‘Imperial policy, your Majesty,’ Oscagne smiled. ‘If you were to know too much, you might start interfering with the government.’
‘Anyway,’ Sparhawk continued, ‘Engessa was very impressed with our tactics in the encounters we had on our way here. We’ve been training some of his Atans in Western techniques.’
‘That’s surprising,’ Sarabian said. ‘I wouldn’t have expected Atans to listen to anybody when it came to military matters.’
‘Engessa’s a professional, your Majesty,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘Professionals are always interested in technical advances in weaponry and tactics. We rounded up some very large draught-horses so that we could mount a number of his Atans, and Kalten and Tynian have been giving them instruction with the lance. That’s the safest way to deal with Trolls, we’ve found. Bevier’s taken another group in hand, and he’s teaching them how to construct and use siege-engines. When we encountered those Cyrgai outside Sarsos, Bevier’s catapults broke up their phalanx. It’s very hard to maintain a military formation when it’s raining boulders. Oh, there’s something else we should be aware of. Khalad found a tree outside town that was riddled with short steel arrows. Someone’s been practising with a crossbow.’
‘What’s a crossbow?’ Sarabian asked.
‘It’s a Lamork weapon, your Majesty.’ Sparhawk scribbled a quick sketch. ‘It looks something like this. The limbs are much stronger than those of an ordinary long-bow, so it has greater range and penetrating power. It’s a serious threat to an armoured knight. Someone here in Matherion’s working on a way to counter the advantage our armour gives us.’
‘It’s beginning to sound as if I’m hanging on to my throne by my fingertips,’ Sarabian said. ‘Could I appeal to you for political asylum, Ehlana?’
‘I’d be delighted to have you, Sarabian,’ she replied, ‘but let’s not give up on Sparhawk just yet. He’s terribly resourceful.’
‘As I was saying before,’ Sparhawk continued, ‘we can’t do too much about the ghouls or werewolves or the Shining Ones or vampires, but I think we might be able to give the Trolls and the Cyrgai a few surprises. I’d like for the Atans to have a bit more training with mounted tactics and the use of Bevier’s engines, and then I think it might be time to let our opponent know that he’s not going to win this in a walk. I’d particularly like to decimate the Trolls. Our enemy’s relying rather heavily on the Troll-Gods, and they’ll leave the alliance if too many of their worshippers get killed. I think that early next week we might want to mount a couple of expeditions – one up into Troll-country and another down to Sarna. It’s time to make our presence known.’
‘And this local business?’ Oscagne asked. ‘All this fascination with the hidden city of the mind?’
‘Caalador will keep working on that. We’ve got their password now, and that can open all kinds of doors for us. Vanion’s drawing up a list of names. Before long, we’ll know everybody in Matherion who’s been talking about the Hidden City.’ He looked at Sarabian. ‘Have I your Majesty’s permission to detain those people if necessary?’ he asked. ‘If we move first and round them all up before they can set their scheme in motion, we’ll break the back of this plot before it gets too far along.’
‘Detain away, Sparhawk,’ Sarabian grinned. ‘I’ve got lots of buildings we can use for prisons.’
‘All right, young lady,’ Sparhawk said quite firmly to his daughter a few days later. ‘One of Caalador’s beggars saw Count Gerrich in a street not far from here. How did you know that he’d be here in Matherion?’
‘I didn’t know, Sparhawk. I just had a hunch.’ Danae was sitting calmly in a large chair, scratching her cat’s ears. Mmrr was purring gratefully.
‘A hunch?’
‘Intuition, if that word makes you feel any better. It just didn’t seem right that Krager and Elron would be here without the others being here as well – and that would logically include Gerrich, wouldn’t it?’
‘Don’t confuse the issue by using the words “logic” and “intuition” in the same sentence.’
‘Oh, Sparhawk, do grow up. That’s all that logic really is – a justification for hunches. Have you ever known anyone who used logic to disprove something he already believed?’
‘Well – not personally, maybe, but I’m sure there have been some.’
‘I’ll wait while you track one down. I’m an immortal, so time doesn’t really mean all that much to me.’
‘That’s really offensive, Aphrael.’
‘Sorry, father.’ She didn’t sound very contrite. ‘Your mind gathers information in hundreds of ways, Sparhawk – things you hear, things you see, things you touch and even things you smell. Then it puts all of that information together and jumps from there to a conclusion. That’s all that hunches really are. Intuition is just as precise as logic, really, but it doesn’t have to go through the long, tedious process of plodding along step by step to prove things. It leaps immediately from evidence to conclusion without all the tiresome intermediate steps. Sephrenia doesn’t like logic because it’s so boring. She already knows the answers you’re so laboriously trying to prove – and so do you, if you’d be honest about it.’
‘Folk-lore is full of these hunches, Aphrael – and they’re usually wrong. How about the old notion that thunder sours milk?’
‘That’s a mistake in logic, Sparhawk, not a mistake in intuition.’
‘Would you like to explain that?’
‘You could just as easily say that sour milk causes thunder, you know.’
‘That’s absurd.’
‘Of course it is. Thunder and sour milk are both effects, not causes.’
‘You should talk to Dolmant. I’d like to see you try to explain that he’s been wasting his time on logic all these years.’
‘He already knows,’ she shrugged. ‘Dolmant’s far more intuitive than you give him credit for being. He knew who I was the moment he saw me – which is a lot more than I can say for you, father. I thought for a while there that I was going to have to fly in order to persuade you.’
‘Be nice.’
‘I am. There are all sorts of things I didn’t say about you. What’s Krager up to?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘We really need to find him, Sparhawk.’
‘I know. I want him even more than you do. I’m going to enjoy wringing him out like a wet sock.’
‘Be serious, Sparhawk. You know Krager. He’d tell you his whole life story if you even frowned at him.’
He sighed. ‘You’re probably right,’ he conceded. ‘It takes a lot of the fun out of it though.’
‘You’re not here to have fun, Sparhawk. Which would you rather have? Information or revenge?’
‘Couldn’t we come up with a way to have both?’
She rolled her eyes upward. ‘Elenes,’ she sighed.
Bevier took a detachment of newly-trained Atan engineers west toward Sarna early the next week. The following day Kalten, Tynian and Engessa took two hundred mounted Atans north toward the lands being ravaged by the Trolls. At Vanion’s insistence the parties filtered out of Matherion in twos and threes to assemble later outside the city. ‘There’s no point in announcing what we’re up to,’ he said.
A few days after the departure of the two military expeditions, Zalasta left for Sarsos. ‘I won’t be very long,’ he told them. ‘We have a certain commitment from the Thousand, but I think I’d like to see some concrete evidence that they’re willing to honour that commitment. Words are all well and good, but let’s see some action – just as a demonstration of good faith. I know my brothers. Nothing in the world would please them more than being able to reap the benefits of allying themselves with us “in principle” without the inconvenience of actually being obliged to do anything to help. They’re best suited to deal with these supernatural manifestations, so I’ll pry them loose from their comfortable chairs in Sarsos and disperse them to these troublespots.’ He smiled thinly at Vanion from under his beetling bro
ws. ‘Extensive travel might toughen them up a bit, my Lord,’ he added. ‘Perhaps we can avoid spraining any more of your ankles in demonstrations of how flabby and lazy they are.’
‘I appreciate that, Zalasta,’ Vanion laughed.
There were always more things to do than there was time for. The ceremonies and ‘occasions’ that surrounded the state visit by the Queen of Elenia filled their afternoons and evenings, and so Sparhawk and the others were obliged to work late and rise early in order to conduct their surreptitious operations in the city and the imperial compound. They all grew short-tempered from lack of sleep, and Mirtai began to badger Sparhawk about the condition of his wife’s health. Ehlana was, in fact, beginning to develop dark circles under her eyes and an increasingly waspish disposition.
The break-through came about ten days after the departure of the expeditions to Sarna and to the newlyoccupied lands of the Trolls. Caalador arrived early one morning with a kind of exultant tightness of his face and a large canvas sack in one hand. ‘It was pure luck, Sparhawk,’ he chortled when the two met in the royal apartment.
‘We’re due for some,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘What did you find?’
‘How would you like to know the exact day and hour when this “Hidden City” business is going to come to a head?’
‘I’d be moderately interested in that, yes. That self-congratulatory expression spread all over your face says that you’ve found out a few things.’
‘I have indeed, Sparhawk, and it fell into my hand like an over-ripe peach.’ Caalador slid into his drawl. ‘Them there fellers on t’ other side’s mighty careless with wrote-down instructions. It seems that this yere cut-purse o’ my acquaintance – enterprisin’ young feller with a real shorp knife – he slit open the purse o’ this yere fat Dacite merchant, an’ a hull fistful o’ coins come slitherin’ out, an’ mixt in with them there silver an’ brass coins they wuz this yere message, which it wuz ez hed bin passt onta him by one o’ his feller-conspiracy-ers.’ Caalador frowned. ‘Maybe the right word there would have been “conspirytors”,’ he mused.
‘Ehlana’s still in bed, Caalador,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘You don’t have to entertain me with that dialect.’
‘Sorry. Just keeping in practice. Anyway, the note was quite specific. It said, “The day of the revelation of the Hidden City is at hand. All is in readiness. We will come to your warehouse for the arms at the second hour past sunset ten days hence.” Isn’t that interesting?’
‘It is indeed, Caalador, but the note could be a week old.’
‘No, actually it’s not. Would you believe that the idiot who wrote it actually dated it?’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘May muh tongue turn green if I ain’t.’
‘Can your cut-purse identify this Dacite merchant? I’d like to locate this warehouse and find out what kind of arms are stored there.’
‘I’m way ahead of you, Sparhawk,’ Caalador grinned. ‘We tracked down the Dacite, and I called on my vast experience as a chicken-rustler to get inside his storehouse.’ He opened the large bag he had brought with him and took out what appeared to be a newly-made crossbow. ‘They wuz several hunnerd o’ these in that there hen-roost o’ his’n,’ he said, ‘along with a hull passel o’ cheap swords – which wuz most likely forged in Lebros in Cammoria – which it is that’s notorious fer makin’ shoddy goods fer trade with backward folk.’
Sparhawk turned the crossbow over in his hands. ‘It’s not really very well-made, is it?’ he noted.
‘She’ll prob’ly shoot, though – oncet anyway.’
‘This explains that tree Khalad found with all the crossbow bolts stuck in it. It looks as if we’ve been anticipated. Our friend out there wouldn’t really need crossbows unless he knew he was going to come up against men in armour. The long-bow’s a lot more efficient against ordinary people. It shoots faster.’
‘I think we’d better face up to something, Sparhawk,’ Caalador said gravely. ‘Several hundred crossbows means several hundred conspirators, not counting the ones who’ll be using the swords, and that’s fair evidence that the conspiracy’s going to involve unpleasantness here in Matherion itself as well as out there in the hinterlands. I think we’d better be prepared for a mob – and for fighting in the streets.’
‘You could very well be right, my friend. Let’s see what we can do to defang that mob.’
He went to the door and opened it. As usual, Mirtai sat outside with her sword in her lap. ‘Could you get Khalad for me, Atana?’ he asked politely.
‘Who’s going to guard the door while I’m gone?’ she asked him.
‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘Why don’t you go get him? I’ll stay here and see to Ehlana’s safety.’
He sighed. ‘Please, Mirtai–as a special favour to me.’
‘If anything happens to Ehlana while I’m gone, you’ll answer to me, Sparhawk.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind.’
‘Pretty girl, isn’t she?’ Caalador noted after the giantess had gone in search of Sparhawk’s squire.
‘I wouldn’t make a point of noticing that too much when Kring’s around, my friend. They’re betrothed, and he’s the jealous type.’
‘Should I say that she’s ugly, then?’
‘That wouldn’t really be a good idea either. If you do that she’ll probably kill you.’
‘Touchy, aren’t they?’
‘Oh, yes – both of them. Theirs promises to be a very lively marriage.’
Mirtai returned with Khalad a few minutes later. ‘You sent for me, my Lord?’ Kurik’s son asked.
‘How would you go about disabling this crossbow without making it obvious that it had been tampered with?’ Sparhawk asked, handing the young man the weapon Caalador had brought with him.
Khalad examined the weapon. ‘Cut the string almost all the way through – up here where it’s attached to the end of the bow,’ he suggested. ‘It’ll break as soon as anyone tries to draw it.’
Sparhawk shook his head. ‘They might load the weapons in advance,’ he said. ‘Someone’s going to try to use these on us, I think, and I don’t want him to find out that they don’t work until it’s too late.’
‘I could break the trigger-mechanism,’ Khalad said. ‘The bowman could draw it and load it, but he couldn’t shoot it – at least he couldn’t aim it at the same time.’
‘Would it stay cocked until he tried to shoot it?’
‘Probably. This isn’t a very well-made crossbow, so he won’t expect it to work very well. All you’d have to do is drive out this pin that holds the trigger in place and stick short steel pegs in the holes to hide the fact that the pin’s gone. There’s a spring that holds the bow drawn, but without the pin to provide leverage, the trigger won’t release that spring. They’ll be able to draw it, but they won’t be able to shoot it.’
‘I’ll take your word for it. How long would it take you to put this thing out of action?’
‘A couple of minutes.’
‘You’ve got a few long nights ahead of you then, my friend. There are several hundred of these to deal with – and you’re going to have to do it quietly and in poor light. Caalador, can you slip my friend here into the Dacite merchant’s warehouse?’
‘If’n he kin move around sorta quiet-like, I kin.’
‘I think he can manage. He’s a country-boy the same as you are, and I’d guess that he’s almost as skilled at making rabbit snares and stealing chickens.’
‘Sparhawk!’ Khalad protested.
‘Those skills are too valuable to have been left out of your education, Khalad, and I knew your father, remember?’
‘They knew we were coming, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said angrily. ‘We split up into small groups and stayed away from towns and villages, and they still knew we were coming. They ambushed us on the west shore of Lake Sama.’
‘Trolls?’ Sparhawk’s voice was tense.
‘Worse. It was a large group of rough-looking f
ellows armed with crossbows. They made the mistake of shooting all at the same time. If they hadn’t, none of us would have made it back to tell you about it. They decimated Engessa’s mounted Atans, though. He was seriously put out about that. He tore quite a number of the ambushers apart with his bare hands.’
A sudden cold fear gripped Sparhawk’s stomach. ‘Where’s Tynian?’ he asked.
‘He’s in the care of a physician. He caught a bolt in the shoulder, and it broke some things in there.’
‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘Probably. It didn’t improve his temper very much though. He uses his sword almost as well with his left hand as he does with his right. We had to restrain him when the ambushers broke and ran. He was going to chase them down one by one, and he was bleeding like a stuck pig. I think we’ve got spies here in this imitation castle, Sparhawk. Those people couldn’t have laid that ambush without some fairly specific information about our route and our destination.’
‘We’ll sweep those hiding-places again.’
‘Good idea, and this time let’s do a bit more than reprimand the people we catch for bad manners. A spy can’t creep through hidden passages very well with two broken legs.’ The blond Pandion’s face was grim. ‘I get to do the breaking,’ he added. ‘I want to be sure that there aren’t any miraculous recoveries. A broken shinbone heals in a couple of months, but if you take a sledge-hammer to a man’s knees, you’ll put him out of action for much, much longer.’
Bevier, who led the survivors of his detachment back into Matherion two days later, took Kalten’s suggestion a step further. His notion involved amputations at the hip. The devout Cyrinic Knight was very angry about being ambushed and he used language Sparhawk had never heard from him before. When he had calmed himself finally, though, he contritely sought absolution from Patriarch Emban. Emban not only forgave him, but granted an indulgence as well – just in case he happened across some new swear-words.
A thorough search of the opalescent castle turned up no hidden listeners, and they all gathered to confer with Emperor Sarabian and Foreign Minister Oscagne the day after Sir Bevier’s return. They met high in the central tower, just to be on the safe side, and Sephrenia added a Styric spell to further ensure that their discussions would remain private.