We found the uniforms stretched across the broad backs of three Chuliks. These diffs were a different proposition, and we had a nice little set to before we could claim their garments for ourselves.
“I see what you meant about the uniforms and gear,” observed Lol as we dressed in the fancy ochre and umbre and buckled up the lesten-hide harness. The sleeves were ochre and white — the serving swod’s approximation to Layco Jhansi’s kovnate colors of ochre and silver — and the accoutrements of the men were of good quality. I nodded and stowed the longsword and longbow and quiver over my shoulder, draping a checkerboard cloak across them.
“We’ll penetrate a good long way dressed like this. But do you keep your own sword, also.”
“I understand.”
When we reached the artificial lake surrounding Trakon’s Pillars and surveyed the narrow wooden bridge that connected the pillared stronghold to the land — so-called — we realized what a foolhardy errand we were on. But there was nothing else for it now but to press on as cheerfully as might be. So, singing that silly little ditty about Forbenard and the Rokrell, we pushed on over the bridge. At the far side under the overhanging wooden gateway a Fristle guard awaited us.
“Six of ’em, majister,” said Lol, leaning down from the saddle. “I’ll rush ’em, and then-”
“Hold, Lol! You may rush ’em, with my blessing. But I shall feather three of them for you as you ride. And, once inside, make for the deepest darkest dirtiest shadow and await me. I shall not be long.”
“Majister!” He looked stricken. “I did not mean-”
“I know what you mean, Lol Polisto, and I welcome your thought. Now, as you love Vallia, do as you are bid.”
He grunted, and said, softly, “As I love my Thelda and my son.” But he waited until I had unlimbered the bow. Then he clapped in his heels and was away and I hauled back the string and snapped three arrows across the gap, whistling past Lol’s down-bent head. Three of the Fristles coughed bright blood and collapsed. Lol took two more and the last turned to run. Lol’s totrix, tangling his stupid six-legs, stumbled the wrong way. The Fristle, screeching, his whiskers flaring, would escape and arouse the castle — all I could do was call on Seg’s Supreme Being, Erthyr the Bow, and cast a last shaft. It sped true.
Lol spurred on swiftly, as we had agreed, and I ran in after him, hurdling the fallen men, for the Fristles may have cat-faces, but they are men and can prove it. Inside the gateway the wooden walls stretched, and ahead showed shadows under brickwork, arches and galleries. That looked promising and so I ran
— fast, you may be sure — expecting an arrow to float silently down any mur and knock my brains out. I reached the brick, gray with age and round-edged, and ducked into the shadows. A totrix snuffled and Lol said, “All clear.”
“Well done. Now let us get on.”
From previous experience of the uniquely Kregen architecture of palace and castle I expected us to be able to move about with comparative freedom provided no alarm was raised. The alarm was going to be raised in no uncertain fashion the moment the first of the Fristle guards was discovered. So we must tailor our cloth to suit the narrowness of our movements.
This rat’s warren of Trakon’s Pillars turned out to be something of a surprise, in the end, for we ventured through courts of moldering brick and past colonnades of gilded wood where every motif shrieked of one thing and one thing only.
Jikaida.
Our bedraggled appearance which had served to give us time to fell the Chuliks had vanished with the donning of their guard uniforms provided by Jhansi. We moved smartly, with that unmistakable swagger of the mercenary drawing swift, half-averted glances from serving wenches, free and slave alike. For a space we could proceed unmolested. The totrix was like to be a hindrance but we were loath to part with the steed against his immediate and urgent need in the near future. Past tumbled ruins, past brand-new buildings, freshly lime-washed, we went, seeking always to come to the center. There, we both felt, lay the answers to our dual questions.
We skirted several courts laid out as Jikaida boards of various sizes. Not one was in use this early in the morning. An ob-Deldar moved bulkily out of an arched doorway and bellowed at us, and we ignored him and marched on as though about the kov’s business. Later on we were accosted again, this time by a thin-nosed and supercilious Hikdar. His misfortune was that he snapped at us in an alleyway between ochreberry bushes, and so had no protection from inquisitive eyes as we clapped him down in his cape and sat on him. He struggled like a landed fish.
“Dom,” I said, very friendly. “Tell us where the captives are stowed away and you may live.”
He started to bluster and then to yell as soon as Lol took his clamping hand away. Lol tapped him alongside the skull, gently, put his fist back over the fellow’s mouth, and, leaning down with a fierceness that perfectly complemented my apparent gentleness, said, “If you do not instantly tell us what we wish to know, and do so quietly, you will miss-” Well, what he would miss would make him miss a lot of life hereafter. The Hikdar was happy, most happy, to tell Lol what he wanted to know. Leaving the Hikdar stuffed under the ochreberry bushes we led the totrix through ways advised us until we passed a neat little pavilion reflected in a goldfish pool. Past a tall yew hedge a gravel path led to a small wicket set in a creeper-bowered brick wall. Here the sentry eyed us as Lol, most officiously, said:
“We have news for the kov, dom. You had best not keep him waiting.”
The guard — one of that nameless band of heroes whose sole function, as I have pointed out before, seems to be to stand all puffed in gold and silver finery, with a spear, and to be knocked on the head -
was inclined to argue. He was also incautious enough to open the wicket to make his point with great vehemence. Lol hit him, whereupon he ceased to be an obstacle and we were able to pass inside.
“Now where?”
“We must ask again, and keep asking, until we get the answer we seek.”
“You have, majister, I think,” said Lol, “done this before.”
“On and off,” I said. “On and off.”
But, the truth is, and will remain, that no two occasions are ever the same. And, every time, the old gut-tightening sensations afflict you and you have to keep a damned sharp lookout behind you. Damned sharp.
The bustle of the place was refreshing after the dolorous dragging down effect of the bogs. Slaves and servants and guards moved about and we were able to make our way forward. A swod with purple and green sleeves told us that, he thought, the prisoners were confined in dungeons where the rasts nested and the schrafters sharpened their teeth on the bones of corpses.
“The lady prisoner, cramph!”
The swod rolled his eyes down, trying to focus the dagger pressing into his throat. “In the Lattice House,” he squeaked.
So we went to the Lattice House.
This turned out to be a brick-built structure whose bricks were still sharp-cornered, and whose roof was tile rather than wood or thatch. We stopped by the corner of a gravel path, where brilliantly plumaged arboras strutted, and took in the prospects of breaking in. Lol was shaking.
“Easy, Lol. We are almost there.”
“Aye. I haven’t even thought of getting out.”
“One thing at a time.”
A dozen guards sweating with effort ran past, and their Deldar bellowed at them to spread out and search the Ladies Quarter. I frowned. “The hunt is up.”
“Just let us break in. Then-”
We glared from the shadows of the foliage, and I saw that Lol’s shaking had stopped. I rather fancied he would make a good companion, even a member of the KRVI, if we got out of this in one piece apiece, so to say. For the life of me I couldn’t take it seriously, and this, I vaguely realized, was because Lol was the kind of fellow to make you do things you wouldn’t dream of doing in more staid moments. He was a lot like Seg, and Inch, in that…