Stolg rolled the body over and looked intently into the dead face. A professional always makes sure that a client has been permanently serviced.
The count was definitely dead. His eyes were blank, his face was turning blue, and a trickle of blood was coming out of his nose. Stolg wiped off his poniard, put it away, and went back out into the hallway. He walked quietly back to the window through which he had entered.
There were two more names on the list Djukta had given him, and with luck he could service another this very night. It was raining, however, and Stolg really disliked working in the rain. He decided to go home early instead and tell Ruta that he would give in just this once and install the lock she wanted so much. Then he thought it might be nice if they took their son and their daughter to the tavern at the end of the street to have a few tankards of ale with their neighbors. It was the Harvest Festival, after all, and a man should really try to spend the holidays with his friends and family.
Sherrok was a small, weedy sort of fellow with thinning hair and a lumpy skull. He did not so much walk as scurry through the crowded streets of Verel in southern Daconia. In the daytime, Sherrok was a minor official in the customs house, biting his tongue as he took orders from his Tamul superiors. Sherrok loathed Tamuls, and being placed in a subservient position to them sometimes made him physically ill. It was that loathing that had been primarily behind his decision to sell information to the diseased Styric Ogerajin, to whom a mutual acquaintance had introduced him. When Ogerajin, after a few carefully worded questions, had slyly hinted that certain kinds of information might be worth quite a bit of money, Sherrok had leaped at the chance to betray his despised superiors – and to make tidy sums as well.
The information he had for Ogerajin tonight was very important. The greedy, blood-sucking Tamuls were going to raise the customs rate by a full quarter of a percent. Ogerajin should pay handsomely for that piece of information.
Sherrok licked his lips as he rushed through the noisy crowds celebrating the Harvest Festival. There was an eight-year-old Astellian girl available at one of the slavemarts, a ravishing child with huge, terrified eyes, and if Ogerajin could be persuaded to be generous, Sherrok might actually be able to buy her. He had never owned a child so young before, and the very thought of her made his knees go weak.
His mind was full of her as he passed a reeking alleyway, and so he was not really paying any attention – until he felt the strand of wire snap tight around his neck.
He struggled, of course, but it was really not much use. The assassin dragged him back into the alley and methodically strangled him. His last thought was of the little girl’s face. She actually seemed to be laughing at him.
‘You’re really more trouble than you’re worth, you know,’ Bersola said to the dead man sprawled in the bow of the rowboat. Bersola always talked to the men he had killed. Many of Bersola’s colleagues believed that he was crazy. Candor compels us to admit that they were probably right.
Bersola’s major problem lay in the fact that he always did things exactly the same way. He invariably stuck his knife into someone between the third and fourth ribs at a slightly downward angle. It was effective, though, since a knife thrust there absolutely cannot miss the heart. Bersola also never left a body lying where it fell. He had a compulsive sense of neatness which drove him to put the remains somewhere out of sight. Since Bersola lived and worked in the Daconian town of Ederus on the coast of the Sea of Edom, disposal was a simple matter. A short trip in a rowboat and a few rocks tied to the deceased’s ankles removed all traces. Bersola’s habit-driven personality, however, led him always to sink the bodies in the exact same place. The other murderers of Ederus made frequent laughing reference to ‘Bersola’s Reef’, a place on the lake-bottom supposedly piled high with sunken bodies. Even people who didn’t fully understand the significance of the phrase referred to Bersola’s Reef.
‘You went and did it, didn’t you?’ Bersola said to the corpse in the bow of the boat as he rowed out to the reef. ‘You just had to go and offend somebody. You’ve got nobody to blame but yourself for this, you know. If you’d behaved yourself, none of this would have happened.’
The corpse did not answer. They almost never did.
Bersola stopped rowing and took his bearings. There was the usual light in the window of Fanna’s Tavern on the far shore, and there was the warning fire on the rocky headlands on the near side. The lantern on the wharf protruding out from Ederus was dead astern. ‘This is the place,’ Bersola told the dead man. ‘You’ll have lots of company down there, so it won’t be so bad.’ He shipped his oars and crawled forward. He checked the knots on the rope that held the large rock in place between the dead man’s ankles. ‘I’m really sorry about this, you know,’ he apologized, ‘but it is your own fault.’ He lifted the rock – and the dead man’s legs – over the side. He held the shoulders for a moment. ‘Do you have anything you’d like to say?’ he asked.
He waited for a decent interval, but the dead man did not reply.
‘I didn’t really think you would,’ Bersola said. He let go of the shoulders, and the body slithered limply over the gunwale and disappeared into the dark waters of the lake.
Bersola whistled his favorite tune as he rowed back to Ederus.
Avin Wargunsson, Prince Regent of Thalesia, was in an absolute fury. Patriarch Bergsten had left Thalesia without so much as a by-your-leave. It was intolerable! The man had absolutely no regard for the Prince Regent’s dignity. Avin Wargunsson was going to be king one day, after all – just as soon as the raving madman in the north tower finally got around to dying – and he deserved some courtesy. People always ignored him! That indifferent lack of regard cankered the soul of the little crown prince. Avin was scarcely more than five feet tall, and in a kingdom absolutely awash with blond people a foot or more taller, he was almost unnoticeable. He had spent his childhood scurrying like a mouse out from under the feet of towering men who kept accidentally stepping on him because they refused to look down and see that he was there.
Sometimes that made him so angry that he could just scream.
Then, without even bothering to knock, two burly blond ruffians opened the door and rolled in a large barrel. ‘Here’s that cask of Arcian red you wanted, Avin,’ one of them said. The ignorant barbarian didn’t even know enough to use a proper form of address.
‘I didn’t order a barrel of wine,’ Avin snapped.
‘The chief of the guards said you wanted a barrel of Arcian red,’ the other blond savage declared, closing the door. ‘We’re just doing what we were told to do. Where do you want this?’
‘Oh, put it over there,’ Avin said, pointing. It was easier than arguing with them.
They rolled the barrel across the floor and set it up in the corner.
‘I don’t think I know you two,’ Avin said.
‘We’re new,’ the first one said, shrugging. ‘We just joined the Royal Guard last week.’ He set a canvas bag on the floor and took out a pry-bar. He carefully inserted the bar under the lid of the barrel and worked it back and forth until the lid came free.
‘What are you doing?’ Avin demanded.
‘You can’t drink it if you can’t get at it, Avin,’ the fellow pointed out. ‘We’ve got the right tools, and you probably don’t.’ At least the man was clean-shaven. Avin approved of that. Most of the men in the Royal Guard looked like trees with golden moss growing on them. ‘You’d better taste it and make sure it hasn’t soured, Brok.’
‘Right,’ the other one agreed. He scooped up some of the wine in the cupped palm of his hand and sucked it in noisily. Avin shuddered. ‘Tastes all right to me, Tel,’ he reported. A thoughtful look crossed his face. ‘Why don’t I fill up a bucket of this before we put the lid back on?’ he suggested. ‘Hauling this barrel up the stairs was heavy business, and I’ve worked up quite a thirst.’
‘Good idea,’ Tel agreed.
The bearded man picked up the brass-bound wooden bucket Avin us
ed for a waste basket. ‘Is it all right if I use this, Avin?’ he asked.
Avin Wargunsson gaped at him. This went too far – even in Thalesia.
The burly fellow shook the contents of the waste basket out on the floor and dipped it into the barrel. Then he set the pail down. ‘I guess we’re ready then, Tel,’ he said.
‘All right,’ Tel replied. ‘Let’s get at it.’
‘What are you doing?’ Avin demanded in a shrill voice as the two approached him.
They didn’t even bother to answer. It was intolerable! He was the Prince Regent! People had no right to ignore him like this!
They picked him up by the arms and carried him over to the barrel, ignoring his struggles. He couldn’t even get their attention by kicking them.
‘In you go,’ the one named Tel said pleasantly, almost in the tone one uses when he pushes a horse into a stall. The two lifted Avin Wargunsson quite easily and stuffed him feet first into the barrel. The one called Brok held him down while Tel took a hammer and a handful of nails out of the canvas bag and picked up the barrel-lid. He set the lid on Avin’s head and pushed him down. Then he rapped his hammer around the edge of the lid, settling it in place.
Only Avin’s eyes and forehead were above the surface of the wine. He held his breath and pounded impotently on the underside of the lid with both fists.
Then there was another pounding sound as Tel calmly nailed down the lid of the barrel.
The ladies quite firmly dismissed Kalten when they set out the morning after the attempt on Queen Betuana’s life. Kalten took his self-appointed duties as Xanetia’s protector quite seriously, and he was a bit offended at being so cavalierly sent away.
‘They need some privacy right now,’ Vanion told him. ‘Set some knights to either side to protect them, but give them enough room to get Xanetia through this.’ Vanion was a soldier, but his insights were sometimes quite profound. Sparhawk looked back over his shoulder. Sephrenia rode close to one side of the sorrowing Xanetia, and Betuana strode along on the other. Xanetia rode with her head bowed, holding Flute in her arms. There was about them a kind of exclusionary wall as they closed ranks around their injured sister. Sephrenia rode very close to the Anarae, frequently reaching out her hand to touch the stricken woman. The racial differences and eons-old enmity appeared to have been overridden by the universal sisterhood of all women. Sephrenia reached across those barriers to comfort her enemy without even thinking about it. Betuana was no less solicitous, and in spite of the gruesome demonstration of the effects of Xanetia’s touch, she walked very close to the Delphaeic woman.
Aphrael, of course, was in complete control of the situation. She rode with her arms about Xanetia’s waist, and Aphrael’s touch was one of the more powerful forces on earth. Sparhawk was quite certain that Xanetia was not really suffering. The Child Goddess would not permit that. The Anarae’s apparent horror and remorse at what she had been compelled to do was entirely for the benefit of her two comforters. Aphrael was quite deliberately erasing Sephrenia’s racial animosity and Betuana’s superstitious aversion by the simple expedient of intensifying Xanetia’s outward appearance of grief.
It was easy to underestimate Aphrael when she appeared in one of her innumerable incarnations as a capricious little girl, and that was probably the main reason she had chosen the form of the Child Goddess in the first place. Sparhawk, however, had seen the reality of Aphrael waveringly reflected in the brass mirror back in Matherion, and the reality was neither childish nor whimsical. Aphrael always knew exactly what she was doing, and she always got exactly what she wanted. Sparhawk firmly fixed the wavering image of the reality of Aphrael in his mind so that it would always be present when the dimples and the kisses began to cloud his judgement.
The days were significantly shorter this far to the north. The sun rose far to the southeast now, and it did not go very high above the southern horizon before it started to descend again. Each long night’s frost piled up on the previous night’s lacy blanket, since the pale, weak sun no longer had the strength to melt what had built up during the hours of darkness.
It was nearly sunset when a towering Atan came loping down a frosty forest path to meet them. He went directly to Queen Betuana and banged his fist against his chest in salute. Betuana motioned quickly to Sparhawk and the others. ‘A message from Engessa-Atan,’ she said tersely. ‘There are enemies gathering on the coast at the eastern end of the wall.’
‘Trolls?’ Vanion asked quickly.
The tall Atan shook his head. ‘No, Vanion-Lord,’ he replied. ‘They’re Elenes, and for the most part they’re not warriors. They’re cutting trees.’
‘To use in building fortifications?’ Bevier asked.
‘No, Church Knight. They are lashing the trees together to build things that will float.’
‘Rafts?’ Tynian asked. ‘Ulath, you said that Trolls are afraid of the sea. Would they be willing to use rafts to go around the outer edge of the escarpment?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ the blond-braided Thalesian replied. ‘Ghwerig did use a boat to cross Lake Venne, and he almost had to have stolen a ride on some ship to get from Thalesia to Pelosia when he followed King Sarak during the Zemoch war, but Ghwerig wasn’t like other Trolls.’ He looked at the Atan. ‘Are they building these rafts north of the wall or here on the south side?’
‘They’re on this side of the wall,’ the Atan replied.
‘That doesn’t make too much sense, does it?’ Kalten asked.
‘Not to me, it doesn’t,’ Ulath admitted.
‘I think we’d better get up there and have a look, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said. ‘That attack on Betuana last night was fair evidence that Zalasta knows we’re coming, so this little stroll through the woods has accomplished its purpose. Let’s join forces with Engessa and Kring and find out if Sorgi’s made it to the beach yet. Winter’s coming on very fast anyway, and I think we’ll want to deal with the Trolls before the sun goes down permanently.’
‘Would you see to that, Divine One?’ Sparhawk said to Aphrael. ‘I’d ask Bhelliom to do it, but you’ve been handling things so well that I wouldn’t want to appear critical by taking over at this point.’
Aphrael’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t push your luck, Sparhawk,’ she said ominously.
Sparhawk was never really certain whether Aphrael had somehow moved them during the night or had slipped them across the intervening miles at some point between the time when they swung up into their saddles and the time when their mounts took their first steps. The Child Goddess was too practiced, too skilled, to be caught tampering when she didn’t want to be.
The hill was the same hill that had been lying to the northwest of their night’s encampment when the sun had gone down – or so it seemed – but when they crested it about a half-hour after they set out, there was a long, sandy beach and the lead-gray expanse of the Tamul Sea on the other side instead of a broad, unbroken forest.
‘That was quick,’ Talen said, looking around. Talen’s presence on this expedition had never really been explained to Sparhawk’s satisfaction. He suspected Aphrael, however. It was easy to suspect Aphrael of such things, and more often than not the suspicions proved to be well founded.
‘There’s someone coming down the beach,’ Ulath said, pointing at a tiny figure riding along the water’s edge from the north.
‘Khalad.’ Talen shrugged.
‘How can you tell?’
‘He’s my brother, Sir Ulath – besides, I recognize his cloak.’
They rode on down the hill and out onto the sand.
‘What kept you?’ Khalad asked Sparhawk bluntly when he joined them.
‘I’m glad to see you too, Khalad.’
‘Don’t try to be funny, Sparhawk. I’ve been struggling to keep Engessa and his Atans from swimming round the outer edge of the escarpment for the past ten days. They want to go attack the Trolls all by themselves. How did Stragen’s plan come off?’
‘It’s hard to say,’ Tale
n told him. ‘We were on the road during the Harvest Festival. I know Stragen and Caalador well enough to know that most of the people they were after are probably dead by now, though. We’re a little late because we wanted to make sure that Zalasta’s people saw us coming. We thought we might be able to divert him enough to keep him out of the way of Caalador’s murderers.’
Khalad grunted.
‘Are the Trolls gathering anywhere nearby?’ Ulath asked.
‘As closely as we can tell, they’re all clustered around the abandoned village of Tzada over on the other side of the Atan border,’ Khalad replied. ‘They tried to climb the wall for a while, but then they pulled back. Engessa’s got scouts on top of the wall watching them. They’ll let us know when they start to move.’
‘Where are Engessa and Kring?’ Vanion asked him.
‘Up the beach about a mile, my Lord. We’ve built an encampment back in the forest a ways. Tikume’s joined us. He brought in several thousand of the eastern Peloi about five days ago.’
‘That should help,’ Kalten said. ‘The Peloi are very enthusiastic about their wars.’
‘Any sign of Sorgi yet?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘He’s feeling his way in through the reefs,’ Khalad replied. ‘He sent a longboat on ahead to let us know that he was coming.’