Not that he could do very much, but perhaps he could try. The prospect of action was enticing. If he did achieve anything, then the Keeper would be in his debt. Whereas, if he refused to help . . . Could this be some sort of test?
“You think Azak will camp within your death-trap valley tonight? I assume the lake is within the occult barrier and the irresistible campsite just outside?”
Raim nodded-and grinned, looking very boyish again. “The Keeper warned me you might be smarter than you look.”
“I certainly hope so,” Rap said. “Could the Keeper cloak me in a similar spell?”
The youngster blinked gold eyes in astonishment. “Her Holiness can do anything she wants, I suppose.”
“Then let me go and call on Azak tonight.” Both archons flinched.
“And what can you say to him?” Toom demanded.
Not much! “I could tell him to turn back, without saying why. He may heed my advice, because he knows me. If he won’t, then you can still drown, him. I could try dropping a discreet hint to his tame sorcerers, also. What have you got to lose?”
“Everything,” Toom said glumly. “What if his sorcerers have already been perverted by the Covin? I can’t see the Keeper taking such a risk.”
Raim uttered a sinister laugh. “Unless she appointed him an appraiser.”
“What does an appraiser do?” Rap demanded, not sure that he wanted to hear the answer.
“Spies for the Keeper. But if he is discovered, then he bursts into flames.”
3
The sheep station lay in the hills west of Castino, in eastern Qoble, under the beetling spires of the front range. It probably saw very little excitement between one century and the next, so Hardgraa had felt no compunction in taking it over for a day or two. There was nothing at the station itself; it just happened to provide a suitably large establishment at a strategic midpoint on the charts, and the owners should feel honored that the imperor needed it. Not that there was an imperor at the moment, but they weren’t to know that.
In the hills the nights were evilish cold even close to midsummer. Some lowly legionary had been told to light a fire, and legionaries were expected to display zeal, so the blaze that roared in the hearth would have roasted twin oxen. Nobody wanted to stand close to it. The cool end of the room was packed with metaled men and the other almost empty. The candles stood tall and fresh, although dawn was not far off.
Feeling frowsy after a mere hour’s sleep—the first in two nights—Hardgraa paused in the doorway to glance over his squad. They would not have described themselves that way. Most of them were centurions, with a few optios and a couple of signifers who knew the quarry well by sight. The ineffectual Tribune Hodwhine was present, and nominally in charge. Two more tribunes were out in the field, supervising the sweep, and they were real soldiers, not aristocratic jellyfish.
For a group so giddily honored by rank, this one was singularly failing to live up to the standards of the XIIth. Shandie would have stalked around the room like a jaguar, ripping stripes. If Hodwhine knew his job, he would be slamming down on the yawning, the slouching, and those unshaven chins. A man should not waste time sleeping if his armor needed cleaning, either.
Hardgraa could not interfere in those matters, but everyone knew who was really in control. He marched into the room and a ripple ran through it, turning heads and stopping conversations. Here was the imperor’s man. Legate Ethemene had assigned three cohorts to this man’s personal command, purely on the strength of his reputation as Shandie’s chief of security. He wore the imperor’s four-pointed star. One man who had displeased him had been flogged to bare bones in front of the legion. He had their attention now.
He nodded perfunctorily to Hodwhine and snatched himself a tankard of coffee from the mess table. Then he turned to the crowd around the chart table and centurions backed out of his way to make room. He knew by the shape of their silence that there was something new. It couldn’t be capture, or he would have been told at once. A good sighting, then. His eyes scanned the green chalk marks that represented sightings, the red marks for his troops. There had been no additions since he went off to catnap. There had been deletions.
He tapped a thick finger on the paper. “The cherry orchard didn’t pan out?”
“A priest,” Hodwhine said at his back, “and his bishop’s wife, would you believe it?”
Just for once, Hardgraa let his sense of humor out of its cage. A priest and a bishop’s wife? No wonder they had tried to evade questioning! Yes, that was worth a smile, and of course the smile was being noticed. “An unfrocked priest, sir? Would that be an instance of a little bit of good in every evil, or a little bit of evil in every good?”
“Depends,” Hodwhine said quickly. “Depends how good the goods are, I’d say.” He’d probably been tutored in witty rejoindering.
Hardgraa let the chuckles fade away while he continued to study the chart. The deletion was not enough to explain the new sense of expectancy—not in this exhausted group at this hour of the night. They knew something he did not. Nevertheless, the pattern was clearer now. Without the priest the sightings clustered better. Almost he could feel that the chalk marks were footprints and he was some great sharp-eyed raptor soaring over the foothills of the eastern Qobles, tracking his prey.
You run, Master Ylo. You try to hide, Master Ylo. You double back and circle, Ylo, but you can’t shake me. Do you feel my breath on you now, Ylo? Can you hear my claws on the rock?
“He’s going east,” Hardgraa said. “He’ll cross the Angot road about here. Then . .. Then we’ve got him, haven’t we!” He leaned across, but the light was too poor to be certain. “There’s no trails marked through the mountains there, are there?”
“No, sir,” said the optio at that corner of the table. Hodwhine coughed. “Oh, Centurion?”
Hardgraa turned. “Sir?”
“Letter here for you,” the tribune drawled. “Came a little while ago. Imperial post from Angot “
So that was what was new! Hardgraa accepted the packet and glanced over the inscriptions. The seal was intact. “Thank you,” he said, and tucked it away in his pouch.
“You’re not going to read it?” Hodwhine said, frowning. “I have read it, sir. I mean I’ve got the message, sir. That’s Ylo’s hand.”
The annoyance on the tribune’s face showed that he had known that. One of the signifers must have identified the writing.
“Posted in Angot,” Hodwhine said sharply. “Addressed to you at the barracks; forwarded here. Posted in Angot, Centurion, yesterday.”
“Yes, sir. That’s the message.” The tribune colored. ”Centurion!”
“Look!” Hardgraa barked, and turned back to the table. He pulled out his dagger and used it as a pointer. “They’re here. Within a league, they’re here. One of these fruit farms, likely. And we’re all round them, and they must know that now. There’s the road to Angot “
“So he slipped by us!”
“No, sir. He did not slip by as. He chose a woman heading down to Angot and slipped her one of his smiles to post a package for him in Angot. That’s what he did, sir. That’s the message, sir—Here I am, come and get me! But it’s a lie, sir. He’s not in Angot. He’s here. Right here!” Hardgraa slammed his dagger into the chart and left it standing there.
Hodwhine bared his teeth. “Read the letter!”
Hardgraa almost shrugged. They must all have been speculating for an hour on what it said, and it didn’t matter. “Yessir.” He pushed out of the group and marched over to stand beside the inferno on the hearth—alone, with every eye in the room watching him. Only then did he pull out the package and break the seal. The heavy parchment crackled as he opened it. He expected to see cipher, the code that Shandie had used within his personal staff, the old ”handful of men” he had trusted: Hardgraa himself, Lord Umpily, and Sir Acopulo, Prince Ralpnie, later Ylo . . .
To his disgust, though, the letter was in clear, its text a shameful breach of security.
Signifer Ylo (retd.) to
Centurion Hardgraa, assigned to the XIIth: Greetings!
We were friends. If the Covin has enslaved you, then I am truly sorry. If you are still your own man, then how can you imagine that our former leader would ever have put any consideration at all ahead of his child’s welfare? He always maintained that every individual should have the right
There was a lot more. Hardgraa tossed the thing into the fire and walked back to the table. He switched to the northeast corner of the chart and, when space had been made for him, he was looking across at a red-faced, glaring tribune.
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