He heard distant shouts and saw that Little Chicken had gone all the way up the trail to meet the advance party descending. There seemed to be an almighty battle in progress already, with armored men hurtling bodily through the air.
For a moment Rap stopped, stricken. The goblin was being trash again, seeking to aid Rap’s escape. How dare he! And now it was useless to go back and try to save him in his turn. Rap had no way of fighting armed men. Damned goblin! Whatever had happened to him when the fairy died, it surely had not made him sword-proof. How dare he be a martyr? He could be as elusive as a doe in undergrowth like this. If any of them had possessed even a hope of escaping, it had been Little Chicken. Rap continued his own noisy, hectic flight.
And who had gone the other way? Thinal? Sagorn certainly would not have stayed around for the patrol to catch. Darad, maybe. That would be another mighty battle.
Like a fox gone to earth, Rap skittered in under a dense bush, hard against an ancient fragment of rotting timber wall. He panted the humid air like a dog and wiped his streaming forehead. Little Chicken was still at it. Even with occult strength, how could one unarmed man hold off a dozen or so legionaries?
And he had apparently already leveled half that many, for the shrubbery was hung with bodies. Over the mad beating of his own heart, Rap could hear the oaths and screams and the crashing of branches. Who ever said that goblins did not enjoy fighting?
A dozen? He scanned and saw that the soldiers had broken ranks, and were going to their comrades’ aid. Uphill and downhill, armed men raced toward the racket. If that had been Little Chicken’s purpose, he had succeeded. The way was not exactly clear, but now the lines were broken, and the bushes were full of running men. One more would not be heard.
The goblin had given his life for his master, then, and it would be folly to refuse the opportunity. It would also feel like cowardice to accept it, yet Rap could do nothing to help now. Cursing himself for a craven ingrate, he scrambled to his feet and went plunging down the slope.
Still the undergrowth was transparent to his farsight. He could find the best route with no difficulty, and in the long run a faun had a much better chance of evading notice in Faerie than a goblin ever would. Coward! He angled over to a narrow, muddy gully, the bed of an intermittent stream, and went slithering down it on his seat. It steepened; he tried to stop, caught a foot in a tangle of roots, went hurtling forward down a high bank, bounced off rock, and plunged into sudden darkness.
4
Inos was never at her best in boats. She had known enough to refuse breakfast, and the waves in the bay were harmless spawn of the mighty surf that thundered beyond the headlands, but the slimy little dhow reeked of fish and wallowed like a drunkard—or so it seemed to her wayward stomach.
She had always assumed that the tentlike garments of Zarkian women were hot and stuffy. She had been surprised to discover that the black chaddar she had been given was a relatively cool and comfortable garment, but it had not encountered soap in a long time, and neither had the half-naked fishermen who swarmed around her. They were a rough, unsettling crew, foulmouthed, hairy, and spangled with fish scales. They shouted ill-natured jests about her and guffawed at them. She dared not reply, for she could not speak in their dialect. The captain was as bad as any, a bow-legged, squint-eyed boor.
Fortunately she need not look at the sailors, for her hood restricted her side vision greatly. Her hands and face had been dyed with berry juice, but very little Inos showed above her veil. Her voice might betray her, and her green eyes-nothing else should.
A bloated meal sack rested heavily on her lap when she sat. Its ropes dug into her shoulders when she walked; but the worst of all her torments was Charak.
Charak in his swaddling clothes stank much worse than anything else. He yelled continuously, he writhed and squirmed. She cursed Azak a million times for Charak and an excessive quest for realism. She did not think Charak was a good idea at all, for he was more likely to draw attention to her by showing up her lack of expertise with babies than he was to provide disguise. He also seemed too young to be an older brother of the meal sack, although Zana must be a better judge of such things than Inos. The advantages of Charak were only that his foul stench tended to keep the sailors away and her constant dread of dropping the tiny monster kept her too busy to brood much.
She had no idea where Azak was. He had not been present when she had picked her away along the slippery boards of the ramshackle jetty to enter this unspeakable floating slum. She had seen no one of his height in her later views of the encampment, when the boat had brought her back again. The dhow had first sailed landward until it met with the fishing fleet, outward bound on the dawn breeze. It had then put about and hidden itself within the myriad of similar boats. Inos had assumed then that her destination was somewhere other than Arakkaransomewhere north or south along the coast-but once the fleet had crossed the bar, her own craft had separated and circled back past the headland again.
By then the family men had been striking camp and embarking their horses in the little ferry that plied to and fro between the capes, for the dusty track through the dunes was apparently a common coastal highway, much used by the beggars and foot pads and glib-spoken chapmen who preyed upon the honest laborers of the villages. To move the whole troop and their mounts would take many trips, and if Rasha thought to check on the sultan or his royal guest, she would have a long search before she could be sure they were not present. That, at least, must be the theory.
Now the dhow was heading in again toward the docks, tacking clumsily against the rising breeze and making poor way; even a landlubber’s eye could see it was not a weatherly craft. Sternly ignoring the queasy twitchings within her, Inos kept her eyes on Arakkaran itself, resplendent in the dawn’s light and just as glorious as Azak had promised. Built like Krasnegar on a slope, it was many times larger, its hillside more stepped and irregular, and its buildings were of marble and gold, not brick, timber, and red tiles. In all of Krasnegar there were exactly six trees, while jungle seemed to be breaking out everywhere in Arakkaran, in any unused corner, on any angle too steep for building. Nor could Inisso’s spiky black castle ever compare with the shining domes and minarets of Azak’s palace sprawling along the plateau’s lip. Despite her discomfort, Inos had to admire the grandeur of Arakkaran.
At long last the wallowing dhow was closing in on the shipping moored and anchored along the harborfront. Now the squint-eyed captain bellowed at his rabble to lower sail and man the sweeps. Grumbling, they set to honest labor. Lewd banter was replaced by muttered curses and hard breathing.
With suspicious suddenness, Charak stopped yelling. Inos held him up to look at. “Now what’re you planning, you little horror?” she whispered. His reply was a loud belch and a fountain of milk. Sweat broke out on her forehead and her insides hunched. That was definitely the worst moment of the trip so far.
By the time Inos had restored her internal calm, Charak was asleep on her shoulder, snoring, and the dhow had almost reached the wharfs. She had missed her chance to admire the many great vessels moored in the harbor. Some sightseeing trip this was turning out to be!
Then the boat jostled against a high wall, whose ancient stones were greasy and coated with brown weed. Hands steadied it, but no lines were thrown. Clutching Charak so tightly that he awoke and began yelling in an echo of her own terror, wobbling off balance because of the meal sack, Inos was roughly disembarked, like baggage, onto a slippery stone staircase. Even before she had properly found her footing, open water was showing between her and the departing boat.
A few rusty spikes protruding from the slimy coating on the wall showed where once there might have been a handrail. If so, it had vanished long since and not been replaced. Unbalanced by the ridiculous padding she wore, clumsy in her long gown, she hung on tightly to one of the sharp-prickled spikes until the world steadied. Water surged and splashed just below her. Charak went back to sleep.