“Find me everything we have on Uncle Sarrakesh’s relatives and friends,” the Vice-Director ordered his assistant. “I doubt he has a separate dossier, so you’ll have to comb all the materials on Lame Vittano’s zamorro. Now: who’s in charge of agents among the Peninsula’s mountain men – Ras-shua, was it?”
CHAPTER 48
Umbar Peninsula, near Iguatalpa Village
June 24, 3019
The chestnut tree in whose shade they camped was at least two hundred years old. All by themselves, its roots were holding together a huge chunk of the slope above the path leading from Iguatalpa to the pass, and doing it well: the spring rains, unusually heavy this year, have not left any landslides or fresh holes in it. From time to time a breeze rustled the luxurious crown of leaves, and then sunspots would drop silently through it down on the yellowish-cream fallen foliage that had accumulated at the foot of the trunk between the mighty roots. Tangorn stretched pleasurably on this wonderful bed (after all, the local paths were not kind on his wounded leg), leaned back on his left elbow and immediately felt some discomfort under it. A bump? A stone? For a couple of seconds the baron lazily considered his dilemma: should he disturb this thick elastic carpet in search of the problem or just move himself a bit to the right? He looked around, sighed, and moved – he did not feel like disturbing anything here, even such a trifle.
The view he saw was amazingly serene. From here, even the Uruapan waterfall (three hundred feet of materialized fury of the river gods trapped by their mountain brethren) looked simply like a cord of silver running down the dark green cloth of the wooded slope.
A little to the right, forming the centerpiece of the composition, the towers of the Uatapao monastery rose above the misty abyss – an antique candelabrum of dark copper all covered in the noble patina of ivy. Interesting architecture, Tangorn thought, everything I’ve seen in Khand looked totally different. Nor is that surprising: the local version of Hakimian faith differs substantially from Khandian orthodoxy. Honestly, though, the mountain men have remained pagans; their conversion to Hakima two centuries ago – this most strict and fanatical of world religions – was nothing but another way to distinguish themselves from the mushily tolerant Islanders, all those nothings who have turned their lives into a constant buy-sell litany and who will always prefer profit to honor and blood money to vendetta…
Here the baron’s leisurely musings were rudely interrupted: his companion, who had already emptied his knapsack and spread the still-warm morning hachipuri and wineskin right on it, like on a tablecloth, suddenly put down his dagger (which he had been using to slice the basturma, hard-dried to the consistency of red stained glass), raised his head, staring at the turn in the path, and pulled his crossbow closer in one habitual movement.
This time the alarm was false, and two minutes later the newcomer was sitting cross-legged by their spread backpack and saying a toast, long and convoluted like a mountain path. He was introduced to Tangorn tersely as a “relative from Irapuato, across the valley” (the baron just shrugged: everyone in these mountains is related somehow). Then the mountain men launched into a genteel discussion of the coming maize harvest and the steel-hardening methods practiced by Iguatalpo and Irapuato blacksmiths; the baron, whose participation in the conversation was anyway limited to a polite smile, began giving its due to the local wine. It is unbelievably tart and thick, its amber depths harboring shimmering pink sparks exactly the color of the first sun rays on a wall of yellowish limestone still wet with dew.
Tangorn used not to understand the charm of this beverage, which is not surprising because it can not stand transportation, whether bottled or barreled, so everything sold down below is no more than an imitation. You can drink the local wine only in the first hours after it has been drawn from the pifos where it had fermented with a small jar on a bamboo handle –after that, it is only good for slaking one’s thirst. During their forced idleness on board the Flying Fish Sarrakesh had gladly educated the baron on the intricacies of mountain winemaking: how the grapes are crushed in a wooden screw together with the vine (hence the unusual tartness) and the juice poured through troughs into the pifoses buried throughout the gardens, how the cork is opened for the first time – you have to carefully snag it from the side with a long hook, looking away lest the escaping thick and unruly wine spirit (the genie) drive you crazy…
Actually, most of the old smuggler’s reminiscences of his rural life were not very warm. It was a very peculiar world, where men were always alert and never without weapons, where women, dressed head to toe in black, were silent shadows always gliding past you along the farthest wall; where the tiny windows in thick walls were nothing but crossbow firing holes and the chief product of the local economy was dead bodies produced by the senseless permanent vendettas; a world where time stood still and one’s every step was predestined for decades ahead. It was not surprising that the joyful adventurer Sarrakesh (whose name was very different back then) had always felt foreign there. Meanwhile, the sea that was open to everyone and treated everyone the same was right there… so now, when he steered his felucca across foamy storm waves with a steady hand, barking at the crew: “Move it, barnacles!” everyone could see a man in his element.
Which was exactly why the sea wolf allowed himself to categorically oppose Tangorn’s plan to return to the city by the twentieth: “No way, forget about it! It’s sure failure!”
“I must be in town tomorrow.”
“Listen, buddy, did you hire me as a gondolier for an evening sail around the Ring Canal?
No, you needed a pro, right? Well, the pro says that we can’t get through today, and that’s how it is.”
“I must get into town,” the baron repeated, “no matter what!”
“Sure you’ll get into town – straight into a jail cell. Two days ago the Coast Guard went on high alert, get it? The entrance to the lagoon is shut tight, not even a dolphin can swim by without them noticing. They can’t keep this up for long; we gotta wait, at least until the next week, when the moon will start to wane.”
Tangorn thought about it for some time.
“All right. If they catch us, what’s it to you? Six months in jail?”
“Who cares about jail? They’ll confiscate my boat.”
“What’s your Flying Fish worth?”
“No less than thirty dungans, that’s for sure.”
“Excellent. I’ll buy it for fifty. Deal?”
The smuggler gave up: “You’re a psycho.”
“Perhaps, but the coins I pay with weren’t minted in a madhouse.”
The venture turned out exactly as Sarrakesh predicted. When a warning catapult shot from a pursuing galley splashed in a moonlit fountain of water less than fifty yards across their bow, the skipper squinted to estimate the distance to the eddies boiling around reefs to starboard (that night the Flying Fish, taking advantage of its paltry draught, was attempting to slip by the very shore of the Peninsula, through reef-studded shallows off-limits to warships), turned to the baron and ordered: “Overboard with you! It’s less than a cable to the shore, you won’t melt. Find my cousin Botashaneanu’s house in Iguatalpa village, he’ll hide you. Give him my fifty dungans. Go!” So what did I gain by jumping into it headfirst? Tangorn thought. Truly it is said: shorter ain’t the same as faster; either way I lost a week. Whatever, hindsight never fails… Suddenly a new word – algvasils – surfaced in the table discussion of the mountain men, so he started listening intently.
Actually, those were city gendarmes, rather than algvasils, commanded by their own officer rather than a Corregidor. Nine men and one officer showed up in Irapuato the day before yesterday. Supposedly they’re looking for the famous bandit Uanako, but in a weird way: sending no patrols, instead they’re going house to house asking whether anyone has seen any strangers. Like anyone will tell those island jackals anything, even if he did see someone… On the other hand, one can understand these guys: the bosses want them to catch bandits, so they’re
making a decent show of it; they’re not dumb enough to actually climb mountains, risking a crossbow bolt any minute for tiny pay, while their friends are safely milking caravans at the Long Dam…
When the guest has departed, Tangorn’s guide (whose name was Chekorello and whose relation to Sarrakesh was beyond the baron’s ken) remarked thoughtfully: “You know, it’s you they’re looking for.”
“Yep,” Tangorn nodded. “Are you by any chance figuring how to turn me in in Irapuato?”
“Are you crazy?! We shared bread!!” The mountain man cut himself short, figuring out Tangorn’s intention, but did not smile. “You know, the folks down below think we’re all dumb up here and don’t get jokes. Maybe so; the people here are intense and just might off you for such a joke… Besides,” he suddenly grinned just like a grandfather promising grandkids a magic trick, “nobody’s gonna pay fifty dungans you owe my family for your head. Better I should get you over to the city, like we agreed, and earn that money honestly, true?”
“Totally true. Have you considered the back paths?”
“Well, can’t go through Irapuato now, we’ll have to go around…”
“Around? This is more serious than it seems. There’re those strange peddlers in Uahapan –four of them and armed to the teeth, while the tax collector with his algvasils is in Koalkoman three weeks early. I strongly dislike this.”
“Yeah, tough… Uahapan, Koalkoman, Irapuato – we’re surrounded. Unless…”
The baron waved the implied suggestion aside: “If you mean the road to Tuanohato, forget it – bet you that it already has a presence. Most likely traveling circus men who show tricks like putting out candles with a crossbow bolt or slicing apricot pits in midair with a scimitar.
But that’s all right; what bothers me is that we’re surrounded, yet there are no visitors in our village. Why?”
“Haven’t gotten around to us yet?”
“Nope – the only way to Uahapan is through Iguatalpa, right? Better tell me this: if such a team were to show up in our village, would they be able to take me?”
“No way! You’ve told us to watch out for strangers, and we have. Even if they came with a hundred gendarmes, I’d still have time to get you out of the village through backyards, and then good luck finding us in the mountains. Should there be dogs, I have tobacco with pepper.”
“Right, and they know it as well as we do. So what does this mean?”
“You wanna say,” the mountain man squeezed his dagger hilt hard enough to whiten knuckles, “that they’ve found out that you’re in Iguatalpa?”
“For sure. It doesn’t matter how at this point. That’s number one. Number two that I really don’t like is how crudely they’re working. It only seems like all these peddlers, bandit catchers, and tax collectors are a net tightening around us. In reality, it’s a bunch of noisemakers whose job is to chase the quarry towards the hunters.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s simple, actually. What did you immediately think about when you heard about gendarmes in Irapuato? Right – the back path through the mountains. Now, how smart does one have to be to station a couple of crossbowmen in camouflage gear by that path?”
Chekorello thought for a long time and then finally managed to say the obvious: “So what’re we gonna do?” thus acknowledging Tangorn as the leader.
The baron shrugged: “We’ll think, and most importantly, we’ll not do anything rash, which is what they’re trying to make us do. So: Uahapan, Koalkoman, Irapuato – all these are the noisemakers. Let’s think of where the real hunters are and how to slip by them.”
It’s a standard problem, he thought. Once again I’m trying to catch a certain Baron Tangorn, thirty-two years old, brown hair, six feet tall, a Nordic complexion that really stands out around here, plus a recently acquired distinctive slight limp. Strangely enough, in reality it’s not such a simple task – where should I deploy my line of hunters? And who should these hunters be? That last is pretty clear, actually – operatives who can recognize him, and no weapon-clad muscle boys visible from a mile away. The baron will certainly be in make-up and disguise, so even those who know him will have a hard time. How many such people are there? Hardly more than a dozen, more likely seven or eight – it’s been four years, after all. Let’s say a dozen; divide them into four shifts, since an observer can’t be effective for more than six hours at a stretch. Not too many, is it? Makes no sense to split up the team, it has to be a fist, a squad of hunters; no way any of them can be a part of the noisemaking team, since by dividing them, we… Damn, but I’m stupid! No hunters among the noisemakers, who’re not expected to meet Tangorn at all – he’s not that much of a fool.
Those teams actually have no need to know what this is all about; their job is just to rattle the bushes. So: key people are few, can’t disperse them, so they’ll have to be concentrated at… of course!
“They’ll be waiting for us at the Long Dam, which we can’t bypass,” he announced to Chekorello, who was going bug-eyed after half an hour of an unaccustomed mental effort.
“Here’s how we’ll get past them…”
“You’re mad!” was all the mountain man could say after listening to Tangorn’s plan.
“I’ve been told that many times,” replied the baron, “so if I’m a madman, I’m a very lucky one. Are you coming with me? I won’t insist – it’ll be easier for me to do it alone.”
***
“It all checks out, milord. Men from 12 Shore Street did try to capture him both at the Seahorse Tavern and at Castamir Square. He escaped both times. Four dead at the Seahorse, three infected with leprosy at the Square; too expensive to cover a one-time diversion, to my taste. 4 Lamp Street is indeed a Gondorian Secret Guard safe house, and he did raid it: one of the sergeants keeping that house was grievously wounded in the chest, his physician confirmed Algali’s account. The Secret Guard badge is genuine; that Aravan’s handwriting matches the one he’s even now using to write explanations at the police headquarters. Plus the entire Gondorian station is turning over stones looking for Algali. In other words, it doesn’t seem to be a ruse.” “So why didn’t he show up at the Green Mackerel on the twentieth?”
“Possibly he had detected our backup team next to the restaurant and quite reasonably decided that we were violating his terms. That’s the best case; the worst is that Aragorn’s people got to him. Let’s hope for the best, milord, and wait for next Friday, the twenty-seventh. We’ll have to skip the backup team, lest the deal fall through again.”
“True enough. But he must not leave the Green Mackerel under his own power…”
CHAPTER 49
Umbar, 12 Shore Street
June 25, 3019
Mongoose walked unhurriedly down the embassy’s corridors.
Not crept along the wall like a fleet weightless shadow, but walked, with his every step echoing through the sleeping building, the wall lamps periodically illuminating his black parade uniform with silver officer’s cords on the left shoulder. Actually, Marandil realized almost immediately that this was a trick of the weak light: the lieutenant was wearing civilian clothes, the silver on his shoulder and chest being spots of some kind of whitish mold… No, what mold – it’s frost, real frost! Frost on clothing – how, from where? Just then a weak but clearly discernible breeze – like an icy breath from a crypt – touched the captain’s face, and the flames in the lamps dipped together, as if confirming to dash all hope: no, this is not an illusion! The walls of the embassy, long an unassailable fortress, two layers of slavishly devoted guards, DSD’s famed hunting skills – everything had failed…
He could physically feel the deathly cold emanating from the approaching figure; this cold froze Marandil’s boots to the floor and turned the panicked flurry of his thoughts into gel.
This is it. You knew all along that this was how it was going to end… After Aravan’s testimony you knew when, now you know how, that’s all… In the meantime, the lieutenant was turning
into a real mongoose leisurely approaching a cobra – a flat triangular head with flattened ears, itself resembling a snake’s head, ruby eye beads and blinding white needle teeth under raised whiskers. He, Marandil, was the cobra – an old tired cobra with broken venomous fangs. Any moment now those teeth would sink into his throat, the blood would spurt from the torn arteries, the delicate neck vertebra would crunch… He backed away, futilely trying to shield himself from the approaching nightmare with his hands, and suddenly sprawled flat on his back: his heel caught the upturned edge of a carpet runner.
The pain from a badly bumped elbow rescued the captain, snapping him back into reality.
His terror somehow switched modes, turning from paralyzing to hysterical; Marandil jumped up and sped down the corridor so fast that the wall lamps turned into a blurred fiery line. Stairs… down… over the railing to the next landing… again… there’s supposed to be a guard here – where is he?.. corridor before the chief’s office… the guards, where the hell are all the guards?! Footfalls behind – regular, as if measuring the thick silence of the corridor. A-a-a-argh! it's a dead end! where now? The office – no other choice… the key…doesn’t fit in the keyhole, dammit… idiot, it’s the key to the safe… calm down… Aúle the Great, help me – this damn lock catches often… Footfalls getting closer, like an icy water drip on a shaved head of a prisoner (why isn’t he running? Shut up, idiot, don’t jinx it!)…calm, now… turn the key… yes!
The Last Ringbearer (2011) Page 30