Domes of Fire
Page 136‘If’n he kin move around sorta quiet-like, I kin.’
‘I think he can manage. He’s a country-boy the same as you are, and I’d guess that he’s almost as skilled at making rabbit snares and stealing chickens.’
‘Sparhawk!’ Khalad protested.
‘Those skills are too valuable to have been left out of your education, Khalad, and I knew your father, remember?’
‘They knew we were coming, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said angrily. ‘We split up into small groups and stayed away from towns and villages, and they still knew we were coming. They ambushed us on the west shore of Lake Sama.’
‘Trolls?’ Sparhawk’s voice was tense.
‘Worse. It was a large group of rough-looking fellows armed with crossbows. They made the mistake of shooting all at the same time. If they hadn’t, none of us would have made it back to tell you about it. They decimated Engessa’s mounted Atans, though. He was seriously put out about that. He tore quite a number of the ambushers apart with his bare hands.’
A sudden cold fear gripped Sparhawk’s stomach. ‘Where’s Tynian?’ he asked.
‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘Probably. It didn’t improve his temper very much though. He uses his sword almost as well with his left hand as he does with his right. We had to restrain him when the ambushers broke and ran. He was going to chase them down one by one, and he was bleeding like a stuck pig. I think we’ve got spies here in this imitation castle, Sparhawk. Those people couldn’t have laid that ambush without some fairly specific information about our route and our destination.’
‘We’ll sweep those hiding-places again.’
‘Good idea, and this time let’s do a bit more than reprimand the people we catch for bad manners. A spy can’t creep through hidden passages very well with two broken legs.’ The blond Pandion’s face was grim. ‘I get to do the breaking,’ he added. ‘I want to be sure that there aren’t any miraculous recoveries. A broken shinbone heals in a couple of months, but if you take a sledge-hammer to a man’s knees, you’ll put him out of action for much, much longer.’
Bevier, who led the survivors of his detachment back into Matherion two days later, took Kalten’s suggestion a step further. His notion involved amputations at the hip. The devout Cyrinic Knight was very angry about being ambushed and he used language Sparhawk had never heard from him before. When he had calmed himself finally, though, he contritely sought absolution from Patriarch Emban. Emban not only forgave him, but granted an indulgence as well – just in case he happened across some new swear-words.
A thorough search of the opalescent castle turned up no hidden listeners, and they all gathered to confer with Emperor Sarabian and Foreign Minister Oscagne the day after Sir Bevier’s return. They met high in the central tower, just to be on the safe side, and Sephrenia added a Styric spell to further ensure that their discussions would remain private.
‘I’m not accusing anyone,’ Vanion said, ‘so don’t take this personally. Word of our plans is somehow leaking out, so I think we should all pledge that no hint of what we discuss here should leave this room.’
‘Well,’ Vanion amended, ‘something on that order, I suppose, but we’re not all Pandion Knights here, you know.’ He looked around. ‘All right then, let’s summarise the situation. The plot here in Matherion quite obviously goes beyond simple espionage. I think we’d better face up to the probability of an armed insurrection directed at the imperial compound. Our enemy seems to be growing impatient.’
‘Or fearful,’ Oscagne added. ‘The presence of Church Knights – and Prince Sparhawk – here in Matherion poses some kind of threat. His campaign of random terror, civil disturbance and incipient insurrection in the subject kingdoms was working fairly well, but it appears that something’s come up that makes that process too slow. He has to strike at the centre of imperial authority now.’
‘And directly at me, I gather,’ Emperor Sarabian added.
‘That’s unthinkable, your Majesty,’ Oscagne objected. ‘In all the history of the empire, no one ever directly confronted the emperor.’
‘Please, Oscagne,’ Sarabian said, ‘don’t treat me like an idiot. Any number of my predecessors have met with “accidents” or fallen fatally ill under peculiar circumstances. Inconvenient emperors have been removed before.’
‘But never right out in the open, your Majesty. That’s terribly impolite.’
Sarabian laughed. ‘I’m sure that the three government ministers who threw my great-great-grandfather from the top of the highest tower in the compound were all exquisitely courteous about it, Oscagne. We’re going to have an armed mob in the streets then, all enthusiastically howling for my blood?’
‘I hate this,’ Ulath said sourly.
‘Hate what?’ Kalten asked him.
‘Isn’t it obvious? We’ve got an Elene castle here. It might not be quite as good as one that Bevier would have designed, but it’s still the strongest building in Matherion. We’ve got three days until the streets are going to be filled with armed civilians. We don’t have much choice. We have to pull back inside these walls – fort up until the Atans can restore order. I detest sieges.’
‘I’m sure we won’t have to go that far, Sir Ulath,’ Oscagne protested. ‘As soon as I heard about that message Master Caalador unearthed, I sent word to Norkan in Atana. There are ten thousand Atans massed twenty leagues from here. The conspirators aren’t going to move until after dark on the appointed day. I can have the streets awash with seven-foot tall Atans before noon of that same day. The attempted coup will fail before it ever gets started.’
‘And miss the chance to round them all up?’ Ulath said. ‘Very poor military thinking, your Excellency. We’ve got a defensible castle here. Bevier could hold this place for two years at least.’
‘Five,’ Bevier corrected. ‘There’s a well inside the walls. That adds three years.’