Crone's GambitThe single road up the mountain climbed back and forth in long meandering loops, giving the watchers at the pass more than enough time to see the army coming. Even if Ashrayan's vision hadn't warned her two nights before, the keen eyes of the Guard Maidens would have alerted the women with time to spare. No one entered High Valley unseen; the hardiest mountaineers couldn't scale the surrounding scarps, nor the stealthiest spies sneak through the solitary well-guarded pass. Few even tried anymore.
This army—easily a hundred mounted men and a hundred more on foot, all of them heavily armored—made no attempt at secrecy. Like a glittering centipede it crawled up the mountain road, setting a leisurely pace, on a clear day in full sunlight. The approach was meant to be seen, to im
