None of the Mongs had smelled salt water before and it amused him to watch them sniffing and frowning. Then the wind changed and the salt smell was gone.
One day a scouting party came in from the east with a prisoner. Blade, supervising a slave work group, stared as curiously as the others as they rode past. The prisoner rode a horse, his hands tied behind him and his feet held with rawhide under the animal's belly. He was a Cath, but not like the Caths Blade had known. His skin was light yellow, and he was beardless, but he was much sturdier with arms and legs well muscled and nearly as large as Blade's own. The prisoner, who held his head high and stared straight ahead, wore wooden armor with the moon symbol emblazoned) on the chest. On his left shoulder he wore an epaulet. He was a Cath officer of fairly high rank. That night, after they had made love, Sadda told him about the prisoner.
"He calls himself a Sea Cath. He speaks freely, without threat of torture, yet he tells nothing that we could not find out for ourselves. He is a subcaptain and thinks he is very grand." She frowned and added, "As do all the Caths!"
Blade, who was eaten with curiosity, managed to appear bored.
"Where was he taken?"
"There is a pass three days march to the east that leads into a valley. A small fort guards it. Our warriors took the fort and slew all the Caths except this one, who was in command."
Blade yawned. "What will happen to him? To this Sea Cath?"
Sadda shrugged her slim shoulders. "Who knows? Who cares? And do not yawn when you are with me, Blade! I do not like it. If I bore you I will find another way of amusing you, and myself."
In that tense moment she was the old Sadda, her eyes narrowed and dangerous, and Blade cursed himself for his laxness. The new Sadda, the princess of tenderness and love for him, and the mother of his child, was only a mask, a thin veneer that need only be scratched to reveal the reality beneath.
He sought to repair matters as best he could.
"I could never be bored with you, my lady."
She frowned. Another mistake.
Blade smiled and kissed her averted face. "Sadda. I am tired. Sleepy. I admit it. These nights with you are paradise, but they are also long. And I have my duties during the day."
He bent to put his ear against her belly, flat and taut as ever, and again smiled as he said, "I could not sleep anyway. I keep thinking of this miracle - of being a father to a new prince or princess."
For a moment he thought he had overdone it, troweling on such obvious flattery, for she still frowned and regarded him coldly. Then she smiled back, for she was a woman after all and Blade spoke what she wanted to hear. She moved into his arms and began loveplay. Blade, sweating a little, vowed never to grow careless again. She was a kitten that could turn into a tigress in a second.
The Sea Cath was eventually tortured, and he babbled like a child. When his tormentors deemed him bled of information he was put to death.
The steppe, funneling downward now, led them to the pass guarding the valley. They were greeted by a few Mongs who had been left to hold the captured fort. They reported no sign of hostile action in the valley. Blade, contriving to see and hear as much as possible, wondered at that. Were these Sea Caths as proud, as haughty, and as stupid, as the wall Caths back in Serendip? It appeared so, otherwise the fort would have been retaken and reinforcements brought up.
The smell of the sea grew stronger as the Mongs wound their way through the valley, ever downward into a belt of thick vegetation where trees clustered in dense copses and huge orchid-like plants bloomed and gay-plumaged birds sang and traced lines of color in the sky. The Mongs marveled at such country, and did not like it. It was too soft, too efflorescent, too tender, for these hardy sons of the black sands. Sweet bird song grated on their ears.
A last gradual rise and the sea lay before them, sapphire and unruffled, edged by golden crescents of beach where wavelets creamed in and out.
On this day Blade was riding with Sadda, not far behind the Khad and his guard of honor. From the top of the rise the party surveyed the downward slope and what lay beyond it.
The Khad Tambur held up a hand. The order was repeated and carried back and the marching column of Mongs came to a gradual halt. Twenty miles of horses, men, and wagons stretched far back into the pass.
Blade and Sadda moved their ponies up to the crest, off to one side of the Khad. No one paid them any attention. The Khad, slumped in his saddle, his malformed back bent half over in constant pain, stared at the scene with his good eye.
Blade, with two excellent eyes, was seeing it differently. This, he knew immediately, would not be easy. He understood why the Sea Caths had not reinforced the fort at the mouth of the pass. They thought themselves secure enough in their city.
Below them the land sloped away to level into a great green plain. Perfect terrain for the Mong horsemen - if the Sea Caths would come out and fight.
They would not be such fools. Blade was sure of it. The city below was perfectly situated for defense. It stood at the mouth of a harbor shaped like an hourglass. An enormous chain, glistening now in the sun, stretched across the narrow waist. The inner harbor was crowded with craft of every description from tiny fishing boats to tall clumsy-looking men of war. They floated placidly at anchor, with no sign of bustle or alarm. As well they might. The Sea Caths had nothing to fear from that direction.
High cliffs ran around the inner harbor, right up to the waterfront of the city. There was no approach that way. The cliffs were effective flank guards. The only feasible line of attack was the direct frontal, across the broad green plain which lay below them. It was inviting - until you got to within two hundred yards of the low city wall.
First there was a wide ditch that sloped gradually down until it met the perpendicular back wall. Blade guessed the wall at twenty feet. From the lip of the ditch to the wall, the slope was covered with sharp-pointed stakes set firmly into the earth and pointing at the lip. Men could move among those stakes. Not horses.
Beyond the ditch - Blade saw immediately and understood, and knew the Mongs would not comprehend - was the trap. The real defensive trickery. A wide moat. Dry now.
Blade traced the moat around the city and his lips twitched in a dry smile. Those were sluice gates where the moat ended in the harbor, and those long poles and levers would open them and let in the sea. A quick glance and rapid calculation convinced him. The sea wall fronting the city was keeping the harbor in its place. Open the sluice gates and gravity would do the rest.
For an hour the Khad and his Captains studied the town and the terrain. Blade saw Rahstum and the Khad in deep debate. Meantime he and Sadda had ridden even more to one side and were safely out of earshot.
Sadda, her knee touching his as the horses stood patiently, said, "We must make ready now, Blade. The time is coming again. I know my brother as few do, and I see signs of the madness returning. Not yet, but soon. And when he takes this city there will be a great feast and celebration. Greater, and wilder than would have been on his birth date. That will be our chance. Be ready."
He masked his eyes and nodded. "I will be ready. I have forgotten nothing and I know what I have to do."
Kill the dwarf after Morpho had killed the Khad! Blade knew it was not going to work out that way, but he still puzzled about how Sadda expected to force the dwarf into killing her brother?