‘i’ll need a couple dozen of your men who know the country.’
Platime nodded.
‘Are you going to bring in the army?’
‘I don’t think so. I think a troop of Pandions might make a more lasting
impression on people who think they have grievances against our queen,
don’t you?’
‘isn’t that just a bit extreme?’ Stragen asked him.
‘I want to make a statement, Stragen. I want everybody in Elenia to know
just how much I disapprove of people who start plotting against my wife. I
don’t want to have to do it again, so I’m going to do it right the first
time.’
‘He didn’t actually talk like that, did he, Sparhawk?’ Ehlana asked
incredulously. ‘That’s fairly close,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘Stragen’s got a
very good ear for dialect.’
‘It’s almost hypnotic, isn’t it?’ she
marvelled, ‘and it goes on and on and on.’ She suddenly grinned impishly.
‘Write down ‘happy as pigs in mud’, Lenda. I may want to find a way to
work that into some official communication. ‘
‘As you wish, your Majesty.’ Lenda’s tone was neutral, but Sparhawk knew
that the old courtier disapproved. ‘What are we going to do about this?’
the queen asked. ‘Sparhawk said that he was going to take steps, your
Majesty,’ Talen told her. ‘You might not want to know too many details.’
‘Sparhawk and I don’t keep secrets from each other, Talen.’ ‘i’m not
talking about secrets, your Majesty,’ the boy replied innocently. ‘i’m just
talking about boring unimportant little things you shouldn’t really waste
your time on.’ He made it sound very plausible, but Ehlana looked more than
a little suspicious.
‘Don’t embarrass me, Sparhawk’ she warned.
‘Of course not,’ he replied blandly.
The campaign was brief. Since Polk knew the precise location of the camp
of the dissidents, and Platime’s men knew all the other hiding places in
the surrounding mountains, there was no real place for the bandits to run,
and they were certainly no match for the thirty black-armoured Pandions
Sparhawk, Kalten and Ulath led against them. The surviving nobles were
held for the queen’s justice and the rest of the outlaws were turned over
to the local sheriff for disposition. ‘Well, my Lord of Bolton,’ Sparhawk
said to an) earl crouched before him on a log, with a blood-stained
bandage around his head and his hands bound behind him. ‘Things didn’t
turn out so well, did they?’
‘Curse you, Sparhawk.’ Bolton’ spat,
squinting uP against the afternoon’s brightness. ‘How did you find out
where we were?’
‘My dear Bolton,’ Sparhawk laughed, ‘you didn’t really
think you could hide from my wife, did you? She takes a very personal
interest in her kingdom. She knows every tree, every town and village and
all of the peasants. It’s even rumoured that she knows most of the deer by
their first names.’
‘Why didn’t you come after us earlier then?’ Bolton
sneered. The queen was busy. She finally found the time to make some
decisions about you and your friends. I don’t imagine you’ll care much for
these decisions, old boy. What I’m really interested in is any information
you might have about Krager. He and I haven’t seen each other for quite
some time, and I find myself yearning for his company again.’ Bolton’s
eyes grew frightened. ‘You won’t get anything from me, Sparhawk,’ he
blustered. ‘How much would you care to wager on that?’ Kalten asked him.
‘You’d save yourself a great deal of unpleasantness if you told Sparhawk
what he wants to know, and Krager’s not so loveable that you’d really want
to go through that in order to protect him.’
‘just talk, Bolton,’ Sparhawk insisted implacably.
‘I – I can’t!’ Bolton’s sneering bravado crumbled.
His face turned deathly pale, and he began to tremble violently.
‘Sparhawk. I beg of you. It means my life if I say anything.’
‘Your life isn’t worth very much right now anyway,’ Ulath told him
bluntly. ‘One way or another, you are going to talk.’
‘For God’s sake, Sparhawk! You don’t know what you’re asking!’
‘i’m not asking, Bolton.’ Sparhawk’s face was bleak.
Then, without any warning or reason, a deathly
chill suddenly enveloped the woods, and the midafternoon sun darkened.
Sparhawk glanced upward. The sky was very blue, but the sun appeared wan
and sickly. Bolton screamed. An inky cloud seemed to spring from the
surrounding trees, coalescing around the shrieking Prisoner. Sparhawk
jumped back with a startled oath, his hand going to his sword-hilt.
Bolton’s voice had risen to a screech, and there were horrible sounds
coming from the impenetrable darkness surrounding him – sounds of breaking
bones and tearing flesh. The shrieking broke off quite suddenly, but the
sounds continued for several eternal-seeming minutes. Then, as quickly as
it had come, the cloud vanished. Sparhawk recoiled in revulsion. His
prisoner had been torn to pieces. ‘Good God!’ Kalten gasPed. ‘What
haPPened?’
‘We both know, Kalten,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘We’ve seen it
before. Don’t try to question any of the other prisoners. I’m almost
positive they won’t be allowed to answer.’
There were five of them, Sparhawk, Ehlana, Kalten, Ulath and Stragen. They
had gathered in the royal apartments, and their mood was bleak. ‘Was it
the same cloud?’ Stragen asked intently.
‘There were some differences,’
Sparhawk replied. ‘It was more in the way it felt rather than anything I
could really pin down.’
‘Why would the Troll-Gods be so interested in protecting Krager?’ Ehlana
asked, her face puzzled.
‘I don’t think it’s Krager they’re protecting,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘I think
it has something to do with what’s going on in Lamorkand.’ He slammed his
fist down on the arm of his chair. ‘I wish Sephrenia were here!’ he burst
out with a sudden oath. ‘All we’re doing is groping in the dark.’
‘Would you be opposed to logic at this point?’ Stragen asked him.
‘I wouldn’t even be opposed to astrology just now,’ Sparhawk replied
sourly.
‘All right.’ The blond Thalesian thief rose to his feet and began to pace
up and down, his eyes thoughtful. first of all, we know that somehow the
Troll-Gods have got out of that box.’
‘Actually, you haven’t really proved that, Stragen,’ ulath
disagreed. ‘Not logically, anyway.’ Stragen stopped pacing. ‘He’s right,
you know,’ he admitted. ‘We’ve been basing that conclusion on a guess. All
we can say with any logical certainty is that we’ve encountered something
that looks and feels like a manifestation of the Troll-Gods. Would you
accept that, Sir Ulath?’
‘I suppose I could go that far, Milord Stragen.’
‘i’m so happy. Do we know of anything else that does the same sort of
things?’
‘No,’ Ulath replied, ‘but that’s not really relevant. We don’t
know about everything. There could be dozens of things we don’t know about
that take the form of shadows or clouds, tear people all to pieces and
give humans a chilly feeling when they’re around.’
‘i’m not sure that logic is really getting us anywhere, Stragen conceded.
‘There’s nothing wrong with your logic, Stragen,’ Ehlana told him. ‘Your
major premise is faulty, that’s all.’ ‘You too, your Majesty?’ Kalten
groaned. ‘I thought there was at least one other person in the room who
relied on common sense rather than all this tedious logic.’ ‘All right
then, Sir Kalten,’ she said tartly, ‘what does your common sense tell you?’
‘Well, first off, it tells me that you’re all going at the problem
backwards. The question we should be asking is what makes Krager so special
that something supernatural would go out of its way to protect him? Does it
really matter what the supernatural thing is at the moment?’
‘He might have something there, you know?’ Ulath said. ‘Krager’s a
cockroach basically. His only real reason for existing is to be stepped
on.’
‘i’m not so sure,’ Ehlana disagreed. ‘Krager worked for Martel, and Martel
worked for Annias.’
‘Actually, dear, it was the other way around,’ Sparhawk corrected her.
She waved that distinction aside.
‘Bolton and the others were all allied to Annias, and Krager used to carry
messages between Annias and Martel. Bolton and his cohorts would almost
certainly have known Krager. Poke’s story more or less confirms that.
That’s what made Krager important in the first place.’ She paused,
frowning. ‘But what made him important after the renegades were all in
custody?’
‘Backtracking,’ Ulath grunted. ‘I beg your pardon?’ The queen looked
baffled. ‘This whatever-it-is didn’t want us to be able to trace Krager
back to his present employer.’
‘Oh, that’s obvious, Ulath,’ Kalten snorted. ‘His employer is Count
Gerrich. Polk told Sparhawk that there was somebody in Lamorkand who wanted
to keep us so busy here in Elenia that we wouldn’t have time to take any
steps to put down all the turmoil over there. That has to be Gerrich.’
‘You’re just guessing, Kalten,’ Ulath said. ‘You could very well be right,
but it’s still just a guess.’
‘Do you see what I mean about logic?’ Kalten demanded of them. ‘What do you