“What is it?” asked Calis.
“Tracks and a cave, Captain,” answered the outrider.
Praji and Vaja exchanged questioning looks, and dismounted. They led their horses close to the cave and inspected it. A short entrance, one a man could enter stooped over, led back into the gloom.
Calis glanced down. “Old tracks.” Then he moved to the entrance and ran his hand over the stone edge of the cave. “This isn’t natural,” said Calis.
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“Or if it is,” said Praji, also running his hand along the wall, “someone’s done some work on it to make it more sturdy. There’s stonework under this dirt.” He brushed away the dirt and revealed some fitted stones underneath.
“Sarakan,” said Vaja.
“Maybe,” conceded Praji.
“Sarakan?” asked Calis.
Praji remounted his horse and said, “It’s an abandoned dwarven city in the Ratn’gary Mountains. All of it underground. Some humans moved in a few centuries back, some cult of lunatics, and they’ve died out. Now it just sits empty.”
“People are always stumbling across entrances down near the Gulf,” said Vaja, “and in the foothills near the Great South Forest.”
Calis said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s hundreds of miles from here.”
“True,” said Praji. “But the damn tunnels run everywhere.” He pointed to the hillock. “That one could be connected somewhere over there”—he pointed at the distant mountains—”or it could simply go back a few hundred feet and stop. Depends on who built it, but it looks like one of the entrances to Sarakan.”
Roo ventured, “Maybe it’s built by the same dwarves, but it’s a different city?”
“Maybe,” said Praji. “It’s been a long time since any dwarves lived anywhere but the mountains, and city folk don’t linger on the Plain of Djams.”
Calis said, “Could we use this as a depot? Leave some weapons and supplies here if we need to come down this side of the river?”
Praji said, “I wouldn’t, Captain. If the Gilani are around here, they may be using this as a base.”
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Calis was silent for a moment; then he spoke loudly enough for the entire troop, except for the other outriders, to hear. “Mark this location in your minds. Check the distant landscapes. We may be very needful of finding this exact spot, soon. If we need to break from the camp, for any reason, or fight our way out, if you can’t make straight for the city of Lanada, make for this mound. Those who do meet here, make your way to the south the best you can.
The City of the Serpent River is your final goal, for one of our ships should be waiting there.”
Erik looked around and then looked down at his mount. If he put her nose in line with two peaks in the distant mountains, the one that looked like a broken fang, and the other that looked like a clump of grapes, to his imagination, and kept the river at his back while keeping another distant peak off his left side, he thought he should be able to find his way back here.
After the men had taken their bearings, Calis turned to an outrider up on a distant hill who was watching. Calis made the arm signals to indicate they were turning back.
The man acknowledged the order, then turned and signaled an even more distant rider, while Calis gave the order to return to the host of the Emerald Queen.
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Escape
Nakor w
waved.
He had learned years ago that if you didn’t want to be accosted by minor officials, look as if you know exactly what you’re doing. The officer standing on the far end of the dock didn’t recognize Nakor, as the Isalani knew he wouldn’t.
Slaves weren’t people. One didn’t take note of them.
And now he didn’t look like a slave. He had ducked out of the slave pen the night before so that the morning and night head count would match. He had wandered around the camp, smiling and chatting, until he had reached the place where he had secreted his belongings when he had run off to play construction worker.
Then at dawn he had wandered back to the slave pens and fallen in a few yards behind the work gang.
He had moved along the newly constructed bridge, past a guard who started to ask him something when Nakor patted him on the shoulder in a friendly fashion and said, “Good morning,” leaving the guard scratching his chin.
452
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Now he called to the officer, “Here, catch!” and threw him his bundle of bedroll and shoulder sack.
The officer reacted without thought and caught the bundle, then set it down as if it were covered in bugs.
By then Nakor had jumped the five feet separating the end of the bridge and the south-shore foundation of rocks. He landed and stood up, saying, “I didn’t want to take the chance of dropping the bundle in the water.
There are important documents in it.”
“Important . . .?” asked the officer as Nakor picked up his bundle.
“Thank you. I must be getting those orders to the Captain.”
The officer hesitated, which was his undoing, for in that moment, while he tried to frame his next question, Nakor slipped behind a party of horsemen riding past, and when they had moved on, the little man was nowhere in sight.
The officer stood peering this way and that, and failed to notice that a few feet away there were now seven sleeping mercenaries around a cold campfire where moments before there had been only six.
Nakor lay motionless, listening for any sign of alarm.
He grinned as he lay there, his usual reaction to pulling off a good vanishing act. He found it amazing that most people never noticed what was going on right before their noses. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and started to doze.
Less than an hour later, he heard a voice and opened his eyes. One of the soldiers next to him was sitting up and yawning. Nakor turned over and saw that the officer he had flummoxed was standing with his back toward the camp.
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Nakor rolled to his feet, said, “Good morning,” to the still-half-asleep mercenary, and moved off down the trail toward where he hoped Calis was camped.
Erik looked up from where he sat, a few feet away from Calis, de Loungville, and Foster, polishing his sword. They had returned to camp after nightfall, and Calis had gone to report to the officers’ tent near the bridge while Erik and the others tended the horses.
When he returned he showed no sign of how the meeting went, but Calis rarely showed anything that Erik could read as pleasure or irritation.
But now Erik saw a small betrayal of emotion as Calis rose with an expectant expression: Nakor was making his way across the narrow trail that had been worn by hooves and feet between the Eagles’ camp and the one to the east.
The little man came trudging into view, with his seemingly ever-present grin in place. “Woof,” he said, sitting down heavily on the ground next to Foster. “That was some doing, finding you. Lots of bird banners, and lots of red things, and most of these men”—he pointed in general at most of the other companies nearby—“don’t care who’s next to them. This is one very ignorant bunch.”
Praji, who was lying back picking his teeth with a long sliver of wood, said, “They’re not being paid to think.”
“True.”
“What did you discover?” asked Calis.
Nakor leaned forward and lowered his voice, so that Erik had to strain to overhear, though he and the others in his squad were trying hard to look as if they weren’t. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea to talk 52887_Shad
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about this here, but let’s say that when I can tell you, you don’t want to know what I saw.”
“Yes I do,” said Calis.
Nakor nodded. “I understand, but you’ll understand what I mean when I tell you. Just let me say that if you have a plan for us to get out of here, tonight would be a very good time to do it. We don’t need to stay any longer.”
Calis said, “Well, now that we know where the ford is, we could try to slip across, or bluff our way and tell the patrol at the bank that we’re going out on another sweep to the south.”
Nakor opened his ever-present bag, slung over his shoulder, and said, “Maybe one of these passes would fool them.”
Erik tried hard not to laugh at the expression on Foster’s and de Loungville’s faces. They looked at the documents, and de Loungville said, “I’m not an expert in reading this gibberish, but these look authentic.”
“Oh, they are,” said Nakor. “I stole them from Lord Fadawah’s tent.”
De Loungville said, “The Queen’s Lord High General?”
“That’s the man. He was busy and no one noticed, as I was playing the part of a slave. I thought one of these might do us some good. I wanted to poke around. There’s something very funny about that general. He’s not what he seems to be, and if I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get my news to you, I would have stayed around to see just what this general really is.”
Calis looked through the four documents. “This might do it. It’s a vaguely worded order commanding 52887_Shadow of a Dark.qxd 9/3/02 3:50 PM Page 456
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all units to let the bearer pass. It doesn’t say if the bearer will have a full company of more than a hundred men with him, but I think if we can keep our wits about us, it might work.”
Praji stood. “Well, the day’s half done, and if we’re going to be convincing about a local patrol, we’d better be on our way now. Or did you want to wait until tomorrow morning?”
Calis glanced at Nakor, who shook his head slightly in the negative. “We leave now,” said Calis.
Order was passed from man to man to act as if there was little urgency, but to get ready quickly to ride. If anyone in the other campsites took notice, Erik couldn’t see. The surrounding companies seemed intent upon their own business. The coming and going of another troop of men seemed of little interest.
In less than an hour, Foster had the men in file, and Calis motioned for Erik’s squad, the first in line, to fall in behind his own vanguard, Nakor, Praji, Vaja, Hatonis, and de Loungville. Foster would fall back and take command of the rear guard, the most experienced squad in the company. As Jadow Shati and Jerome Handy moved out of line, back to where Foster waited, Erik made a good-luck sign which Jadow returned, along with his broadest grin.
They rode northward, along the path to the road, where they paralleled the river until they came in sight of the bridge. “That’s finishing up quickly,”
observed Praji.
“They have many men working on it,” said Nakor. “I worked on it for a couple of days so I could get across.”
Vaja said, “There’re are ample fords nearby. Why all the bother?”
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Nakor said, “The Queen doesn’t want to get her feet wet.”
Calis glanced at the little man, as did Erik. Nakor wasn’t smiling.
They reached the guardpost and a stout sergeant came forward. “What’s all this, then?”
Calis said, “Hello again, Sergeant.”
Recognizing Calis from the night before, the sergeant said, “Going out again?”
“The generals weren’t happy with my report.
They think I didn’t head far enough south. I’m going out until noon tomorrow, then I’ll be back by morning the day after.”
“No one said anything to me about your company crossing the river, Captain,” said the sergeant, looking suspicious, “or anyone being out for more than a day.”
Calis calmly held out the pass. “The General made up his mind just a short time ago. He gave me this rather than relying on a messenger getting to you before we were ready to leave.”
The sergeant said, “Damn officers! We’ve got our orders, and then some captain of some company thinks he can get his drinking buddy to change the way we do things. Which of those strutting peacocks thinks he can just sign his name . . .” His voice trailed off and his eyes widened as he saw the name and seal at the bottom of the pass.
“If you want to send a messenger to General Fadawah to tell him that he’s not observing procedures, and you want confirmation, we’ll wait,” said de Loungville. “I’d just as soon not have to go looking for the Gilani. Hell, I don’t think the general will mind, Sergeant.”
The sergeant quickly rolled up the pass and hand-
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ed it back to Calis. “You may cross,” he said, waving them past. He turned to the soldiers at the bank and shouted, “They’re crossing to the other side!”
They waved back and resumed their bored poses while Calis walked his horse down to where they stood and into the water, taking it slowly and carefully.
Erik felt the back of his neck itch, as if someone behind would start shouting they were trying to escape, or someone else would be warning the sergeant that a pass had been stolen from the General’s tent.
But they moved across the shallow ford in the river until the last company, with Corporal Foster the last man, had safely crossed. Then Calis motioned for them to pick up speed, and they all started moving south at a trot. Erik found himself fighting an unusually strong urge to dig his heels in and get his horse galloping. He wondered how many of the others felt the same way.
When they had moved some distance downriver, Calis ordered them to a canter and they rode at a good rate for another mile before he signaled for them to return to a trot. Nakor shouted, “You want me to tell you now?”
Calis said, “Yes, before you fall off and break your neck.”
Nakor grinned. “It’s bad. You remember our old friend the Lady Clovis?”
Calis nodded. Erik had no idea who she might be, but the darkening expression on Calis’s face said he knew her. What surprised him was that de Loungville registered no recognition. But Praji said,
“That bitch who was using Dahakon and the Overlord Valgash down at the City of the Serpent River way back when we first met?”
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“That’s her,” said Nakor.
“She’s the Emerald Queen?” asked Calis.
Nakor shook his head. “I wish it were so. Jorna, that’s her real name, at least back when we were married—”
“What?” gaped Calis, and for the first time Erik saw him totally lose his composure.
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you some other time.
But when she was a girl she was vain, and when we were together she was always seeking ways to stay young forever.”
“I think if we get out of this you’re going to tell me every detail,” said de Loungville, obviously as astonished as Calis.
“Anyway,” said Nakor, motioning for him not to interrupt, “the girl had talent for tricks, what you call magic, and she left me when I wouldn’t tell her secrets I didn’t have, about staying young forever.
She was using a different body when she was the Lady Clovis.”
“A different body?” said Praji, now obviously confused. “How did you recognize her.”
“When you know someone well, bodies don’t matter,” said Nakor.
“I guess,” said Vaja, obviously amused by the entire conversation.
“Shut up,” said Nakor. “This is serious. This woman made a bargain with the Pantathians to keep her young forever while she helped them. What she didn’t know was they were using her. I warned her. I told her, ‘They want more than you can ever give them,’ and I was right. They’ve taken her.”
“What do you mean?” asked Calis.
Nakor’s expression turned grim. “What happened to your father, with the Armor of White and Gold.”
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“Yes?” said Calis, color draining from his face.
“It’s happening again. Jorna, or Clovis, is wearing an emerald crown and it’s changing her. She is becoming like your father.”
Calis looked shaken and said nothing for a moment; then he turned to de Loungville. “Tell Foster I want a rear guard to follow by fifteen minutes. I want to know if anyone tries to overtake us. If they encounter anyone, their fastest rider is to come find us, while the others are to lead whoever’s coming away. We’ll wait for a short time at the cave we found two days ago, then we’ll strike straight for Lanada.”
De Loungville said, “And if those who come after don’t take the bait?”
“Make them take the bait,” said Calis.
De Loungville nodded once, turned his horse, and rode to the end of the column. Erik looked back and saw Foster and six other men slow and then stop after de Loungville gave the order. They would wait a quarter hour, then start riding after Calis’s company, hoping they would get the chance to catch up in a day or two.
It was midmorning the next day when someone at the rear of the column shouted, “Rider!”
Erik looked over his shoulder and saw Jadow Shari riding the life out of his horse. The animal was completely lathered, and from the huge extension of her nostrils, Erik could tell she couldn’t catch her breath. She was blown out and ruined, he was certain. Jadow was familiar enough with horses to realize he was killing the marc, so Erik knew it could only mean trouble. He untied the cord that held his 52887_Shadow of a Dark.qxd 9/3/02 3:50 PM Page 461
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