Quag Keep by Andre Norton

again to take the watch. Milo, wrapped in his cloak, settled for a little rest before he should take his turn at guard.
    Though they had all agreed to change the direct line of their march in the morning, they had also planned to set the ambush,or at least a watch on their backtrail. To learn the nature and strength of those trailers was of the utmost importance.
    Milo was aware of the aches of his body, the fact that he had been twenty-four hours, or near that, without much sleep. He shut his eyes on the fire, but could he shut his mind to all the doubts, surmises, and attempts to plan without sure authority or control? It seemed that he could—for he did not remember any more until a hand shook his shoulder lightly and he roused to find Naile on his knees beside him.
    â€œAll is well—so far,” the berserker reported.
    Milo got up stiffly. He had certainly not slept away all the aches. Beyond the fire to which Naile must have added fuel, for the others slept, the night looked very dark.
    He pushed past Wymarc, who lay with his head half-pillowed on his bagged harp, and went out. It took some moments for the swordsman’s eyes to adjust to the very dim light of a waning moon. Their mounts and the pack animals were strung out along their picket ropes a little farther north. Naile must have changed their grazing grounds so that they could obtain all the forage this small pocket in the river land could offer.
    A wind whispered through the grass loud enough to reach Milo’s ears. He took off his helmet and looked up into the night sky. The moon was dim, the stars visible. But he found that he could trace no constellation that he knew. Where
was
this world in relation to his own? Was the barrier between them forged of space, time, or dimension?
    As he paced along the lines of the animals, trying to keep fully alert to any change in the sounds of the night itself, Milo was for the first time entirely alone. He felt a strong temptationto summon up fragments of that other memory. Perhaps that would only muddy the impressions belonging to Milo Jagon, and it was the swordsman who stood here and now and whose experience meant anything at all.
    So he began to work on that Milo memory, shifting, reaching back. It was like being handed a part of a picture, the rest of it in small meaningless scraps that must be fitted into their proper places.
    Milo Jagon—what was his earliest memory? If he searched the past with full concentration, could he come up with the answer to the riddle of the rings? Since Deav Dyne’s discovery, he had moments of acute awareness of them, as if they weighed down his hands, sought to cripple him. But that was nonsense. Only there were so many holes in that fabric of memory that to strive to close them with anything but the vaguest of fleeting pictures was more than he could do. More than he should do, he decided at last.
    Live in the present—until they had come to the end of the quest. He accepted that all Hystaspes had told them was correct. But, there again, how much
had
the wizard influenced their minds? One could not tell—not under a geas. Milo shook his head as if he could shake such thoughts out of it. To doubt so much was to weaken his own small powers as a fighting man, he knew, powers that were not founded on temple learning or on wizardry, but on the basis of his own self-confidence. That he must not do.
    So, instead of trying to search out any past beyond that of his calling, he strove now to summon all he knew of the details of his craft. Since there was none here save the grazing animals to see or question, he drew both sword and dagger, exercised adrill of attack and defense which his muscles seemed to know with greater detail than his mind. He began to believe that he was a fighter of no little ability. While that did not altogether banish the uneasiness, it added to the confidence that had ebbed from the affair of the rings.
    Dawn came, and with it Wymarc, to