He stood on the deck and listened to wind whine in the rigging, the slap and wash of water along the hull. They were lonely sounds, cold ones that strengthened the chill about his heart, yet he had no choice. He’d set himself to this task, knowingly or not, the first time he entered Sharna’s temple, accepted the Scorpion’s protection and power. Should Harnak fail Him in return, he would envy the maiden who’d died upon the altar, and he knew it.
He shivered again, then shook himself. This was no time for brooding. They were four days out of South Hold; all too soon it would be time to unload their horses and set out on Bahzell’s trail once more . . . if the demon hadn’t already slain him.
Harnak of Navahk closed his eyes, longing to pray for the demon’s success. But only one god would hear him now, and that god had already done all it might to bring that success about. And so he drew a deep, chill breath, squared his shoulders, and went below once more, to wait.
South Hold was a fortress city, built in the angle between the Spear and Darkwater rivers. Its walls towered over the water, gray and cold against a sky of winter-blue steel as Harnak’s vessel entered the crowded anchorage where tall, square-rigged ships lay to their buoys or nuzzled the quays. Those ships flew the banners of Purple Lord trading houses, for South Hold might be the major port of the Empire of the Spear, but the Purple Lords refused passage up the Spear to seagoing vessels of any other land. They used their lucrative stranglehold on the river to monopolize the Spearmen’s carrying trade, and they cared not at all for the festering resentment that roused.
Harnak’s river schooner edged in among them, and he stood on the foredeck, gawking at the size of the city and the strength of its defenses. South Hold made Navahk look like the wretched knot of misery it was, and he felt a sudden, fresh chill at the thought of how the city might react to the arrival of two score northern hradani.
But that was a concern which never arose, for Harnak’s taciturn skipper knew his job. Harnak had never learned what the human truly was-a smuggler, at the least, though it seemed likely from the brutality of his crew that he dabbled in more violent trades when opportunity arose-but clearly the Church had briefed him well for his mission. He guided his vessel across the main basin without stopping, then slipped it deftly into the channel of the Darkwater and alongside a run-down wharf on the river’s southern bank. The warehouses beyond it were as ramshackle as the wharf itself, and they were more than a mile outside South Hold’s walls. That was a clear enough indication of the sort of trade they served; the surly, heavily armed “watchmen” who glowered suspiciously at the schooner simply confirmed it.
The schooner’s master wasted no time. Hardly had his sails been furled and his mooring made fast than he was hustling his passengers ashore. His determination to complete his mission and be gone was evident, but Harnak had little time to resent it, for someone awaited him at dockside.
The prince beckoned his chief guardsman to him and jerked his chin at the confusion of men and horses beginning to froth awkwardly ashore.
“Get those fools straightened out, Gharnash. We don’t want any attention we can avoid.”
“Yes, Highness.” Gharnash looked as if he wanted-again-to ask what was truly happening. The guardsman was hard and brutal, a clanless man, outlawed by his own tribe and taken into Harnak’s service precisely because he had nowhere else to turn, no other refuge or countervailing loyalty, yet he was no fool. He’d served Harnak for over six years, and he knew the prince too well to accept Harnak’s surface explanation for this journey. That Harnak hated Bahzell and wanted him dead, yes; that much Gharnash readily believed, but he also knew the prince feared the Horse Stealer. That made his feverish insistence on personally hunting Bahzell down most unlike him, and there was something . . . odd about Harnak’s new sword.
Yet Gharnash said nothing. His prince had secrets he didn’t know-and didn’t want to know-and instinct and reason alike told him this was one of them.
Harnak gazed into Gharnash’s eyes, reading the man’s thoughts more clearly than Gharnash knew, then snorted and turned away. He stepped to the dock with an arrogant confidence he was far from feeling, and a small, red-cloaked human bowed to him.
“Greetings, Your Highness. Our master welcomes you.”
Harnak returned the greeting with a shallower bow of his own, and his heart sank. If all had gone well, the demon should already have slain Bahzell, yet there was no exultation on his greeter’s face. The man straightened from his bow and let his cloak slip open to reveal a gemmed amulet, and Harnak inhaled sharply. This man was an archpriest, senior even to Tharnatus, and he was suddenly acutely aware of the lack of respect his own bow had implied.
The archpriest met his eyes, and a faint, amused smile curled his lips as he read the quick prickle of Harnak’s panic. But he forbore to comment upon it, and gestured to a nearby warehouse.
“Come, Your Highness. Let us discuss our business less publicly.”
“Ah, of course,” Harnak agreed, and followed the priest through a door one of his attendants held open. The attendant closed the door behind them and stood guarding their privacy, and Harnak licked his lips.
“Please excuse any seeming disrespect,” he began stiffly, “but-”
“Don’t disturb yourself, Your Highness,” the archpriest said smoothly. “We both serve the Scorpion; let His service make us brothers.”
Harnak nodded stiff thanks, and the priest smiled again. There was no humor in that smile, and the prince felt his belly tighten.
“I know your mission here, of course,” the archpriest told him, “and I have information for you.”
“Information?” Harnak’s voice was sharper than he’d intended. There was only one piece of “information” he wanted to hear, and the priest’s tone told him he wouldn’t.
“Yes. I regret to inform you-” the man’s smile vanished into an expression of bleak hatred “-that the greater servant failed in its task.”
“It failed?! ” Harnak goggled at the other in disbelief-and fear. “How? I saw the servant-nothing could have withstood it!”
“The evidence, alas, suggests you’re in error.” The priest’s eyes glittered in the dim warehouse. “I don’t know precisely how it happened, but the servant was destroyed, and Bahzell . . . wasn’t.” He shrugged and glanced significantly at the blade at Harnak’s side. “Surely you were told it might fail, Your Highness. If not, why are you here?”
“Well, of course I knew it was possible ,” Harnak muttered, “but I didn’t think- That is, I found it difficult to believe the Scorpion’s sting could actually miss its mark.”
“But it hasn’t, Your Highness. Not yet, for you are His true sting, are you not?”
Harnak nodded curtly, unable to trust his tongue, and the archpriest donned his smile again.
“Be of sound heart, Your Highness. The Scorpion will guide you to him you seek, and the blade you bear will not fail. He will fight at your very side through it, and no mortal can prevail against Him when He Himself takes the field. Yet I fear you must be on your way soon if you’re to overtake the Horse Stealer.”
“You know where he is?”
“No, but I know where he’s bound, which is almost as good.”
“Well?” Harnak pressed.
“For a time, Your Highness, he was in the company of certain enemies of Carnadosa. They didn’t tell us who those enemies were, but we have our own sources, including certain dog brothers who met them and survived, and they need not concern you, anyway, for Bahzell is no longer with them. The Carnadosans have returned to their own concerns, leaving us to deal with ours, but we feel confident that Bahzell will shortly seek to reach Alfroma.”
“Alfroma? Where’s that, and why should Bahzell go there?”
“It lies in the Duchy of Jashân, Your Highness, and why he wishes to go there need not concern you, either. If he reaches it, however, your chance to slay him will vanish . . . and the Scorpion will be, ah, displeased .”