by Glen Cook
He wished the damned baby would hurry up and the whole damned mess would get done with.
His thoughts slipped away to the night she had told him.
They had been lying on the couch in his office, on one of those rare occasions when they had the chance to be together. As he had let his hand drift lightly down her sleek stomach, he had asked, “You been eating too much of that baklava? You’re putting on a little…”
He had never been a smooth talker, so he wasn’t surprised by her tears. Then she whispered, “It’s not fat. Darling… I’m pregnant.”
“Oh, shit.” A swarm of panic-mice raged round inside him. What the hell would he do? What would Elana say? She was suspicious enough already…
“I thought… Doctor Wachtel said you couldn’t have any more. After Carolan you were supposed to be sterile.”
“Wachtel was wrong. I’m sorry.” She’d pulled herself against him as if trying to crawl inside.
“But… Well… Why didn’t you tell me?” She had been well along. Only skilled dress had concealed it.
“At first, I didn’t believe it. I thought it was something else. Then I didn’t want you to worry.”
Well, yes, she had saved him that, till then. Since, he’d done nothing
but
worry.
Too many people could get hurt: Elana, himself, his children, Fiana, and Kavelin—if the scandal became a cause célèbre. He spent a lot of time cursing himself for his own stupidity. And a little admitting that his major objection was having gotten caught. He’d probably go right on bedding her if he got through this on the cheap.
Before it showed enough to cause talk, Fiana had taken trusted servants and Gjerdrum and had moved to Karak Strabger, at Baxendala, where Ragnarson had won the battle Kavelin celebrated on Victory Day. Her plea of mental exhaustion wasn’t that difficult to believe. Her reign had been hard, with seldom a moment’s relief.
Horns alerted him to the present.
“Game’s afoot,” Kildragon observed, rising.
“Go ahead,” Bragi said. “Think I’ll just lay around here and loaf.”
Haaken, Reskird, Turran, and Valther were habituated to action. They went. They would get more relaxation from the hunt.
“And you, Derel?”
“Are you joking? Fat, old, and lazy as I am? Besides, I never did see any point to hounding some animal through the woods, and maybe breaking my neck.”
“Gives you a feeling of omnipotence. You’re a god for a minute. ’Course, sometimes you get taken down a peg if the game gives you the slip or runs you up a tree.” He chuckled. “Damned hard to be dignified when you’re hanging on a branch with a mad boar trying to grab a bite of your ass. Makes you reflect. And you figure out that what Haaken said about us being top critter isn’t always right.”
“Can you manage this charade another two months?”
“Eh?”
“My calculations say the child will arrive next month. She’ll need another month to make herself presentable…”
Ragnarson’s eyes became hard and cold.
“Too,” said Prataxis, who hadn’t the sense to be intimidated, because in Hellin Daimiel scholars could make outrageous, libelous remarks without suffering reprisals, “there’s the chance, however remote, that she’ll die in childbirth. Have you considered possible political ramifications? Have you taken steps? Kavelin could lose everything you two have built.”
“Derel, you walk a thin line. Take care.”
“I know. But I know you, too. And I’m speaking now only because the matter needs to be addressed and every eventuality considered. The Lesser Kingdoms have been stricken by deaths lately. Prince Raithel last year. He was old. Everybody expected it. But King Shanight, in Anstokin, went during the winter, in circumstances still questionable. And now King Jostrand of Volstokin has gone, leaving no one but a doddering Queen Mother to pick up the reins.”
“You saying there’s something behind their deaths? That Fiana might be next? My God! Jostrand was dead drunk when he fell off his horse.”
“Just trying to make a point. The Dark Lady stalks amongst the ruling houses of the Lesser Kingdoms. And Fiana will be vulnerable. This pregnancy shouldn’t have happened. Bearing the Shinsan child ruined her insides. She’s having trouble, isn’t she?”
It took a special breed not to be offended by the forthrightness of the scholars of Hellin Daimiel. Ragnarson prided himself on his tolerance, his resilience. Yet he had trouble dealing with Prataxis now. The man was speaking of things never discussed openly.
“Yes. She is. We’re worried.”
We
meant himself, Gjerdrum, and Dr. Wachtel, the Royal Physician. Fiana was scared half out of her mind. She was convinced she was going to die.
But Bragi ignored that. Elana had had nine children now, two of whom hadn’t lived, and she had gone through identical histrionics every time.
“To change the subject, have you thought about Colonel Oryon?”
“That arrogant little reptile? I’m half tempted to whip him. To send him home with his head under his arm.”
He found Balfour’s replacement insufferably abrasive. High Crag’s recent threat to call in Kavelin’s war debts had done nothing to make the man more palatable. And Bragi thought he was kicking up too much dust about Balfour’s disappearance.
Ragnarson wondered if that was related to High Crag’s threats. Though ranked General on its rosters, he had had little to do with the Mercenaries’ Guild the past two decades. High Crag kept promoting him, he suspected, so a tenuous link would exist should the Citadel want to exploit it. He wasn’t privy to the thinking there.
“Actually,” he said, “you’ve conjured enough into the Treasury to pay them off. They don’t know yet. My notion is, they want to do to us what they’ve done to some of the little states on the coast. To nail us for some property. Maybe a few titles with livings for their old men. That’s their pattern.”
“Possibly. They’ve been developing an economic base for a century.”
“What?”
“A friend of mine did a study of Guild policies and practices.
Very
interesting when you trace their monies and patterns of commission acceptance. Trouble is, the pattern isn’t complete enough to show their goals.”
“What do you think? Would it be better to give them a barony or two? One of the nonhereditary titles we created after the war?”
“You could always nationalize later—when you think you can whip them heads up.”
“If we pay there won’t be much left for emergencies.”
“Commission renewal is almost here. There won’t be much favorable sentiment in the Thing.”
“Ain’t much in my heart, either.” Ragnarson watched the sun play peekaboo through the leaves. “Hard to convince myself we need them when we haven’t had any trouble for seven years. But the army isn’t up to anything rough yet.”
The real cost of the war had been the near-obliteration of Kavelin’s traditional military leadership, the Nordmen nobility. Hundreds had fallen in the rebellion against Fiana. Hundreds had been exiled. Hundreds more had fled the kingdom. There was no lack of will in the men Bragi had recruited since, simply an absence of command tradition. He had made up somewhat by using veterans he had brought to Kavelin back then, forming several sound infantry regiments, but the diplomatically viable military strength of the state still hinged on the Guild presence. Their one regiment commanded more respect than his native seven.
Kavelin had greedy neighbors, and their intentions, what with three national leaderships having changed within the year, remained uncertain.
“If I could just get the Armaments Act through…”
Soon after war’s end Fiana had decreed that every free man should provide himself with a sword. Ragnarson’s idea. But he had overlooked the cost. Even simple weapons were expensive. Few peasants had the money. Distributing captured arms had helped only a little.
So, for years, he had been pushing legislation which would enable his War Ministry to provide weapons.
He wanted the act so he could dispense with the Mercenaries. The Thing wanted rid of the Mercenaries first. An impasse.
Bragi was finding politics a pain in the behind.
Reskird and Haaken returned, then Turran and Valther. Empty-handed. “That kid Trebilcock, and Rolf, got there first,” Reskird explained. “Tough old sow anyway.”
“Sour grapes?” Bragi chuckled. “Valther, you heard anything from Mocker yet? Or about him?”
Most of a year had passed since he had sent the fat man south. He hadn’t heard a word since.
“It’s got me worried,” Valther admitted. “I made it top priority two months ago, when I heard that Haroun had left his camps. He’s gone north. Nobody knows where or why.”
“And Mocker?”
“Practically nothing. I’ve scoured the country clear to Sedlmayr. He never made it there. But one of my men picked up a rumor that he was seen in Uhlmansiek.”
“That’s a long way from Sedlmayr…”
“I know. And he wasn’t alone.”
“Who was he with?”
“We don’t know. Nearest thing to a description I have is that one of them was a one-eyed man.”
“That bothers you?”
“There’s a one-eyed man named Willis Northen, alias Rico, who’s been on my list for years. We think he works for El Murid.”
“And?”
“Northen disappeared about the right time.”
“Oh-oh. You think El Murid’s got him? What’re the chances?”
“I don’t know. It’s more hunch than anything.”
“So. Let’s see. Mocker goes to see Haroun. El Murid’s agents intercept him. Question. How did they know?”
“You’ve got me. That bothers me more than where Mocker is. It could cost us all. I’ve tried every angle I can think of. I can’t find a leak. I put tagged information through everybody who was there when we conned Mocker into going. Result? Nothing.”
Ragnarson shook his head. He knew those men. He had bet his life on their loyalties before.
But the word had leaked somehow.
Had Mocker told anybody?
Thus the spy mind works. There had to be a plot, a connection. Coincidence couldn’t be accepted.
Habibullah hadn’t had the slightest idea of Mocker’s mission. He had simply set his agents to kidnap a man, acting on news, which was common talk in the Siluro quarter, that he was traveling to Sedlmayr. Mocker had spread that story himself. The man in black had other resources.
“Keep after it. In fact, get in touch with Haroun’s people.”
“Excuse me?”
“Haroun has people here. I know a little about your work. I’ve done some in my time. Admit it. You know them and they know you. Ask them to find out. Or you could go through our friends from Altea. They’re in direct contact. Even if you find out they don’t know anything, we’re ahead. We’d know Mocker didn’t reach the camps. Oh. Ask the Marena Dimura. They know what’s happening in the hills.”
“That’s where I got my Uhlmansiek rumor.”
The Marena Dimura were the original inhabitants of Kavelin, dwelling there before Ilkazar initiated the wave of migrations which had brought in the other three ethnic groups: the Siluro, Wessons, and Nordmen. The semi-nomadic Marena Dimura tribes kept to the forests and mountains. A fiercely independent people—though they had supported her during the civil war—they refused to recognize Fiana as legitimate monarch of Kavelin. Centuries after the Conquest they still viewed the others as occupying peoples… They put little effort into altering the situation, though. They took their revenge by stealing chickens and sheep.
It was early spring. The sun rolled west. The afternoon breeze rose. The air grew cooler. Shivering, Bragi announced, “I’m heading back to town. Be damned cold by dark.” It would take that long to get home.
Prataxis and Valther joined him. They had work to do.
“You ought to go see your wife sometime,” Ragnarson told Valther. “I had a wife who looked like that, I wouldn’t go out for groceries.”
Valther gave him an odd look. “Elana isn’t bad. And you leave her alone all the time.”
Guilt ragged Ragnarson’s conscience. It was true. His position was opening a gulf between him and Elana. And he hadn’t only neglected her. The children, too, were growing up as strangers. He stopped chiding Valther. The man’s marriage was even more successful than Mocker’s.
“Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. I’ll take a couple days off soon as I get the new armaments thing lined up. Maybe dump the kids on Nepanthe and take Elana somewhere. There’s some pretty country around Lake Turntine.”
“Sounds perfect. And Nepanthe would love having them. She’s going crazy, bottled up with Ethrian.”
Nepanthe was staying at the Palace. There were no children her son’s age at Castle Krief.
“Maybe she should move out to my place?” Ragnarson’s family occupied the home of a former rebel, Lord Lindwedel, who had been beheaded during the war. It was so huge that his mob of kids, and servants, and Haaken when he stayed over, couldn’t fill it.
“Maybe,” Valther murmured. “My place would be better.” His wasn’t far from Ragnarson’s.
The head of an intelligence service doesn’t always tell his employer all he knows.
F
IVE:
S
PRING, 1011 AFE
A
T
RAVELER IN
B
LACK
North of the Kratchnodians, at the Trolledyngjan mouth of the Middle Pass, stood the inn run by Frita Tolvarson. It had been in his family since the time of Jan Iron Hand. The main trade road from Tonderhofn and the Trolledyngjan interior passed nearby, spanned the mountains, formed a tenuous link with the south. For travelers it was either the first or last bit of comfort following or preceding a harrowing passage. There was no other hospice for days around.
Frita was an old man, and a kindly soul, with a child for almost every year of his marriage. He didn’t demand much more of his customers than reasonable payment, moderate behavior, and news of the rest of the world.
There was a custom at the inn dating back centuries. Every guest was asked to contribute a story to the evening’s entertainment.
Winding down from the high range, a path had been beaten in the previous night’s snow. The first spring venturers were assaulting the pass from the south. The path made a meandering ribbon of shadow once it reached the drifted moor, its depths unplumbed by the light of a low-hanging, full Wolf Moon. A chill arctic wind moaned through the branches of a few skeletal trees. Those gnarled old oaks looked like squatting giants praising the sky with attenuated fingers and claws.
The wind had banked snow against the north wall of Frita’s establishment. The place looked like a snowbound barrow from that direction. But on the south side a traveler could find a welcoming door.
One such was crossing the lonely moor, a shivering black silhouette against the moonlit Kratchnodians. He wore a dark great cloak wrapped tightly about him, its hood pulled far forward to protect his face. He stared down dully, eyes watery. His cheeks burned in the cold. He despaired of reaching the inn, though he saw and smelled the smoke ahead. His passage through the mountains had been terrible. He wasn’t accustomed to wintery climes.
Frita looked up expectantly as a cold blast roared into the inn. He put on a smile of welcome.
“Hey!” a customer grumbled. “Close the goddamned door! We aren’t frost giants.”
The newcomer surveyed the common room: there were just three guests.
Frita’s wife bade him quit gawking and offer the man something to drink. He nodded to his oldest daughter. Alowa slipped off her stool, quickly visited the kitchen for mulled wine. “No!” she told a customer as she passed him on her way to the newcomer. Frita chuckled. He knew a “yes” when he heard it.
The newco
mer accepted the wine, went to crouch before the fire. “There’ll be meat soon,” Alowa told him. “Won’t you let me take your cloak?” Her blonde hair danced alluringly as she shook it out of her face.
“No.” He gave her a coin. She examined it, frowned, tossed it to her father. Frita studied it. It was strange. He seldom saw its like. It bore a crown instead of a bust, and intricate characters. But it was real silver.
Alowa again asked the stranger for his cloak.
“No.” He moved to the table, leaned forward as if to sleep on his forearms.
There’ll be trouble now, Frita thought. She won’t rest till she unveils the mystery. He followed her to the kitchen. “Alowa, behave yourself. A man deserves his privacy.”
“Could he be the one?”
“The one what?”
“The one the Watcher is waiting for?”
Frita shrugged. “I doubt it. Mark me, girl. Let him be. That’s a hard man.” He had caught a glimpse of the man’s face as he had turned from the fire. Fortyish, weathered, thin, dark-eyed, dusky, with a cruel nose and crueler lines around his mouth. There was a metallic sound when he moved. The worn hilt of a sword protruded through the part in his cloak. “That’s no merchant trying to be first to the prime furs.”
Frita returned to the common room. It lay silent. The handful of customers were waiting for the newcomer to reveal something of himself and his business. Frita’s curiosity grew. The man wouldn’t push back his hood. Was his face so terrible?
Time passed, mostly in silence. The newcomer had dampened the mood that had prevailed earlier, when there had been singing, joking, and good-natured competition for Alowa’s favors. The stranger ate in silence, hidden in his hood. Alowa, gradually, moved from mystification to hurt. Never had she encountered a man so oblivious to her charms.
Frita decided the time for tales had come. His guests had begun drinking to fill the time. The mood was growing sour. Something was needed to lighten it before drink led to unpleasantness. “Brigetta, get the children.” Nodding, his wife rose from her needlework, stirred the younger children from their evening naps and the older from the kitchen. Frita frowned at the youngsters when they began playing with one of the traveler’s dogs.
