it," Willard muttered. "The cards are not falling in our favor."

Brolli turned his peep-hole toward Willard. "Do you think this Old One is on that ship?"

Willard frowned. "I don't know. If he is and he disembarks to meet us on the shore, however, there will be only one course of action left to us: we turn this limping ferry downstream and hope to lose them under cover of darkness. You'd be safe if we could make it all the way to the court."

Brolli shuddered. "No. I did not feel safe there. That is why I left. I wish to take my chances on this road."

Willard's brow lowered in concern. "Ambassador, you may not think much of our queen or her ways, but she has brought peace to our land, and abolished slavery and many other wretched things. You must see what we are now, in the light of what came before. Before Evandora, when the Old Ones ruled, there was no peace. War is their religion. And they do not hang their enemies, Brolli. They torture and dismember, using Phyros blood plasters to heal over the amputations so their victims survive to live long lives in West Isle trophy halls and entertainment at banquets." Brolli made a small sound of surprise. Willard nodded. "Indeed. There will be no quick death by arrow for me. If I'm taken, I'll spend my days at the foot of an Old One's throne, a limbless footrest."

Brolli said nothing for many heartbeats. "I see. This also for me, if I'm caught."

"No. They don't hate you, Brolli. They just want you dead, to start a war. With me, it's personal. They can't devise punishment enough for my crime."

Brolli's head quirked to the side under the blanket. "Which crime?"

He heard the jest in Brolli's tone, but there was more to it than playful taunt. The ambassador wanted to understand Arkendian culture and also who he was dealing with, and it wouldn't do to distort or sugar the truth. Deception was what drove Brolli from the court in the first place. "I've committed a few crimes over the course of seven lives, Brolli. Fewer, I like to think, than some commit in one. But as far as the Old Ones are concerned, my only crime is that I spilled the Blood of the God."

A pulse of guilt surprised Willard, and his lip curled in disgust. It was the Blood in his veins, absorbed through the plaster, twisting his mind, tormenting him for his ancient sin. He gave himself a shake, and Brolli must have noticed, for he grew still, watching.

"This god," said Brolli, his tone newly serious. "You call him Krato, yes? It is his blood in the Phyros? And when you immortal, it run in you?"

The Blood craving howled in Willard. If it were anyone but the ambassador, he'd have bid him hold his foolish tongue. With an effort, he said, "Yes. Krato's blood runs through Molly and all her kin. And when I was immortal..." He took a deep breath. "I bled her and drank of it regularly, as the Old Ones do of their Phyros."

"Little gods."

"Not so little, as you may see."

"And you killed them in this Cleansing your people sing on? That is your crime."

"Oh, I've killed my share, but that's not a crime to them; it's rotting hard to do, so they respect it. My crime is that I ignored all that and taught the world to slay their Phyros." A throb of guilt rose up, amplified by his irrational craving for Blood, and he clamped his jaw against a growl of frustration. "Moons take it, Brolli, I can't speak of it-" he began, but it was but a mutter between clenched teeth, and Brolli spoke over him.

"That thinking was wise!" Brolli said. "You slay the Phyros, and you slay Old One. They sing you for good." Brolli's head tilted sideways as if regarding Willard from the corner of his eyes through the peephole. "You are god-killer. You are a complex-ated man."

Willard chewed his moustache a few times before he trusted himself to speak. "I did what had to be done. Just be sure to kill me if I'm captured."

By now they were close enough to see the nature of the harbor: a vertical fault in the granite had opened to form a wedge-shaped bay just big enough for a single ship to slip the current and land upon a little beach at its head.

Kogan's flock had already disembarked their ferry. Some of them already formed an ant-like line across the Hanging Road as it rose from the beach and cut back across the wall of the harbor on its way to Gallows Ferry. Willard could see now that the Hanging Road was a natural ledge in the face of the granite, wide enough for a wagon and horseman abreast. The ledge angled steeply up from the beach and westward across the wall of the harbor. Above the mouth of the harbor, it cornered sharply northward onto the cliffs of the river proper, and from there continued above the river toward Gallows Ferry.

It was there at the point of rock above the mouth of the harbor that the locals had erected their namesake monument.

"What is that tower above the harbor?" Brolli asked.

"That's the gallows."

Brolli tilted his head beneath the blanket. "A place for hangings? It is too big for that. I think it is a watch tower."

As they drew nearer, the dangling corpses became unmistakable. Six hung down from a long timber boom stretched out above the water, while lesser booms suspended iron gibbets of bleached bones. The thing was enormous, the size of a siege tower, Willard realized, though at a distance the sheer scale of the Godswall had dwarfed it to near insignificance.

"Your people are too fond of hangings," said Brolli, grimly.

The Sapphire lord's ship slowed before them, waiting, perhaps, for Kogan's ferry to clear the narrow harbor. Willard's ferry approached it from downstream, near enough to pick out individuals on the decks, though not near enough for hailing. Willard scanned the figures that appeared above the rails. No gigantic blue-skinned immortals. So far so good.

However, a small commotion on the bow of the ship caught his eye. A group of men had gathered on the forecastle, where they had hoisted a hanged man from a flagstaff. Willard cast a glance at Brolli, who, thankfully, was fussing with something under his blanket. He peered more intently at the hanged man. No, not a man. It didn't hang heavy enough to be a man. It was an arming manikin, adorned in orange armor.

Recognition took Willard like a hammer to the gut.

"Tam," he breathed. His squire, captured only two nights before. He couldn't fail to recognize the boy's equipment: the foolish spray of victory feathers on the helm, the orange bastard belt at the waist. And he knew without studying what the armor's missing gauntlets signified. They'd taken his hands. Or wanted Willard to think so. Perhaps it was a bluff, intended to enrage him into folly.

For a moment Willard was unsure if he still sat his saddle, or if he'd fallen and was reeling about the deck. Then a grim calm descended, and his resolve returned. Do they think to fright me with this, a mere shadow of the horrors we knew in the Cleansing?

"Is something wrong?" Brolli twisted around to peer up at Willard through his peephole.

Willard shook his head, curtly. The position of the ships altered again, and the scene on the bow disappeared from their view.

Kogan's ferry was leaving the harbor. It churned past the bow of the Sapphire's ship to turn promptly downstream, as Willard had instructed its pilot. The crew would find a down-river anchorage, and douse its fires, rather than return this night for Sir Green.

Shouts erupted on the decks of the Sapphire's ship as they understood the ferry pilot's intent. Whistles sounded, signal flags waved from the bow, trying to redirect the fleeing ferry, but the ferry pilot resolutely ignored them, fairly flying down the current with its chimneys belching flame.

When it was clear the ferry was lost to them, the Sapphire's ship abandoned its whistles and flags, and made for the landing. It drew into the little wedge of harbor and made fast to the dock at the very foot of the mile-high Godswall.

Willard's pilot held position outside the harbor as men and horses and armored knights disembarked the Sapphire's ship and mounted on the beach. When the ship pulled away and exited the harbor, Willard could see the entire company milling on the steep gravel beachhead. He counted ten knights with lances and armor, in blood ranks ranging from gentleman saffron to noble blues.

Willard exhaled. No immortal, gods leave us. We still have a chance.

The Sapphire himself rode among his men, in gleaming blue armor, riding a dapple bay stallion. He turned his horse and led his company clattering up the Hanging Road across the sheer wall of the harbor.

"This Old One must still be on the road behind us," said Brolli.

Willard glanced back across the river, where the lack of ferries had stranded Sir Green and his band. The Sapphire's ship now appeared to be feeling its way across the unfamiliar channel to retrieve them. May they run aground in the attempt.

"We'll take our chances passing through Gallows Ferry," Willard said. "The Sapphire still thinks he's dealing with an immortal, so he'll pursue the strategy of following and watching until his Old One arrives to deal with me. However, we have to expect he'll still have his crossbowmen take shots at you."

"In Gallows Ferry?"

"Unlikely. They won't want witnesses. But if I were him I might put a few crossbows on the upper decks of that gallows. It's the only cover I can see on the road. More important to him, however, is getting to Gallows Ferry before us, so he can secure the place and prevent me from raising the inhabitants and shutting the gates against him."

"But once this Sapphire reaches Gallows Ferry, could he not shut the gates against us?"

Willard smiled. "I don't think he will. It would be a simple matter for us to turn back and board our ferry and flee downstream, prolonging this hunt for many more days. I'm betting he won't risk having to explain such a delay to his Old One."

Willard signaled his pilot, and the ferry turned to limp across the current and into the tiny harbor. They passed beneath the overlooking gallows, where the Sapphire lord paused to look down in triumph. Orange sunset light flashed from armor and shields. Willard noted with satisfaction that even the noble Sapphire kept his crest covered, for anonymity. The Queen's power was strong enough, even this far into the frontier, that he dare not openly oppose her. Not yet. But even that could change, since she'd allowed Westies to bring their slaves to the Free Lands. In great enough numbers, they could change the place, make it another bastion of the Old Ways.

Brolli peered up. "I hope this Sapphire shuts the gates." There was an unmistakable smile to his voice. "We would not turn around. I could open them."

Willard frowned. "With your magic? I dare say you could. And it may come to that. But I don't need to remind you what sort of folk end up at the ends of ropes here in Arkendia?"

"Oh, no. That is much clear to me. Witches, you call us. Users of moon magic."

"My people don't tolerate it." Willard scowled up at the corpses swaying from the gallows. "Those are witches, most likely. When they catch one, they throw their witch-stone in the river and hang the witch over water. Not your people, obviously," Willard added, quickly. "These are witches from the Iberg empire, across the sea."

"Your ancient enemies, yes."

"Ever since we discovered your people and your magic, Ibergs have been sneaking over here in waves hoping to get a hint of how you make your magicks, infiltrating our shores like rats from ships. Have I thanked you for that, lately? Makes our whole magic-fearing population jumpy as cats in a kennel."

Brolli laughed. "You are most welcome. Our magic is magnificent. Of course they want it. And it is most strange that your people do not admire it."

Willard grunted.

Brolli sat in silence as the grisly structure above them drifted past on the port side. "I much wonder how our peoples shall live in peace together," said Brolli, pensively, "for my people live by the powers of the moons. Much like these Iberg witches."

"The thought has occurred to me, as well."

"I must tell you, Sir Willard: if we are near to die, I will certainly use my magic."

Willard nodded. "If we're about to die, I give you leave to use it."

The ferry drew into the steep gravel beach, and Willard disembarked, herding the ponies before him. Up the narrow ledge of the Hanging Road, the Sapphire's entire company waited, silhouetted against the sunset fire, lance tips glinting.

Willard cursed. "What are you up to, Sir Sapphire?" Willard waited, and watched, but no move came from Sir Sapphire. At length, he exhaled loudly, drew Belle from her sheath and rested her across the front cantle of his saddle.

"Get those weapons ready, Ambassador. You may need them sooner than I'd hoped. And remember, there may be bowmen stationed in that gallows, so stay behind me till I've had a good look."

"I am ready."

Willard nodded. He craned his neck back to peer up the mile of sheer granite above him, and felt himself shrink to the size of an insect about to storm a castle.