The guards did not keep Trusca waiting to pass. We shot through into the countryside. He brought Pegasus’ head up and the animal danced impatiently as he stood. I reined in beside him. “Care to race?” he inquired casually. “Race? You’ve got to be joking, I don’t know the terrain and Pegasus is three hands higher than Andromeda—” “We head south,” he said, pointing past Trussa, in a direction that I had certainly never explored. “It’s flat country until you enter the woods.” I followed his pointing finger and indeed, Trussa lay in the middle of a plateau, surrounded on all sides by those deep, dark, primeval forests that began perhaps two miles out from the fortress walls. “And you’ll see the road. It’s well-kept and well-maintained and a few miles in, you’ll come to a stream clearing, much like the one where we stopped on our way in to Trussa. Remember?” I nodded. “Finish line. I will, of course, take a handicap.” “How much of one?” “Until you are a quarter of the distance to the woods.”
