Sorgi smiled. ‘I haven’t heard that dialect since I left home,’ he told Sparhawk. ‘I could sit and listen to Caalador talk by the hour. Let’s not worry about money yet. The advice is free. It starts costing you money when I lift my anchor up off the bottom.’
‘We have to go to a place where there’s been an earthquake recently,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘Kurik’s son just sent me a message. The earthquake has changed things so much that all the old maps are useless.’
‘Happens all the time,’ Sorgi told him. ‘The estuary that runs on up to Vardenais changes her bottom every winter.’
‘How do you deal with that?’
Sorgi shrugged. ‘We put out a small boat with a strong sailor to do the rowing and a clever one to heave the sounding-line. They lead us through.’
‘Isn’t that sort of slow?’
‘Not nearly as slow as trying to steer a sinking ship. How big an area got churned up by the earthquake?’
‘It’s sort of hard to say.’
‘Guess, Master Cluff. Tell me exactly what happened, and give me a guess about how big the danger-spot is.’
Sparhawk glossed over the cause of the sudden change in the coastline and described the emergence of the escarpment.
‘No problem,’ Sorgi assured him.
‘How did you arrive at that conclusion, Captain?’ Vanion asked him.
‘We won’t have to worry about any reefs to the north of your cliff, my Lord. I saw something like that happen on the west coast of Rendor one time. You see, what’s happened is that the cliff keeps on going. It runs on out to sea – under the water – so once you get to the north of it, the water’s going to be a thousand feet deep. Not too many ships I know of draw that much water. I’ll just take along some of the old charts. We’ll go out about ten leagues and sail north. I’ll take my bearings every so often, and when we get six or eight leagues north of this new cliff of yours, we’ll turn west and run straight for the beach. I’ll put your men ashore up there with no trouble at all.’
‘And that’s the problem with your plan, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said. ‘You’ve only got a hundred ships. If you take both the knights and their horses, you’ll only be able to take fifteen hundred up there to face the Trolls.’
‘Is a-winnin’ this yere arg-u-ment real important t’ you two?’ Caalador asked.
‘We’re just looking for the best way, Caalador,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘Then why not combine the two plans? Have Sorgi start north first thing in the morning, and you mount up your armies and ride on up that way as soon as you get things organized. When Sorgi gets to a place ten leagues or so south of the wall, he can feel his way in to shore. You meet him there, and he starts ferrying your army on around the reef and puts you down on the beach north of the wall. Then you can go looking for Trolls, and Sorgi can drop his anchor and spend his time fishing.’
Sparhawk and Vanion looked at each other sheepishly.
‘It’s like I wuz a-sayin’, Sorgi,’ Caalador grinned. ‘Th’ gentry ain’t got hordly no common sense a-tall. I b’leeve it’s ‘cause they ain’t got room in ther heads fer more’n one i’dee at a time.’
Inevitably, the day arrived when the relief column was scheduled to depart for Atan. It was before dawn when Mirtai came into the bedroom of the Queen of Elenia and her Prince Consort. ‘Time to get up,’ the giantess announced.
‘Don’t you know how to knock?’ Sparhawk asked, sitting up in bed.
‘Did I interrupt something?’
‘Never mind, Mirtai,’ he sighed. ‘It’s a custom, that’s all.’
‘Foolishness. Everybody knows what goes on in here.’
‘Isn’t it almost time for you and Kring to get married?’
‘Are you trying to get rid of me, Sparhawk?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Kring and I have decided to wait until after all of this is finished up. Our weddings are going to be a little complicated. We have to go through two ceremonies in two parts of the world. Kring’s not very happy about all the delay.’
‘I can’t for the life of me see why,’ Ehlana said innocently.
‘Men are strange.’ Mirtai shrugged.
‘They are indeed, Mirtai, but how would we amuse ourselves without them?’
Sparhawk dressed slowly, pulling on the padded, rust-stained underclothing with reluctance and eyeing his black-enameled suit of steel work-clothes with active dislike.
‘Did you pack warm clothing?’ Ehlana asked him. ‘The nights are getting chilly even this far south, so it’s going to be very cold up on the North Cape.’
‘I packed it,’ he grunted, ‘for all the good it’s going to do. No amount of clothing helps when you’re wearing steel.’ He made a sour face. ‘I know it’s a contradiction, but I start to sweat the minute I put the armor on. Every knight I’ve ever known does the same. We keep on sweating even when we’re freezing and icicles are forming up inside the armor. Sometimes I wish I’d gone into another line of work. Bashing people for fun and profit starts to wear thin after a while.’
‘You’re in a gloomy mood this morning, love.’
‘It’s just that it’s getting harder and harder to get started. I’ll be all right once I’m on the road.’
‘You will be careful, won’t you, Sparhawk? I’d die if I lost you.’
‘I’m not going to be in all that much danger, dear. I’ve got Bhelliom, and Bhelliom could pick up the sun and break it across its knee. It’s Cyrgon and Zalasta who’ll have to watch out.’
‘Don’t get over-confident.’
‘I’m not. I’ve got more advantages than I can count, that’s all. We’re going to win, Ehlana, and there’s nothing in the world that can stop us. All that’s really left is the tedious plodding from here to the victory celebration.’
‘Why don’t you kiss me for a while now?’ she suggested. ‘Before you put on the armor. It takes weeks for the bruises to go away after you kiss me when you’re all wrapped in steel.’
‘You know,’ he smiled, ‘that’s an awfully good idea. Why don’t we do that?’
The column stretched for several miles, undulating across the rounded hills on the east coast of Lake Sama. There were Church Knights, Atans, Kring’s Peloi, and a few ornately garbed regiments of the Tamul army.
It was a splendid day, one of those perfect autumn days with a stiff wind aloft hurrying puffy white clouds across an intensely blue sky, and the enormous shadows of those clouds raced across the rolling landscape so that Sparhawk’s army rode alternately in sunshine and in shadow. The pennons and flags were of many hues, and they snapped and rippled in the breeze, tugging at the lances and flag-staffs to which they were fastened.
Queen Betuana strode along at Faran’s shoulder. ‘Are you sure, Sparhawk-Knight?’ she asked. ‘The Troll-beasts are animals, and all animals are born knowing how to swim. Even a cat can swim.’
‘Only reluctantly, Betuana-Queen,’ Sparhawk smiled, remembering Mmrr’s ‘cat-paddling’ in Sephrenia’s fish-pond in Sarsos. ‘Ulath-Knight says that we won’t have to worry about the Troll-beasts swimming around the end of the escarpment. They’ll swim across rivers and lakes, but the sea terrifies them. It has something to do with the tides, I think – or maybe it’s the salt.’
‘Must we continue at this slow pace?’ Her tone was impatient.
‘We want to be certain that Zalasta’s spies see us, your Majesty,’ Vanion told her. ‘That’s a very important part of our plan.’
‘Elene battles are very large,’ she observed.
‘We’d prefer smaller ones, Atana, but Zalasta’s schemes stretch across the whole continent, so we have to respond.’
Sephrenia, with Flute riding in front of her, rode forward with Xanetia. They had all watched the tentative friendship growing between Sephrenia and Xanetia. Both were still very cautious, and there were no great leaps in their relationship. The tenuousness now came not from defensiveness but rather from an excess of concern about inadvertently
giving offense, and Sparhawk felt that to be a rather profound change for the good. ‘We grew tired of all the stories,’ Sephrenia told Vanion. ‘I can’t be sure which is the bigger liar, Tynian or Ulath.’
‘Oh?’
‘They’re trying to outdo each other. Ulath’s exaggerating outrageously, and I’m sure Tynian’s doing the same thing. Each of them is doing his level best to persuade the other that he missed the adventure of the century. They’ll be drowning in falsehood before long.’
‘It’s a demonstration of a form of affection, little mother,’ Sparhawk explained. ‘They’d be too embarrassed to admit that they’re genuinely fond of each other, so they tell each other wild stories instead.’
‘Did you understand that at all, Xanetia?’ Sephrenia smiled.
‘What reasonable person can ever understand how and why men express their love, sister?’
‘Men aren’t really comfortable with the word “love”,’ Sparhawk told them, ‘particularly when it’s applied to other men.’
‘It is love, though, isn’t it, Sparhawk?’ Sephrenia asked him.
‘Well, I suppose it is, but we’re not comfortable with it all the same.’
‘I have meant to speak with thee, Anarae.’ Betuana lapsed perhaps unconsciously into archaic Tamul.
‘Gladly will I hear thy words, Queen of Atan.’
‘It hath been the wont of youthful Atans to seek Delphaeus, having it in their minds to destroy thy home and to put thy people to the sword. I am heartily sorry that I have permitted this.’
Xanetia smiled. ‘It is of no moment, Queen of Atan. This is but an excess of adolescent enthusiasm. I must freely confess that our fledglings do entertain themselves by deceiving and distracting thine, leading them away from their intended goal by rudimentary enchantments and clumsy deceptions. It cometh to me all unbidden that thus are we both relieved of the obligation to entertain our children, who, by virtue of their youth and inexperience and profound inability to divert themselves, do continually complain that there is nothing for them to do – at least nothing worthy of what they perceive to be their enormous gifts.’
Betuana laughed. ‘Do thy children have that self-same plaint, Anarae?’
‘All children complain,’ Sephrenia assured them. ‘It’s one of the things that make parents age so fast.’
‘Well said,’ Sparhawk agreed. Neither he nor Sephrenia looked directly at Flute.
They reached Lebas in northern Tamul in about two days. Sparhawk had spoken with the army, stressing the enormous power of Bhelliom to explain how it would be possible for them to cover great distances in a short period of time. In actuality, however, Bhelliom was in no way responsible. Flute was in charge of their travel arrangements on this particular trip.
There was another Atan runner waiting for them in Lebas with yet another message from Khalad. It was a fairly offensive note which suggested that the runner had been sent to guide them to the stretch of beach where Kring and Engessa waited with their forces, since if knights were left to their own devices in the forest, they would inevitably get lost. Khalad’s class prejudices were still quite firmly in place.
There was no road as such leading north from Lebas, but the trails and paths were quite clearly marked. They reached the southern edge of the vast forest that covered the northeastern quadrant of the continent, and the hundred Peloi Kring had brought with him from Eosia pulled in to ride very close to their allies. Deep woods made the plains-dwelling western Peloi very nervous.
‘I think it has to do with the sky,’ Tynian explained to the others.
‘You can barely see the sky when you’re in the deep woods, Tynian,’ Kalten objected.
‘Exactly my point,’ the broad-faced Deiran replied. ‘The western Peloi are accustomed to having the sky overhead. When there are tree-limbs blocking their view of it, they start to get nervous.’
They were never able to determine if the attempt was random or was deliberately aimed at Betuana. They were a hundred leagues or so into the forest and had set up their night’s encampment, and the large tent for the ladies – Betuana, Sephrenia, Xanetia and Flute – had been erected somewhat apart so that they might have a bit of privacy.
The assassins were well concealed, and there were four of them. They burst out of the thicket with drawn swords just as Betuana and Xanetia were emerging from the tent. Betuana responded instantly. Her sword whipped out of its sheath and plunged directly into the belly of one of the attackers. Even as she jerked the sword free, she dove to the ground, rolled and drove both feet full into the face of yet another.
Sparhawk and the others were running toward the tent in response to Sephrenia’s cry of alarm, but the Queen of the Atans seemed to have things well in hand. She parried a hasty thrust and split the skull of the shabby assailant who had made it. Then she engaged the remaining attacker.
‘Look out!’ Berit shouted as he ran toward her. The man she had felled with her feet was struggling to rise, his nose bleeding and a dagger in his hand. He was directly behind the Atan Queen.
Always before, when Xanetia had shed her disguise, the change had been slow, the concealing coloration receding gradually. This time, however, she flashed into full illumination, and the light within her was no mere glow. Instead, she blazed forth like a new sun.
The bloody-nosed assassin might have been able to flee from her had he been in full possession of his faculties. The kick he had received in the face, however, appeared to have rattled him and shaken his wits.
He did scream once, though, just before Xanetia’s hand touched him. His scream died in a hoarse kind of gurgle. With his mouth agape and his eyes bulging with horror, he stared at the blazing form of she who had just mortally wounded him – but only for a moment. After that, it was no longer possible to recognize his expression. The flesh of his face sagged and began to run down, turned by that dreadful touch into a putrefying liquid. His mouth seemed to gape wider as his cheeks and lips oozed down to drip off his chin. He tried to scream once, but the decay had already reached his throat, and all that emerged from his lipless mouth was a liquid wheeze. The flesh slid off his hand, and his dagger dropped from his skeleton clutch.
He sagged to his knees with the slimy residue of skin and nerve and tendons oozing out of his clothing.
Then the rotting corpse toppled slowly forward to lie motionless on the leaf-strewn floor of the forest – motionless, but still dissolving as Xanetia’s curse continued its inexorable course.
The Anarae’s fire dimmed, and she buried her shining face in her glowing hands and wept.
Chapter 28
It was raining in Esos, a chill, persistent rain that swept down out of the mountains of Zemoch every autumn. The rain did not noticeably dampen the Harvest Festival celebration, since most of the revelers were too drunk to even notice the weather.
Stolg was not drunk. He was working, and he had nothing but contempt for men who drank on the job. Stolg was a nondescript sort of fellow in plain clothing. He wore his hair cropped close, and he had large, powerful hands. He went through the crowd of revelers unobtrusively, moving toward the wealthier quarter of the city.
Stolg and his wife Ruta had argued that morning, and that always put him in a bad humor. Ruta really had little cause for complaint, he thought, stepping aside for a group of drunken young aristocrats. He was a good provider, after all, and their neat little cottage on the outskirts of town was the envy of all their friends. Their son was apprenticed to a local carpenter, and their daughter had excellent prospects for a good marriage. Stolg loved Ruta, but she periodically became waspish over some little thing and pestered him to death about it. This time she was upset because their cottage had no proper lock on the front door, and no matter how many times he told her that they, of all people, had no need of locks, she had continued to harp on the subject.
Stolg stopped and drew back into a recessed doorway as the watch tramped by. Djukta would normally have bribed the watch to stay out of Stolg’s way, but
it was Harvest Festival time, so there would be plenty of confusion to cover any incidental outcries. Djukta was not one to spend money needlessly. It was a common joke in the seedier taverns in Esos that Djukta had deliberately grown his vast beard so that he could save the price of a cloak.
Stolg saw the house that was his destination and went into the foul-smelling alley behind it. He had arranged for a ladder to be placed against the back of the house, and he went up quickly and entered through a secondstory window. He walked on down the hallway and through the door into a bedroom. A former servant in the house had drawn a diagram and had pointed out the room of the owner of the house, a minor nobleman named Count Kinad. Once inside the room, Stolg lay down on the bed. As long as he had to wait, he might as well be comfortable. He could hear the sound of revelry coming from downstairs.
As he lay there, he decided to install the lock Ruta wanted. It wouldn’t be expensive, and the peace and quiet around the house would be more than worth it.
It was no more than half an hour later when he heard a heavy, slightly unsteady footfall on the stair. He rolled quickly off the bed, crossed silently to the door, and put his ear to the panel.
‘It’s no trouble at all,’ a slurred voice outside said. ‘I’ve got a copy in my bedroom.’
‘Really, Count Kinad,’ a lady’s voice called from below, ‘I take your word for it.’
‘No, Baroness, I want you to read his Majesty’s exact words. It’s the most idiotic proclamation you’ve ever seen.’ The door opened, and a man carrying a candle entered. It was the man who had been pointed out to Stolg two days ago. Stolg idly wondered what Count Kinad had done to irritate someone enough to justify the expense of a professional visit. He brushed the thought aside. That was really none of his business.
Stolg was a thorough professional, so he had several techniques available to him. The fact that Count Kinad’s back was to him presented the opportunity for his favorite, however. He drew a long poniard from his belt, stepped up behind the count, and drove the long, slim blade into the base of the count’s skull with a steely crunch. He caught the collapsing body and quietly lowered it to the floor. A knife-thrust in the brain was always certain, and it was quick, quiet, and produced a minimum of mess. Ruta absolutely hated to wash her husband’s work-clothes when there was blood all over them. Stolg set his foot between the count’s shoulders and wrenched his poniard out of the back of the skull. That was sometimes tricky. Pulling a knife out of bone takes quite a bit of strength.