by Джеффри Лорд
An hour or so beyond Mestron's walls, the message-bearer would angle down to the sea. He would pull out a small fish-oil lantern, light it with his flint and steel, and wave it in a complex pattern. Then he would wait until out on the dark waves the same pattern was repeated.
A few minutes later one of the Sea Masters would appear in the waves offshore, stride up the beach, and take the message from the sailor. Unseen but always there, two of his comrades would be lurking in the waves, crossbows aimed at the beach. The Sea Master would return to the water and swim out to rejoin his comrades. As the land-messenger made his way homeward, all three Sea Masters would swim still farther out into the sea. They would swim to where the yulon was tethered, release the tether, mount up, and head north.
«A yulon can cover the distance from Mestron to Clintrod in three hours without straining itself,» Blade had explained it to Alanyra. «One of the Sea Masters himself could never do it. But fortunately your people tamed the yulons. They are faster than any ship afloat. Using them, we've got an almost perfect solution to one of the oldest problems any spy faces.»
«What problem is that?» she asked.
«The problem of getting his information out. Look. I could get into the Emperor's private council chamber and sit under his table while he discusses his plans. I could learn everything I ever wanted to know about them, and more. But if I got caught and killed before I could get out of the palace and tell any of you, it wouldn't do any good. All the information would die with me.»
«I see.»
Blade couldn't help being slightly proud of his using unfamiliar tools to so thoroughly solve a very familiar problem. He would have been even prouder if there had been any useful information to send out. But night after night, all he could send out was a report of no progress and the code for the next night's rendezvous.
This went on for two weeks. A good chunk of the gold was gone. Even more disturbing, one of the sailors came in one evening to report what he had heard in a tavern on the waterfront.
«They say there be a yulon a-runnin' off the coast, like none ever heard of before.»
«Could it be one wandering in from the sea?»
«I doubt it much, Cap'n. The times when they say it's been seen are too much like the comins' and goins' o' ours.»
«Damn!» said Blade. All they needed now was for all the sailors and small boats in Mestron to turn out to hunt down a rogue yulon. His cherished message system would be up the creek-or rather, down to the bottom of the sea.
That night he almost did find it hard to sleep.
But the next morning, after two weeks of sifting sand, he found his first nugget. He found it in the course of an argument with an arms merchant.
«You're charging twenty silver bits apiece for these-these pieces of junk?» Blade sneered, pointing at a stack of crossbows. «I ought to-«
«Oh, ten thousand devils take all you damned bloodsucking buyers!» stormed the merchant. «You want finished crossbows at the price of scrap iron! If you want something that cheap, go to Duke Tymgur's armorers! They can afford to give away their work. The Duke pays them enough, curse them!»
«You're telling tales,» said Blade sourly. «Nobody's that rich or that foolish.»
The merchant threw his hands into the air, dislodging the wig from his bald and sweaty head. «So you don't believe me? All right, then waste your money. I give up!» He turned away decisively and began rummaging in his desk for a ledger.
Blade would have liked to ask a few more questions but didn't dare risk it. Not here and now, at least. He couldn't afford word getting around too soon that he was unnaturally interested in Duke Tymgur's strange business practices. If it did, his disguise might not be enough to save him. The word might go out to watch for any man asking about Tymgur, and possibly also to follow such a man back to his lodgings. That would be fatal. But for the first time in weeks, Blade allowed himself a small bit of hope as he left the dark warehouse for the glaring sun of the streets.
His hopes were justified. Over the next three days, he was able to pick up a good deal of information by casually dropping Duke Tymgur's name. So casually, in fact, that only a well-trained observer could have detected anything unusual in Blade's words. He had to hope that there were no well-trained observers listening to him or watching his comings and goings.
Gradually he began to build up a picture. As each piece of that picture fell into place, he sent it off in the night's message. Duke Tymgur was pouring much of his immense wealth into subsidizing arms sales to both Sea Masters and Sea Cities. He had begun doing this about the time the war between the two sea peoples became particularly violent. He had a large force of armed retainers on his estates to the north of Mestron, almost a private army. He had immense influence among the nobles and among the officers of the imperial fleet and army, being openhanded with both patronage and money. He was not popular among the arms merchants, whom he constantly undersold.
Blade began to meet with some of those merchants by night, slipping gold into their hands. They said to him things they would not have dared to say in daylight. It did not take long for Blade to finish his picture of what was going on in Nurn and send the last detail of it off to the people waiting aboard Fox at Clintrod.
The last message he sent from the Inn of the Seven Cats read:
I am going tonight to a dealer reputedly in the service of the Duke himself. This is dangerous, but I must visit at least one such before I finish my work here.
There may be a trap laid for me. In case there is, I am having the four sailors move in disguise tonight to another inn. They will wait for me there. If I do not rejoin them or send word that I am safe within a day, they will head north and go aboard Fox. You will not wait for me after they appear, but set sail at once for Talgar. My disappearance will be the final proof that Duke Tymgur is behind the plot to embroil Talgar and the Sea Masters with each other, to his advantage.
The Goddess be with you. Blade
Blade did not particularly enjoy the prospect of sticking himself up like a lightning rod and seeing what Duke Tymgur would throw at him. But he couldn't see that he had much choice.
Chapter FIFTEEN
Richard Blade was prowling the streets of Mestron, at an hour when they were normally deserted by all honest people. No, that was not true. The Sisters of the Night, the high-class courtesans, were honest in that they gave value for money received. But none of their elegant carriages were within sight or hearing now.
Tonight Blade was not moving through the waterfront warehouses and taverns. He slipped along paths and alleys in a residential quarter, high on a wooded hill a good three miles from the harbor. It was also where Duke Tymgur's agent had promised a meeting.
Blade didn't know the quarter nearly as well as he knew the waterfront. The wooded villas and estates around him could easily hide an ambush. But he had no choice. If Duke Tymgur's agent seriously wanted to do business, that was fine. If he was setting a trap-well, no one could ask better proof of the Duke's treachery than an effort to murder the agent probing into his affairs. Blade hoped that if there was a trap, he could spring it and make his escape. He remembered what he had told Alanyra about getting the word out.
He had taken and was taking all the precautions he could think of. For the last mile he had followed a wandering, unpredictable course toward the rendezvous, to throw off anyone trying to follow him. He avoided patches of light as though they were quicksand and watched from the shadows each time he rounded a corner. His eyes flickered endlessly from side to side, his footsteps were light, and his hand was never far from his sword hilt.
He wore a short-sword and a broadsword on his belt, and all of his garments from hood to boots were dark gray or black. Under his tunic he wore a shirt of fine mail that would keep out all daggers and most swords. In sheaths at wrists and ankles, Blade carried four knives equally well-suited for stabbing or throwing. If there was a better concealed weapon than a good knife for silent killing in any dimension, Bla
de hadn't met it.
He also carried three signal pots in a pouch on his belt. Thrown down hard, they broke, ignited, and poured out vast clouds of thick greenish-white smoke. They made a signal clearly visible by day. By night they could also make a fleeing man invisible in a moment. Blade wasn't sure whether he was going to be cat or mouse in this game. But he knew that he might change from one to the other in a matter of seconds.
He checked behind him, looking down the street and then searching the wall tops to the left and right of him. No movement, not even a prowling cat or a waving branch. Blade took advantage of the pool of shadow to do a few limbering-up exercises. Then he stalked on.
He came to the street that led to the agent's villa. He flattened himself against the base of a vine-grown wall. The street stretched out of sight, the gate of the villa clearly visible in the moonlight. There was no other light in the street and none visible through the trees rising above the villa wall. But there was plenty of light for an archer to aim by, and the street was open and bare of cover.
He wasn't going to walk down that street, an easy target for any archer lying in wait. If the agent was honest, and Blade's cautious approach made him uneasy, that was too bad. He could always say that he suspected the villa was being watched by the Emperor's agents. (Probably it was. And suppose they chose this moment to move in? That would solve the problem of Duke Tymgur, to be sure. But it wouldn't be much help to Blade if the Emperor's men stabbed first and asked questions afterward.)
Blade waited until a patch of cloud drifted across the moon. Then he flitted catfooted by the crossroads and dove into a ditch. Now he was at the foot of the villa's wall, around the corner from the gate.
Blade looked up, to the top of the wall. It was no more than eight feet high, overgrown with vines and jostled by small trees. He could see no spikes on top. He waited for another moment of dimmed moonlight. Then he was up the wall with a rush.
He flattened himself on the loose, crumbling bricks on top just long enough to listen for any signs of alarm and look down inside the wall. Vines, bushes, and weedy patches of grass crowded up against the wall. He swung himself down inside the wall, and flattened himself on the damp earth behind one of the bushes.
Still no signs that anyone in the villa was awake, alert, or even alive. If this was a trap, they were obviously waiting until he was well inside to spring it. There it might be hard to fight and impossible to run.
Once more Blade was doing something he had done a score of times before in as many different places. Not always for stakes as high as tonight, though. Tonight was not a matter of scoring points against the Russians or the Chinese or the Albanians. Tonight could make or break the future of two, brave peoples.
In the garden Blade did not need to look for pools of shadow. It was practically all shadow under the trees. He had to look instead for enough light to see where he was going, and also where he had been. He wanted to have an escape route firmly in mind, so that he could make a fast retreat if any of a dozen things went wrong.
Blade moved on. He would dart across thirty feet of open grass and go to earth under a bush. Then he would look in all directions and listen to all the sounds coming in from all sides. There were night-birds giving off gurgling coos, insects whining, and somewhere the sound of water running over stones. No human sounds-no footfalls, no clink of weapons, no voices. If he hadn't known this was a garden, Blade would have said he was alone in a forest miles outside the city.
Then he would creep forward on his hands and knees under the bushes. The slick, close-woven fabric of his clothes shrugged off thorns and branch stubs, but there were always stones and roots to leave bruises. Sweat ran down his face. It would not damage his dark camouflage grease, but it did attract swarms of insects. They whined and darted around his face and into his eyes.
Blade's caution paid off just when he had nearly decided that it wouldn't. As he flattened himself against a vast, gnarled tree nearly eight feet thick, he saw a high hedge about fifty feet ahead. Light shone through it, revealing a stone-flagged walk on the other side. The light also silhouetted a number of human heads on the nearer side of the hedge.
Blade practically stopped breathing while he counted the men lying in wait. There were at least ten. Two had crossbows; the others seemed to carry swords or battle axes. As one of them half rose, the light revealed his face more clearly. Blade sucked in his breath. It was Stipors' henchman, the officer who had helped conduct the interrogation of the prisoners returning from the Sea Masters.
So Tymgur's agent was laying a trap for him. That meant Tymgur's plots were proved beyond any further doubt. With Stipors' man involved, that also meant the Autocrat for War was deep in the plot with Tymgur.
Did he have notions of being Tymgur's Viceroy over Talgar when the Sea Cities were weakened enough to be easy prey for the Duke? Blade didn't know or care. Right now, the best thing for him to do was to glide quietly away into the darkness, his mission accomplished, and get himself and his men out of Mestron as fast as possible.
But he didn't want to leave yet. Even a few minutes' eavesdropping might add details that could help break up the plot faster. Blade had always been reluctant to drop an inquiry until he had found out everything possible. He crept forward another ten feet and flattened himself under a bush. Again he hardly breathed as he lay and listened.
The Talgaran renegade seemed to be in command. He also seemed to be in a vile temper, swatting noisily at the insects and muttering under his breath. Blade caught snatches of those mutterings.
«Why-we out here-eating us alive-Durkas staying inside with his pleasure girl-trouble for us if-«
Another voice floated out of the shadows. «Is the gate open?»
«Course 'tis, you fool,» said a third voice. «We want-«
«Shhhhhhhh!» came from the officer. Apparently he had suddenly realized that silence might be wise for a party lying in ambush. The silence descended.
It lasted for less than a minute. As that minute drew to a close, a raw, full-throated scream tore through the night air. It was a woman screaming in terrible agony and fear. In the few seconds after the scream, things happened very quickly.
The officer rose to his feet with a curse. «Damn Durkas! His games-«He turned toward the bush where Blade lay.
In the house voices shouted and feet pounded. Another scream came, then a window flew open with a crash.
Yellow lamplight flooded out into the garden through the open window.
By that light, the officer saw Blade crouching under the bush.
In the next few seconds, Blade made several more things happen.
In a single snap of trained muscles, he was on his feet. His arm jerked once, and a throwing knife slipped down into his right hand. His arm rose and jerked a second time. The knife flashed once in the air, then flashed a second time as it buried itself in the officer's chest. Blade beard a solid chunk as the hilt slammed hard up against the ribs and knew that it was in more than deep enough to kill. The ambush party had lost a leader and Stipors had lost a henchman.
But nine more men were too many to fight in the dark on unknown ground. Before the officer had hit the ground, Blade was sprinting along the hedge, away from the house. The hedge was just too high for Blade to leap with this much armor and weaponry on his body. Instead he covered fifty feet in a matter of seconds, ducked behind a tree, and hauled himself up into its branches. Pushing off with arms and legs together, he sailed down over the thick hedge. He landed lightly on his feet on the walk, facing the house. It was blazing with lights now, but there was no sign of anyone coming out the bronze-shod door. Blade didn't wait. He spun about and headed for the gate.
He went down the path like a lion running down a fat buck, and came pelting up to the gate.
It was unlocked but not unguarded. A man stood on either side of it, one armed with a bow, one with a sword. The archer backed away and the swordsman came forward, so that Blade had to defend himself against the second man fir
st. He would rather have taken out the man with the long-range weapon, but there was no way to manage that.
His own sword flew clear of its scabbard and up under the thrust of the guard. It struck the other's sword up with a clang. Before the man could bring it down again to restore his guard, Blade thrust upward. His point went up into the man's chin and kept on going until it rammed into the brain. The man's mouth and eyes opened and gushed blood. Blade jerked his sword from the falling body and a smoke pot from his pouch.
He was a little too slow. As the green smoke rolled up around the gate and hid him from the archer, the crossbow went spung. Sharp steel tore through the flesh of Blade's thigh, clattering on the stones behind him. Blade winced but kept moving. His second wrist dagger dropped into his left hand as he closed with the dim shape of the archer. The other was still backing away, struggling to reload his bow, when Blade's dagger drove up into him below the ribs. Blade left the dagger in the body and bolted out of the gate.
He did not stop to examine his wound. There wasn't time to do anything but run as fast as he could for as long as he could. If he could lose himself in the darkness before Durkas's bravos started combing the streets-
But as he ran, he knew that he wasn't going to be able to keep going that fast for that long. It was only a flesh wound the bolt had given him, but it was a flesh wound deep enough to be costing him a lot of blood. He could not run on too long without stopping to bandage the wound. Even after that, it would give him a stiff leg before too long.
He would have to go to earth somewhere among the villas, under the bushes in somebody's garden, and stay there for a while. Certainly until the immediate hue and cry had died down; perhaps until daybreak increased traffic on the streets enough that he might slip along unnoticed. He would have to move fast and hope that Durkas would balk at searching the villas of all his neighbors-or they would balk him.