Two days later, as he returned to the march, the Marena Dimura brought him a young messenger.
"Wouldn't be related to Eanred Tarlson, would you?" Bragi asked, as he broke Royal seals.
"My father, sir." .
"You're Gjerdruni, eh? Your father said you were at university."
"I came home when the trouble started. I knew he'd need help. Especially if anything happened to him."
"Eh?" But he had begun reading.
His orders were to hasten to Vorgreberg and assume the capital's defense. Tarlson had been gravely wounded in a battle with Volstokin. The foreigners were within thirty miles of the city.
"Tell her I'm on my way," he said.
The boy rode off, never having dismounted. Ragnar-son wondered if he could get there in time. The rain would f complicate river crossings in the lowlands. And Tarlson's injuries might cost the Queen the support he brought her by force of personality. He might lead his men to an enemy city. "Haaken! Ahring! Altenkirk! Sir Andvbur!"
ii) Travels with the enemy
"Woe! Am foolest of fools," Mocker mumbled over and over."
The dungeon days had stretched into weeks, a parade of identical bores. Kirsten had forgotten him due to other pressures. Those he could judge only by his guards. Always sullen and vicious, they became worse whenever the Breitbarth fortunes waned. News arrived only when another subversive was imprisoned.
One day the turnkeys vanished. Every available man had been drafted to resist Volstokin's perfidy.
After crushing resistance, Vodicka visited the dungeons. Mocker tried to appear small in his corner. The Volstokiners were hunting someone. And he had had a premonition.
"This one," he heard.
He looked up. A tall, lean, angular man with a wide scar down one cheek considered him with eyes of cold jade. Vodicka. Beside him Was another lean man, shorter, dusky, with high, prominent cheekbones and a huge, hawklike nose. He wore black. His eyes were like those of a snake.
Inwardly, Mocker groaned. A shaghun.
"Hai!" He bounced up with a broad grin. "Great King arrives in nick to rescue faithful servant from mouldering death in dungeon of perfidious ally. Breitbarth is treacher, great lord. Was plotting treason from beginning ..."
They ignored him.
Mocker sputtered, fumed, and told some of his tallest lies. Vodicka's men put him in chains and led him away. No one explained why.
But he could guess. They knew him. He had done El Murid many small embarrassments. There was the time he had sweet-talked/kidnapped the man's daughter. There was the time he had convinced an important general that he could reveal a short-cut through the Kapenrungs, and had led the man into an army-devouring ambush.
Still, daylight seen from chains was sweeter than dungeon darkness. And at least an illusion of a chance to escape existed.
He could have gotten away. Escape tricks were among his talents. But he saw a chance to lurk on the fringe of the enemy's councils.
He got to see a lot of daylight—and moonlight, starlight, and weather—the next few months, while Volstokin's drunken giant of an army lumbered about Ravelin's western provinces. Vodicka wanted his prizes near him always, but never comfortable.
Mocker didn't get along with his fellow prisoners. They were Nordmen, gentlemen who had barely paid their ransoms to Bragi's agents when taken by Vodicka.
Ragnarson had won himself a low, black place in Vodicka's heart. He had already plundered the best from Ahsens, Dolusich, Gaehle, Holtschlaw, and Heiderscheid provinces. Bragi's leavings were not satisfying the levies, who had been called from their homes for a campaign that would last past harvest time.
Vodicka kept escalating his promises to keep his army from evaporating.
Mocker wished he could get out among the troops. The damage he could talk... But his guards, now, were men of Hammad al Nakir. They were deaf to words not approved by their shaghun. His chance to escape had passed him by. The looting improved in Echtenache and Rubbelke, though there a price in blood had to be paid. In Rubbelke, sixty miles west of Vorgreberg and fifteen north of the caravan route, a thousand Nordmen met Volstokin on the plains before Woerheide.
Vodicka insisted that his prisoners watch. His pride still stung from the difficulty he had had forcing the Armstead ford.
Vodicka was more talented at diplomacy and intrigue than at war, but refused to admit his shortcomings.
Tons of flesh and steel surged together in long, thunderous waves amidst storms of dust and swirling autumn leaves. Swords like lightning flashed in the thunderheads of war; the earth received a rain of blood and broken blades and bodies.
Volstokin's knights began to flee. Enraged, Vodicka prepared to sacrifice his infantry.
Mocker watched with delight and game-fan commentary. The Nordmen had no infantry of their own. Unhorsed, without the protection of footmen, they would be easy prey for Volstokin's more mobile men-at-arms.
The shaghun asked Vodicka to hold the infantry. He would turn the tide.
Mocker had encountered many wizards. This one was no mountain-mover, but was superior for a survivor of El Murid's early anti-sorcery program. If he were an example of what the Disciple had been developing behind the Sahel, the west was in for some wicked surprises.
He conjured bears from smoke, unnaturally huge monsters misty about the edges but fanged and clawed like creatures bred only to kill. The Nordmen recognized them harmless, but their mounts were impressed beyond control. They broke, many throwing their riders in their panic.
"Now your infantry," said the shaghun.
"Woe," Mocker mumbled, "am doomed. Am condemned to hopelessest of hopeless plights. Will never see home of self again." His fellow prisoners watched him curiously. They had never understood his presence. He had done nothing to enlighten them. But he had learned from them.
He knew who planned to betray whom, and when and how, and the most secret of their changing alliances. But Mocker suspected their scheming no longer mattered. Vodicka's and Bragi's armies were the real powers in Ravelin now.
Vodicka's leadership remained indecisive. Twenty miles from Vorgreberg he went into camp. He seemed to be waiting for something.
What came was not what he wanted. From his seat outside Vodicka's pavilion, Mocker listened to the King's curses when he discovered that the Queen's Own, though inferior in numbers, were upon him. While the surprise attack developed, Vodicka and the shaghun argued about why Tarlson was so confident.
Mocker learned why they had been waiting.
They were expecting another Siluro uprising.
But Tarlson should have anticipated that possibility. Had he rounded up the ringleaders?
Mocker supposed that Tarlson, aware of his position, had elected to rely on boldness and speed.
He brought his horsemen in hard and fast, with little armor to slow them. From the beginning it was obvious he was only mounting a raid in force.
Yet it nearly became a victory. Tarlson's men raged through the camp, trailing slaughter and fire. One detachment made off with cattle and horses, another drove for the Royal pavilion.
Mocker saw Tarlson at their head, shouted them on. But Vodicka's house troops and the shaghun's bodyguards were hardened veterans.
The shaghun crouched in the pavilion entryway, chanting over colored smokes. If there had ever been a time for a Mocker trick, this was it. He had begun to despair of ever winning free. He wracked his brain. It had to be something that wouldn't get him killed if he failed.
A not-too-kind fate saved him the trouble.
A wild thrust by a dying spearman slipped past Tarlson's shield and found a gap behind his breastplate. The Wesson plunged -from his saddle. With the broken spear still protruding, he surged to his feet.