The Misenchanted Sword

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The marsh stank, with a sharp, briny stench that seemed to fill Valder’s head. He stared out across the maze of tall grass and shallow water for a long moment and then reluctantly marched onward, into it. The ground gave beneath him; his boot sank past the ankle in gray-brown muck. He muttered an obscenity, then smiled weakly at his own annoyance and slogged forward.

The enemy, he knew, was no more than an hour behind him. The marsh was nothing but a minor inconvenience by comparison.

To his left lay the open sea, and to his right was endless empty forest that was probably full of northern patrols and sentinels, human or otherwise. Behind him somewhere were the three northerners who had been pursuing him for the past four days. Ahead of him, wet and green and stinking, lay the coastal marshes.

He could, he supposed, have turned to the right and avoided the marshes, tried to lose his pursuers in the forest, but he had been running through forests for four days without being able to shake them off his trail. At least the marshes would be different.

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