“I was given up? By whom?”
Rodoski laughed. “You still don’t see? You were given up by Kaspar. He uses people just like you use towels after a bath. Kaspar let our agents know you were coming to kill me. Kaspar wants you out of the way. The Lady Natalia is a little too fond of you, and you’ve already made enemies in his court by your rapid rise. Kaspar may even see you as a threat, for without heirs, if something happens to him and you wed his sister, who else is there to rule in Opardum? You were the goat. Do you see?”
It all made sense to Tal. He sat back. “If you know all this, why not move directly against Kaspar?”
Varian said, “I need no proof to dump you in the harbor. And I need no proof to have someone slit Kaspar’s throat in the dead of night. But we can’t get anyone that close, for reasons you know all too well.”
“Leso Varen.”
“Yes. That evil wizard is too dangerous, so we’re content to let Kaspar play his games, as long as they don’t become too deadly. And we block him where we can. But one day he’ll go too far—and this attempt on me is as close to the limit as King Carol is willing to per-
_______________
KING OF FOXES
227
mit. When that day comes, we will sail our fleet to Opardum and unload soldiers from Kesh and let them destroy Kaspar.”
Tal sat back. “So why let me live?”
“Because I need to send a message to Kaspar he can’t ignore or pretend to misunderstand. I will have the body of Prohaska delivered to him and yourself bound up in chains, and the conclusion he comes to should be clear.”
The Duke stood up. “And I’ll leave you to Kaspar’s tender mercies. The day may come when you wish I had killed you. Oh, if you do survive, understand that you will be killed on sight if you set foot on Roldem again.” To the guards, he said, “Take him.”
Tal was grabbed by two soldiers who quickly disarmed him and bound his arms behind him. One stepped behind him and suddenly pain exploded behind his eyes, and he slipped into unconsciousness.
__
Tal awoke in the dark and quickly realized he was chained inside the hold of a ship. The rocking motion told him they were already out of the harbor and at sea. Amafi groaned next to him, and Tal said, “Are you awake?”
After a moment came a choked groan, then Amafi said, “I am here, Magnificence.”
“We have been betrayed,” said Tal.
“So it seems.”
Tal tried to make himself as comfortable as he could, for he knew it would be a long, cold, wet journey. After some hours a sailor came down the companionway, bearing two bowls of food, a mix of boiled grain, dried fruit, and a piece of salted pork, mostly fat. “Eat,” he said, handing each man a bowl. “It’s all you get until tomorrow.”
_______________
228
RAYMOND E. FEIST
Tal took the food and began to eat. It tasted salty and bland, but it filled him and he knew he would need as much strength as he could muster.
The voyage passed slowly, a seemingly endless succession of days spent in rocking darkness, interrupted only by a daily visit by a sailor who brought the same meal. On the forty-first or -second day, Tal noticed they no longer got the salt pork.
Some ten days later, the ship shuddered, and Tal realized they were making the final reach for Opardum. Before another day was out, they’d be hauled up before Kaspar.
A thought ran through Tal’s mind over and over again.
He had been betrayed. The king of foxes had shown he was really a scorpion, and being true to his nature, he had stung.
Tal was freed of his obligation. He could now kill Kaspar without betraying his oath.
If he survived.
__
They had been taken straightaway to the castle. Tal had hoped perhaps he might be unchained and allowed to clean up before being dragged before Kaspar, but that hope proved to be in vain.
He was brought before Kaspar, who sat alone in his great hall, with only soldiers around him: no Lady Natalia, no courtiers. “So, Baron Talwin,” said Kaspar without preamble, “you’ve failed.”
Tal decided there was no benefit to feigning ignorance of events. “As I was apparently destined to, Your Grace.”
Kaspar laughed. “Well, you obviously didn’t get yourself killed, so I assume Duke Rodoski had other plans, such as rubbing my nose in my failure.”
_______________
KING OF FOXES
229
“Something like that. He did say you have now come as close to the line as King Carol will permit. One more infraction and a Roldemish fleet will be delivering companies of Keshian Dog Soldiers to Opardum.”
“Oh, he said that, did he?” Kaspar chuckled. “Games within games, Baron. There is another level of play under way that even one so highly placed as Duke Varian is un-aware of.
“Still,” he added with a wave of his hand, “that is a matter which no longer concerns you. You’ve failed me, Baron. You not only didn’t kill Rodoski, as I ordered, you didn’t have the good grace to get yourself killed in the attempt. So, in a sense, you’ve failed me twice, which is one more failure than I usually permit. Still, you’ve been an earnest young fellow and have given me some amusement. For that sake, I will have your death be quick and painless.” To the guards he said, “Take him away.”
As the guards seized Tal’s arms, Tal shouted, “You owe me your life!”
Kaspar sat back and motioned for the guards to stop.
“Damn me, but you’re right,” said Kaspar. He shook his head. “Very well, I will not be bound in life by a debt not paid. I will give you your life, Squire—I’m rescinding your office of baron—but you will wish before I’m done I hadn’t.” He then looked at Amafi, and said, “What am I to do with you?”
Amafi said, “You could start by removing the chains, Your Grace.”
The Duke motioned and guards freed him. After Amafi was out of his chains, he bowed and said, “I hope the Squire’s failure does not taint my service, Your Grace.”
“No, not in the least, Amafi. You are the perfect tool.
You do exactly what I bid you to do, no more, no less.”
_______________
230
RAYMOND E. FEIST
Tal looked at his manservant and said, “You?”
“Someone had to carry word to the Duke’s agents in Salador that you were sent to kill him, Squire,” said Kaspar. “I certainly couldn’t depend on Roldemish agents here to get word back to the Duke in time. Bribing your man to betray you was a far more elegant solution. I told him how to contact one of my agents in Salador, who in turn put him in touch with a member of Duke Duncan’s staff, and from there it was but one step to Duke Rodoski.”
Amafi bowed toward Tal. “As you yourself observed the first night we met, Magnificence, ‘Until such time as you can successfully betray me without risk.’ This was such a time.”
“You will be rewarded, Amafi,” said Kaspar. “Now, go and get cleaned up.”
The former assassin said, “Yes, Your Grace, but may I caution you in one thing.”
“What?”
“I have served Talwin Hawkins long enough to know that despite his youth, he is an extremely dangerous man.
You would do well to put aside your debt and have him killed.”
“No,” said Kaspar. “I understand your caution, but I have my sense of honor, peculiar as it may be. He saved my life, so I can’t ignore that debt.” He paused, then said,
“But I will take your warning to heart. Now, leave us.”
Amafi bowed to the Duke and departed. To Tal, Kaspar said, “I give you your life, but it will be spent in a place no man should endure, and few have for long. You are to live the rest of your life in the Fortress of Despair. If the gods are kind, you will die quickly there. But in my experience, the gods are rarely kind.”
To the captain of the guards, he said, “When he ar-
_______________
&
nbsp; KING OF FOXES
231
rives, inform the commander of the fortress that this man is to be fed well and not tortured. Well, not tortured after he cuts off the prisoner’s right hand.”
Tal stood numbly for a moment upon hearing his fate; then suddenly without further word, he was dragged off by the soldiers. His last image of Kaspar was of the Duke sitting on his throne, an expression of satisfaction mixed with regret playing across his face.
____________
P a r t T w o
SOLDIER
R e v e n g e s h o u l d h a v e n o b o u n d s .
____________
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene viii _______________
THIRTEEN
PRISON
Tal stood on the deck.
He had been dragged to Opardum harbor. He had been off the ship from Salador less than half a day before he was chained in the hold of yet another ship.
Rather than forty or more days, this journey took only a week. Thoughts of escape had run through his mind and more than once he had tested his chains where they passed through a large iron ring fastened to a beam. After the first day, he had fallen into a mood of dejected misery.
After a week, Tal had been roughly hauled up to the deck, where the ship’s captain waited.
“There’s your new home, Squire,” he said in an oddly convivial tone, pointing to an island.
Tal looked where the captain indicated and felt even more hopeless. The Fortress of Despair was an old keep, six stories tall, which overlooked the narrow passage be-
_______________
236
RAYMOND E. FEIST
tween this island and the mainland, merely three miles away. It stood bleak against a grey winter sky, as the wind cut icily though Tal’s clothing.
“One of the Duke’s ancestors built it,” said the Captain. “Then it was called Fortress Sentinel. When the City of the Guardian was built up, this place sort of fell into disuse, until one of the old dukes decided to make a prison out of it.”
A longboat was lowered, and Tal was forced to climb down a ladder to be yanked into the longboat by a couple of rough-handed seamen. As the boat was rowed toward the dock, the captain waved and cheerfully said, “Enjoy your stay, Squire!”
Tal sat in the boat, the winter sky as foreboding and dark as his mood. The salt spray that struck him in the face was frigid as it whipped off the spindrift. The boat rocked as the four rowers pulled to reach the docks as quickly as possible. The sooner they were done, the sooner they could be back on board the ship, back to a slightly warmer and drier berth.
Three men stood waiting on the docks, wearing heavy cloaks. The boat drew up, and the sailors steadied it. They didn’t even bother to tie off: two of them stood up and gripped the pilings, while another motioned for Tal to climb a short ladder. He did so, with one sailor following him, and when they both stood on the docks, the sailor said, “Here’s the writ, Governor.”
Without thanks, the man took the paper, and without another word, the sailor was back down the ladder and the boat pushed off. The man who had been handed the paper looked at Tal and said, “Come.”
The other two men were armed guards, both looking little more than street thugs. Neither wore a uniform, and they carried large cudgels rather than swords. Tal had no _______________
KING OF FOXES
237
doubt either man could and would quickly break his arm or leg with the clubs if he tried to escape. As he walked toward the fortress, he looked around and thought, Where would I escape to?
As if reading his thoughts, the Governor said, “You can try to run; you look like a fast lad, so you might outrun Kyle and Anatoli here, but with them chains on, maybe not. If you did, you’d maybe find your way down to the beach up there on the north side of the island, but then where’d you go? Looks close, don’t it? The mainland, I mean. Three miles, a bit more or less. But there’s a current there wants to take you north, and there’s sharks and other things. That’s if the chains don’t pull you down and you drown. But maybe you’re a strong swimmer. If you made it to the beach, you’re miles from food.”
They reached an old drawbridge that looked to have been down for years. As they crossed over it, Tal looked down and saw a twenty-five-foot ravine filled with broken rocks at the bottom. “So, maybe you’re a hunter,” said the Governor. “Maybe you get by, even though it’s winter.
You build a fire and somehow don’t freeze to death.
“Guess what?” he said and turned, and for the first time Tal got a look at his face. The Governor of the prison had no left eye, just a closed lid, and a notch in the bridge of his nose, as if someone had cut him across it with a blade. His own teeth had been knocked out, and he wore some sort of contraption made of wood and teeth—perhaps human or animal—that would serve him for eating. He grinned, and said, “The only civilization for hundreds of miles is the City of the Guardian, and it’s a border city, so the guards look close at everyone coming in.”
They reached the entrance to the old fortress, and the Governor stopped. “Take a look around, lad. Look up.”
_______________
238
RAYMOND E. FEIST
Tal did so.
“It’s the last time you’ll be seeing the open sky, I’m thinking.” He motioned, and the two guards escorted Tal up the steps into the old fortress.
What had been the entrance hall was now bare, a huge room with a set of doors in each wall. They marched across the stone floor, worn featureless and smooth by centuries of feet trudging across it, and passed through another door. “This used to be the great hall,” said the Governor. “Now we only use it for banquets.”
The two guards laughed. “Come along,” said the Governor.
They led Tal to what must once have been the private apartment of the commander of the fortress. Now it was an office, containing a large table littered with food and empty wine cups as well as papers. A rat scurried off the table as the Governor waved his hand at it.
Taking off his heavy cloak, the Governor tossed it across a chair. “Let’s see, now, what we have here,” he said, unrolling the writ.
“Squire Talwin Hawkins, is it?”
Tal said nothing.
“I’m Governor Zirga. Used to be a sergeant in the Duke’s father’s Household Guard. Got this,” he said, pointing to his face, “at the Battle of Karesh’kaar, when I was not much older than you. So as a reward, they give me this job. I get a week off a year to go to City of the Guardian and spend gold on whores and getting drunk.
The rest of the time I care for you prisoners.
“So we understands one another. You don’t cause trouble, and we’ll get along fine. You’ve come here to die, more or less, and it’s up to you how you fare between now and when we toss your ashes off the cliffs.” He waved the papers at Tal and said, “Says here you’re to be treated _______________
KING OF FOXES
239
well, which means a little more food and we’ll put you up in the keep, instead of the dungeon below. Them down there dies right fast. Most go in less than two years. Up above, well, you’ve got a bit of sunlight and some better air—though it do get bitter cold in the winter—but in the summer you’ll be glad for the breezes. But I’ve got a couple o’ lads up there been with us fifteen, twenty years.
“So, we’ll get you upstairs straightaway . . . as soon as we cut off your right arm.”
The Governor motioned for the two guards, who seized Tal by either arm, lifting him slightly off his feet so he couldn’t get purchase on the stones. They frog-marched him out of the door and across to another door, then down a long flight of stairs, half-carrying, half-dragging him along a narrow corridor.
“We don’t have a proper chirurgery here, so we have to make do with the dungeon when it comes to cutting and the like,” said the Governor. “Occasionally one of the lads gets a cut or scrape that turns putrid, and I’ve got to do som
e cutting.”
They passed a third guard, who was sitting on a stool next to a table, and the Governor said, “Fetch some brandy.”
The two guards who held Tal pulled him into a chamber that had obviously been used for torture in the past.
“From time to time the Duke sends us someone he wants really punished, so we bring them down here. Used to be we could do a lot with what was left over from the old days, but as you can see”—he pointed to a pile of rusty implements left on the filthy straw strewn on the floor—
“we’ve fallen on harder times. Don’t have that many good tools anymore. Just some pincers and knives and the like.”
He pointed to an iron ring in the ceiling. “Used to have a dandy hook hanging there. I could hang a man on it just _______________
240
RAYMOND E. FEIST
right and he’d be screaming for a couple of days. Last time I used it, damn thing broke off. I sent a request in for another one, but no one’s bothered to do anything about it back in Opardum.”
The guard with the brandy appeared, and the Governor said, “Start a fire.”
There was a large brazier that at one time must have been used for heating torture devices, and the guard quickly got a fire started with some dry straw and kindling. He fed wood into it until it started blazing brightly.
“Heat an iron,” said the Governor. “Can’t have you bleeding to death, now, can we?” he said to Tal.
Tal was motionless. He felt as if he wanted to lash out and fight, to run, but he knew the situation was hopeless.
He knew that if he was to have any chance at all for survival, he must not fight. He must just endure.
The Governor took off his jacket, revealing a dirty white shirt underneath. He went to the wall and found what looked to be a large cleaver. He put it in the fire.
“We used to have coal. I could get the sword so hot I could ruin the temper of the steel if I wasn’t careful. Just the thing. The trick is to sear the wound. Used to be, when I had coal, I could slice right though your arm and the metal would be so hot your stump would hardly bleed. Now, I make do with wood. If the hot blade doesn’t do it, then we’ll poke at where it’s bleedin’ with the iron.”