Dark Crusade (16 page)

Some of his men were struggling to the far bank of the water-meadow, dragging themselves wearily through the high grass in hope of flight. Jarvo knew Kane would send his cavalry to skirt the marsh, cut off their retreat. There was no escape from that quarter, nor could he remain where he was. Better to drown in the fen than fall into Kane's hands.

There was one desperate chance, and Jarvo took it. Slithering across the muck like some ungainly salamander, he began to work his way through the marsh--following the course of the reed-buried river, away from the sounds of massacre. All was confusion behind him, as Satakis crawled out to slaughter the mired calvarymen. Swimming through scum-covered pools, slithering between the high reeds, Jarvo was well beyond the circle of slaughter by the time darkness concealed hunters and hunted, slavers and slain.

The following days were a confused haze that Jarvo remembered with no more clarity than the first days he spent in Erill's wagon. Exhaustion and the agony of festering wounds were a constant torment--until fever blotted out all other sensation. He remembered drinking from foetid pools in a vain effort to quench his searing thirst, devouring raw the snakes and frogs and blind crawling things that were all he could catch to eat. He remembered the torturing bites and stings of myriads of insects, the blistering touch of the sun. Once a queen snake coiled before him; its bite would bring merciful oblivion, but instead he killed it with a rock and ate it.

Jarvo supposed he was quite mad for much of that time. Beyond his immediate need to escape, he was never certain what plans he may have had. At first there was the need to return to Sandotneri, but that was impossible with Kane's certain siege, and at some deeper level Jarvo knew Sandotneri must fall after his disastrous defeat. At times, when he could rally his thoughts at all, it seemed to Jarvo he must instead go to Ingoldi--that the only way to expiate his disgrace was to seek out Kane there and kill him. Only rarely did his dream of vengeance remember to take in Orted Ak-Ceddi as well. After several more days of aimless wandering in a northward direction, the only thing Jarvo could remember to concentrate on was the need to escape capture. And finally that awareness dissolved as well, There followed an indefinable interval of pain-haunted blackness that ended finally as his fevered vision began to focus on Erill's face.

By the time Jarvo could feed himself, or endure an hour without dripping with fever-sweat or shaking with chill, he had grown a heavy straw-colored beard. With the patches of scar tissue, the beard gave him a decidedly mangy appearance, but it would be more days still before he would care. By then Erill had passed on to him such information as she dared give him as to the fate of Sandotneri. Jarvo lay in dull despair, wondering why he had been spared. More than ever he swore vengeance on Kane.

It was in this bleak mood he learned from Erill that Esketra yet lived--carried off by the Prophet to serve his will in Ceddi. Jarvo was silent for many hours thereafter. When he spoke again it was with a new calmness, for he had a use for life once more. He would return to Ingoldi with Erill and Boree, and there bide his time for the opportunity to rescue Esketra.

It could be done, of that Jarvo was certain. To believe otherwise was a torture beyond any enduring. All that remained was to study the problem, bide his time until he found a way. True, Esketra had been false to him. But he could forgive her that, knowing that her heart would be his once more, when he daringly stole her away from the Prophet's citadel. Their world was no more; their love would be a new world.

Thereafter he filled his days with a thousand mad schemes. He would storm the citadel with a secret army. He would organize a rebellion. He would burst upon Orted in his tower, cut him to pieces as Esketra watched with glowing eyes. He would steal into the citadel by night, spirit her away with the audacity of a master thief. He would set a trap for Kane, overpower him in an epic duel--sparing Kane's life while he forced him to procure Esketra's release.

The plans and variations were beyond number, ranging from vaguely feasible to hopelessly fanciful. They each ended with the same vision of triumph and bliss. Erill listened patiently to most of them, occasionally offering sarcastic comment. Whether from bitter tonics or airy hopes, the fever at length gave way, and Jarvo's strength returned.

They had to return to Shapeli--or risk being hunted down as inuchiri by the Sataki patrols that passed about them increasingly, as Kane led the Sword of Sataki ever onward into the southern kingdoms. Erill had originally planned no further than to try to nurse Jarvo back to health, then help him escape to wherever he might muster a new army to lead against Kane. By the time he was strong enough to leave, she found herself rather wishing he would stay. Her protests to his insistence in going to Ingoldi lacked vehemence.

After all, there was no place of safety from the Dark Crusade. Moreover, General Jarvo was by now presumed to be worm-meat beneath the marshes--and even should he have somehow escaped that day, was there any place a less likely refuge than Ingoldi? Finally, Jarvo was going to Ingoldi. If Erill would take him in her wagon, that was fine. If not, he would get there on his own.

So Erill brought him to Ingoldi. On his own, she knew he would never survive. Jarvo laughed at her fears. Erill held her temper, warned him that he had no conception of what awaited them in the Prophet's capital. Jarvo laughed again. Like much of laughter, it was born of ignorance.

A carnival wagon with two women and a maimed veteran does not excite immediate suspicion, even in Shapeli. Erill took measures to insure such suspicions might never fall--for the Defenders of Sataki were eternally vigilant, and seldom did they scruple over distinctions between whispered suspicion and veritable guilt.

Jarvo became Insiemo, a loyal follower of Sataki whose face had been scarred at Emleoas. His old wounds kept him from serving in the Sword of Sataki, but he had joined the Sataki horde that had called down the doom that engulfed Sandotneri. Old wounds had flared anew on his return from Sandotneri. Erill had met him then, offered the shelter of her wagon to the stricken hero, and they had become lovers after a fashion. Boree had sneered at this; Jarvo agreed the charade would lull suspicion. Humanitarian gestures were suspect in Shapeli.

Allowing for regional dialects, the language throughout Shapeli and the southern kingdoms was the same. Jarvo's accent was suspect. Erill coached his pronunciation until he could pass for a native of one of the border towns, whose accent had taken on a mongrel aspect after the years of social upheaval in Shapeli.

Jarvo had been clean-shaven; Insiemo had a full but scabby beard. Jarvo was blond and carefully groomed; Insiemo had a dark beard and shaggy hair streaked with grey. Jarvo wore an eye patch; Insiemo's left eye glared blindly at the world. Let them stare at the ruined eye, Erill told him--and they will little note your other features. Greasepaints and stains darkened Jarvo's complexion from fair to swarthy. Strips of gum extended the scar across his nose and onto the unburned side of his face; waxy make-up made it appear he sought to bide the scarring as best he could. That camouflaged the wax extension that made a straight-bridged nose a hooked beak,

Erill considered such refinements as gum pads within the checks to distort the facial lines, or silver arches within the nostrils to flare out and tilt the nose upward, or clips and gum inserts to alter the shape of the ears. She decided against all these. They took too long to adjust and required constant attention, while close or prolonged scrutiny might discern them. Best to keep with a relatively simple appearance that Jarvo could maintain for weeks. It was a good disguise, made all the more effective because there were few left alive who knew Jarvo by sight. Jarvo was dead, and Shapeli was crowded with maimed veterans such as Insiemo.

He needed a cover. Erill and Boree had maintained their carnival contacts throughout all the upheaval. It kept them eating, and beat the Sataki labor teams. Now, as the war moved away from Ingoldi, the Theater Guild began to flourish. There were patriotic pageants to stir the morale of the masses, morality plays to remind them of their duties to Sataki, and of the new age that would come when the Dark Crusade was victorious. Erill was an accomplished mime, and had no difficulty picking up her former career. Jarvo was strong, could use his hands after a fashion; there was enough work to justify his presence at the guild while he waited for his chance.

The weeks were a torture for him, skulking in the background--thinking always of Esketra, but unable to do anything. He consoled himself by gathering detailed information on the Prophet's fortress and on the workings of the Dark Crusade, it occurred to him that his information would be invaluable to an invading army, but for Jarvo it was only a potential means toward entering Ceddi and rescuing Esketra.

His task was far more complicated than he had ever imagined. Ingoldi lived under a pall of suspicion and fear. The Defenders of Sataki watched everything, and what they missed a faithful citizen might whisper to them. There were rewards for denouncing noochees. And Ceddi was absolutely closed to unauthorized persons. No one went in, no one came out, except under tightest security. No one outside of the priests of Sataki even knew for certain what went on inside the Prophet's citadel. Presumably the doomed prisoners who were dragged into Ceddi's secret recesses found out, but none ever came out again.

After months of frustration, Jarvo bad not even seen Esketra, only knew from gossip that the Prophet's favorite concubine still lived. He clung to sanity by mentally enacting a thousand mad schemes--dreaming of hidden passages, scaled walls, secret notes, hidden spies, and other vain hopes. Lately he had thought of risking everything and trying to join the priesthood. No one knew for certain how the priests of Sataki recruited new brothers.

When the new pageant was being organized, and someone suggested that Insiemo was a natural to portray villainous Scarface Jarvo, Jarvo accepted with only weak protests. It was a piece of audacity that appealed to his growing recklessness. It was a secret jest, no more than thumbing his nose at an enemy's back. But Jarvo knew he must soon find some release from tension, or he would run amok.

So the months had dragged on for him. Defeated and disgraced, nursed back to strength from the brink of death, now living in the very shadow of his enemy's citadel, dependent upon a barely grown girl--a carnival mime of strange moods and uncertain temper. And while he skulked about helplessly, Kane was laying waste to the southern kingdoms, Orted Ak-Ceddi was piling his storerooms with blood-bartered loot, and Esketra was slave to the Prophet's foul lusts.

And Erill flew at him because he was so bold as to venture forth without his nursemaid.

So Jarvo scowled and sulked, aroused from his grim brooding only when Erill finally returned to the wagon.

Her face was worried.

"What is it?" he asked sharply.

"Trouble, I'm afraid. I just got word from the guild directors."

"Trouble from the censors?" That could be very bad.

"Wish that was all it was. No, the new pageant has met with the highest official praise. It's a stirring portrayal of the victorious advance of the Dark Crusade. All the faithful should see it twice."

"Then what's the sting?"

"We're too good. The Prophet has called for a command performance, to be given within the great hall of Ceddi."

Jarvo leapt to his feet with an exultant laugh. "That's too good to be true! Finally! It's the chance I've needed all along to get into Ceddi! I'll at least be able to see Esketra, maybe get word to her, maybe even..."

"It's to be a victory banquet--in honor of Kane's return."

Boree's practiced fingers reshuffled the black lacquered squares, pushed the deck across the table to Erill.

"Try it again, honey."

Erill scowled, shook her blonde curls in vexation. "Twice is enough, damn it. I've got things to do. Why don't you leave me alone?"

Boree's face was expressionless, but her eyes were shadowed, "Once more."

"Go to hell. You won't even tell me what you read the last two times." Erill held the spill to her cold pipe, puffed it alight.

"Hard to read the cards tonight, honey."

"Then it's bad, and you don't want to scare me. Well, reading the cards again won't change my fate."

"I may have made a mistake somehow."

"Then it's not worth wasting my time."

"Please. Once more."

Erill swore and accepted the black deck. It angered her that her hands trembled.

Jarvo looked at his hands and cursed. The tremor didn't go away. Nerves, he told himself, and set his jaw determinedly.

That betrayed him. A spasm shook his muscles; his teeth chattered for an instant. Not nerves, fever. Vaul! Not tonight...

Savagely Jarvo wiped at the sweat that oozed from his pallid face. He wondered again how it was possible to sweat when his guts were an icy ache. No matter. The familiar fever and chills gripped him once again--treacherously, when he was certain his strength had fully returned, certain the nights of shivering beneath sweatsoaked blankets were past and gone. No matter; it was back.

Erill must not know. She had given up trying to dissuade him from appearing at the Prophet's command performance--but only because she knew no arguments could stop him. If she found out he was suffering another relapse, she'd rail at him to stay away--his illness would allow another to take his part without suspicion, and surely in his state...

Jarvo grimaced. He could hear her angry voice now. Erill could be very persuasive. No wonder that husky Boree always gave way to the girl's stinging temper.

He glanced toward the westering sun. It lacked some hours yet before the troupe would assemble for their admission into Ceddi. Perhaps by then his bout would have left him. The episodes were milder, and the intervals farther apart now.

No matter. He was going into Ceddi tonight. He would see Esketra tonight, if he never saw another sunrise.