was riddled with short steel arrows. Someone’s been practising with a
crossbow.’
‘What’s a crossbow?’ Sarabian asked. ‘It’s a Lamork weapon, your Majesty.’
Sparhawk scribbled a quick sketch. ‘It looks something like this. The limbs
are much stronger than those of an ordinary long-bow, so it has greater
range and penetrating power. It’s a serious threat to an armoured knight.
Someone here in Matherion’s working on a way to counter the advantage our
armour gives us.’
‘It’s beginning to sound as if I’m hanging on to my throne by my
fingertips,’ Sarabian said. ‘Could I appeal to you for political asylum,
Ehlana?’
‘i’d be delighted to have you, Sarabian,’ she replied, but let’s not give
up on Sparhawk just yet. He’s terribly resourceful. ‘
‘As I was saying before,’ Sparhawk continued, ‘we can’t do too much about
the ghouls or werewolves or the Shining Ones or vampires, but I think we
might be able to give the Trolls and the Cyrgai a few surpriSeS. I’d like
for the Atans to have a bit more training with mounted tactics and the use
of Bevier’s engines, and then I think it might be time to let our opponent
know that he’s not going to win this in a walk. I’d particularly like to
decimate the Trolls. Our enemy’s relying rather heavily on the Troll-Gods,
and they’ll leave the alliance if too many of their worshippers get killed.
I think that early next week we might want to mount a couple of expeditions
– one up into Troll-country and another down to Sama. It’s time to make our
presence known.’
‘And this local business?’ Oscagne asked. ‘All this fascination with the
hidden city of the mind?’
‘Caalador will keep working on that. We’ve got their password now, and
that can open all kinds of doors for us. Vanion’s drawing up a list of
names. Before long, we’ll know everybody in Matherion who’s been talking
about the Hidden City.’ He looked at Sarabian. ‘Have I your Majesty’s
permission to detain those people if necessary?’ he asked. ‘if we move
first and round them all up before they can set their scheme in motion,
we’ll break the back of this plot before it gets too far along.’
‘Detain away, Sparhawk,’ Sarabian grinned. ‘I’ve got lots of buildings we
can use for prisons.’
‘All right, young lady,’ Sparhawk said quite firmly to his daughter a few
days later. ‘One of Caalador’s beggars saw Count Gerrich in a street not
far from here. How did you know that he’d be here in Matherion?’
‘I didn’t know, Sparhawk. I just had a hunch.’ Danae was sitting calmly in
a large chair, scratching her cat’s ears. Mmrr was purring gratefully. ‘A
hunch?’
‘intuition, if that word makes you feel any better. It just didn’t seem
right that Krager and Elron would be here without the others being here as
well – and that would logically include Gerich, wouldn’t it?’
‘Don’t confuse the issue by using the words ‘logic’ and ‘intuition’ in the
same sentence.’
‘Oh, Sparhawk, do grow up. That’s all that logic really is – a
justification for hunches. Have you ever known anyone who used logic to
disprove something he already believed?’
‘Well – not personally, maybe, but I’m sure there have been some.’
‘I’ll wait while you track one down. I’m an immortal, so time doesn’t
really mean all that much to me.’
‘That’s really offensive, Aphrael.’
‘Sorry, father.’ She didn’t sound very contrite. ‘Your mind gathers
information in hundreds of ways, Sparhawk – things you hear, things you
see, things you touch and even things you smell. Then it puts all of that
information together and jumps from there to a conclusion. That’s all that
hunches really are. Intuition is just as precise as logic, really, but it
doesn’t have to go through the long, tedious process of plodding along step
by step to prove things. It leaps immediately from evidence to conclusion
without all the tiresome intermediate steps. Sephrenia doesn’t like logic
because it’s so boring. She already knows the answers you’re so laboriously
trying to prove – and so do you, if you’d be honest about it.’
‘Folk-lore is full of these hunches, Aphrael – and they’re usually wrong.
How about the old notion that thunder sours milk?’
‘That’s a mistake in logic, Sparhawk, not a mistake in intuition.’
‘Would you like to explain that?’
‘you could just as easily say that sour milk causes thunder, you know.’
‘That’s absurd.’
‘Of course it is. Thunder and sour milk are both effects, not causes.’.’
‘You should talk to Dolmant. I’d like to see you try to explain that he’s
been wasting his time on logic all these years.’
‘He already knows,’ she shrugged. ‘Dolmant’s far more intuitive than you
give him credit for being. He knew who I was the moment he saw me – which
is a lot more than I can say for you, father. I thought for a while there
that I was going to have to fly in order to
persuade you.’
‘Be nice.’
‘I am. There are all sorts of things I didn’t say about you. What’s Krager
up to?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘We really need to find him, Sparhawk.’
‘I know. I want him even more than you do. I’m going to enjoy wringing him
out like a wet sock.’
‘Be serious, Sparhawk. You know Krager. He’d tell you his whole life story
if you even frowned at him.’ He sighed. ‘You’re probably right,’ he
conceded. ‘It takes a lot of the fun out of it though.’
‘You’re not here to have fun, Sparhawk. Which would you rather have?
Information or revenge?’
‘Couldn’t we come up with a way to have both?’ She rolled her eyes upward.
‘Elenes,’ she sighed.
Bevier took a detachment of newly-trained Atan engineers west toward Sama
early the next week. The following day Kalten, Tynian and Engessa took two
hundred mounted Atans north toward the lands being ravaged by the Trolls.
At Vanion’s insistence the parties filtered out of Matherion in twos and
threes to assemble later outside the city. ‘There’s no point in announcing
what we’re up to,’ he said. A few days after the departure of the two
military expeditions, Zalasta left for Sarsos. ‘I won’t be very long,’ he
told them. ‘We have a certain commitment from the Thousand, ‘ but I think
I’d like to see some concrete evidence that they’re willing to honour that
commitment. Words are all well and good, but let’s see some action – just
as a demonstration of good faith. I know my brothers. Nothing in the world
would please them more than being able to reap the benefits of allying
themselves with us ‘in principle’ without the inconvenience of actually
being obliged to do anything to help. They’re best suited to deal with
these supernatural manifestations, so I’ll pry them loose from their
comfortable chairs in Sarsos and disperse them to these troublespots.’ He
smiled thinly at Vanion from under his beetling brows. ‘Extensive travel
might toughen them up a bit, my Lord,’ he added. ‘Perhaps we can avoid
spraining any more of your ankles in demonstrations of how flabby and lazy
they are.’
‘I appreciate that, Zalasta,’ Vanion laughed. There were always more
things to do than there was time for. The ceremonies and ‘occasions’ that
surrounded the state visit by the Queen of Elenia filled their afternoons
and evenings, and so Sparhawk and the others were obliged to work late and
rise early in order to conduct their surreptihous operations in the city
and the imperial compound. They all grew short-tempered from lack of sleep,
and Mirtai began to badger Sparhawk about the condition of his wife’s
health. Ehlana was, in fact, beginning to develop dark circles under her
eyes and an increasingly waspish disposition. The break-through came about
ten days after the departure of the expeditions to Sama and to the
newlyoccupied lands of the Trolls. Caalador arrived early one morning’ with
a kind of exultant tightness of his face and a large canvas sack in one
hand. ‘It was pure luck, Sparhawk,’ he chortled when the two met in the
royal apartment. We’re due for some,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘What did you
find?’
‘How would you like to know the exact day and hour when this ‘Hidden City’
business is going to come to a head?’
‘i’d be moderately interested in that, yes. That selfcongratulatory
expression spread all over your face says that you’ve found out a few
things.’
‘I have indeed, Sparhawk, and it fell into my hand like an over-ripe
peach.’ Caalador slid into his drawl. Them there fellers on t’ other side’s
mighty careless with wrote-down instructions. It seems that this yore
cut-purse o’ my acquaintance – enterprisin’ young feller with a real sharp
knife – he slit open the purse o’ this yore fat Dacite merchant, an’ a hull
fistful o’ coins come slitherin’ out, an’ mixt in with them there silver
an’ brass coins they wuz this yore message, which it wuz oz bed bin passt
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