Warlord of Antares (16 page)

Murlock the Spry, most unspry-like with his foot bandaged and propped on a log, called across. His thin face with the raw, healing scar looked as apprehensive as ever. He’d been employed as best he could around the camp, and Weymlo had dropped a few silver dhems into his hand. Now he wanted to know what his fate would be. As he said: “If the king’s men find out—”

“No fear of that, at least yet,” Seg told him.

“I suppose you’ll be off and running the moment your foot heals.” I stared at the offending appendage.

He looked even more guilty.

“As to that, doms, I do not think so. If you would take me, I would serve you well. And cheaply.”

“Doing what?”

“My father, may his bones never be disturbed, was a Third Under Chamberlain at the Second Court of the Palace of Exotic Delights. I trained up to follow in his illustrious footsteps.” He shook his head. “Alas, the Mensaguals, the cruel Arbiters of Fate, dictated otherwise.”

Seg snorted in amusement. “We are in no need of those kind of entertainments, Murlock.”

“Ah, but, horter, I am well-trained in the management of a household. You would be served in the field as you have never before been served. I know.”

He didn’t know, of course. Seeing our faces, he went on: “My punishment was over a mere peccadillo — why, the girl was more eager than I! I swear it by Pymanomar the Ever-Just! I must try to make my way in the world again.”

Seg and I held ourselves in check and did not burst out laughing. In the end we said: “Very well, Murlock the Spry. And see you are as good as your word.”

At that his cares fell from him. He bounded up on his wounded foot and danced across to us, shouting: “My thanks, horters! Thrice blessed in the name of Havil!”

“Your foot,” pointed out Seg.

“A miraculous cure, horters!”

“Murlock the Spry,” I said. “More likely Murlock the Cunning.”

“Cunning in providing all your wants. You will eat tonight as you have not done on this journey!”

Nath and Orso, strolling over, listened to this fresh news with fascination. Nath licked his lips.

“I trust the rascal is as good a cook as a liar.”

“I shall see to it that he tastes every morsel before I eat it,” quoth Orso.

That evening we saw the Lamnians off, and splendidly sumptuous they looked for their meeting with Kapt Rorman.

Then we settled to taste and test the meal prepared by Murlock the Spry. He had shrugged off caustic comments about his foot’s improvement, and had disappeared during the early part of the afternoon. Under the first fuzzy pink rays of the Maiden with the Many Smiles, we sat down to dine.

No doubt about it. Murlock was a blue-ribbon chef. He was not as good as Emder, or even as Deft-Fingered Minch; but he was top class. We sat back after the repast, not bloated but comfortably full.

“So that is how they eat in a place like the Palace of Exotic Delights,” remarked Nath, picking his teeth. “The prices must be ruinous.”

Murlock, just carrying away four plates all together, plus four smaller plates and four used glasses, plus sundry other items, halted and swung about. For a thin ferrety fellow he looked wrought up.

“Horter! Were you not a renowned hyrpaktun wearing the gold pakzhan I would challenge you for the insult!”

“Do what?”

“D’you think my illustrious father worked in a mere tavern? The Palace of Exotic Delights is one of the king’s palaces beside the Azure Lake in Pelasmohnia!”

“Oh,” said Nath, quite unrepentant.

We managed to soothe Murlock’s ruffled feathers and he produced what was a superior wine, a vintage with which I was unfamiliar. We sat around the fire drinking companionably, and when Murlock had finished the washing up, he was called to join us.

“How,” demanded Orso, “did you steal this food?”

“We do not much fancy the late food’s owners cutting up rough,” put in Nath.

“The food was come by honestly, horters, that I swear by Pyman—”

“Yes, yes,” Orso crackled, wiping his lips. “Enough of that. We believe you even if a million wouldn’t.”

As Seg said: “There are Menahem and Menahem.” He meant, of course, that Murlock as a palace servant, not slave, was not quite the same as your normal Bloody Menahem. I reflected that he had, at least, stuck his knife into the neck of Gartang the Kazzur neatly enough. He might not be as soft and flabby as so many palace servants become.

The night flowed on about us with the scents of night-blooming flowers mingled with the woodsmoke from the camp fires.

Presently Seg said: “Well, my old dom. And where are our Lamnian friends, then?”

“There is little need to worry our heads over them,” said Orso. “They are skilled negotiators.”

“The negotiating was done when the deal was struck. They went to collect payment due to them.”

Nath rumbled out: “I like ’em, them Lamnians.”

“Job for us tonight,” Seg told him. “So banish all thoughts of your sack.”

Murlock looked disappointed. He heaved up a sigh and said: “If you demand my services later, horters, then naturally I am at your command. I was hoping — there is a sweet little shishi in the — well—”

“It seems to me,” said Seg and he was bottling up his enjoyment, “that you chase anything female you see.”

“Not anything, horter. There is taste.”

“Ah, of course!” And Seg laid a wise finger alongside his nose.

“All the same,” I said, rather heavily. “That does not tell us where the Lamnians are.”

Murlock stood up. “Before I go off duty, with your permission, horters, naturally, I will make enquiries.”

“Yes, yes, very well,” said Orso.

Seg and I, together, said: “Thank you, Murlock.”

Orso looked at us after Murlock had gone into the moon-shadows. His face was intense.

“I am forced to call you Jak, majister, and you, jen, as Seg. I am not a noble; but my father is incredibly wealthy and may buy a dozen lords. He may yet buy a title, if he chooses. Yet you treat these scum as though they are koters and brothers in arms.”

Seg and I waited for each other to speak, and so Nath in his rough way rumbled out: “Doesn’t hurt to treat a fellow decent, Orso. Never know when he might have a knife in your throat.”

“Come the day when he ever gets a knife near my throat!”

Seg changed the conversation then and we talked desultorily of this and that until Murlock returned.

He did not sit down as he was gestured to do. He said: “I have a second cousin in Kapt Rorman the Indestructible’s camp kitchen staff. I can come and go freely. My appearance is much changed.” Here he touched the scar.

“Well? Get on with it!” That was Orso.

“The Lamnians have been arrested and detained at the king’s pleasure.”

Orso just sneered at the news, clearly persuading himself that he’d expected duplicity all along. Nath rumbled out a curse and started to talk. Seg cut in and I said: “The plans remain. But it will be just you three, now.”

I stood up and put a hand on Murlock’s shoulder.

“You have, I think, a cousin in the king’s camp kitchen staff.”

At his abruptly scared nod, I went on confidently to say: “Exactly so. Then we will stroll up there and see what may be done about our Lamnian friends.”

Chapter seventeen

Al-Ar-Mergondon

The glow of a more golden light impinging on the fuzzy pink radiance of the Maiden with the Many Smiles heralded the breaking of She of the Veils from cloud wrack. Mingled moons’ light fell across the camp and the river and the wrecked town and one could be forgiven for believing that in that luminescence the countryside slept peacefully.

I did not have to take Murlock the Spry by one ear and run him over to the king’s enclosure. He trotted along willingly enough; I knew he’d take himself off the moment he had a chance.

In the streaming mingled golden and rosy radiance of the two moons, we approached the guarded gate. Over most of Paz the first and third Moons of Kregen are generally known as The Maiden with the Many Smiles and She of the Veils. The two second moons, the Twins, have many and various names all over, and as for the three hurtling lesser moons, so often are they referred to in the terms of endearment one uses to pets their names are legion.

“No!” whispered Murlock, grabbing my arm and trying to haul me away. “Not there!”

He dragged me off the beaten path leading to the gate.

What he intended made absolute sense. He led us around to the other side of the enclosure where a small gate gave admittance to the slaves and servants. Small though it might be, this gate, too, was guarded.

“Let me do the talking, horter.”

“Am I slave or servant?” I had taken the trouble to collect a parcel of sticks as firewood and bound the bundle with string. Down the center snugged the Krozair blade, so the thing took after the guise of a fasces.

“Servant.” Here Murlock shifted my swords he wore strapped to his waist as though they stung him. He was strictly a knife-man. He might learn, given time and life. He carried the bottle of Risslaca Ichor wrapped in straw and slung from his left shoulder.

“Llanitch!” called the sentry in due form.

Obediently we halted.

“Second chef Apgarl the Sauce’s cousin come to see him, jurukker, on a matter of high culinary policy.”

Murlock rapped that out in the same hard formal tones the guard had used ordering us to halt. Now Murlock relaxed and went on in a different tone of voice: “It’s the Havil-retarded clingberry and mustard sauce, dom. Won’t go right nohow. My cousin’s the expert in that field and I have to get it right for the morning, without fail.”

“You cooks have it soft as it is,” growled the sentry; but he, too, relaxed, and after another gibe or two waved us into the king’s enclosure.

“You’re in, horter,” squeaked Murlock. “So I’ll be off.” The enormity of what he had done must have caught up with him about then, for he did look a strange color.

“Not yet, dom, not yet. Stick close.”

“You could have brought your friends as well. I’d have got them through easy.” Now the deed was accomplished he dwelt with pride on how he had fooled the guard; he did not want anything further to go wrong. “And the Lamnians won’t be caged up here, surely? Not in my experience.”

“They’re not ordinary prisoners taken in a fight.”

We were approaching the cooking area and the scents really were quite delicious. The cooks never slept in King Morbihom’s camp, for he would call for food, anything from a light snack to a twenty-course banquet, at any hour of day or night. Torches lit the scene. There was no secret now where Murlock had acquired the high-class ingredients for the meal he had cooked us. The Kapt’s cook was a cousin. I guessed the catering families were intertwined through the whole structure of Menaham society.

“Maybe they aren’t ordinary prisoners. They’re not here!”

“We will see.”

Now the problem of secreting a weapon in a pile of firewood is that, sooner or later, you have to dump the wood near the fire.

I began to regret my stubbornness in lugging the Krozair brand along with me. This was work for daggers and knives, perhaps a rapier or thraxter. Still, stubborn I, Dray Prescot, am... My friends call it obstinacy and others dub it pig-headedness. I was stuck with a decision and must, therefore, in the best traditions of Kregen, make the most of it.

When I captured the first passing soldier, treating him summarily and dragging him somewhat forcibly into the rose and golden shadows of a tent, Murlock’s alarm increased.

“All right, Murlock. I won’t treat any of your array of cousins like this. Satisfied?”

He licked his lips. “Only that Garhand the Pickler, who deserves to be pickled. You won’t pass as a guard.”

“Rather tart, is he? Don’t intend to — not yet.”

The guard rolled his head around and mumbled: “Luli! Don’t go away, Luli! Luli, c’mere—”

I took his chin between my fist and hefted him up and glared at him. I made him see the devil look. He flinched.

“Where are the Lamnian prisoners, dom?”

“Can’t say—”

“It’s your life.”

Very little persuasion was needed for him to blurt out the location of the tent in which the three Lamnians were being held. No decision, as far as he was aware, had been reached on their fate.

“The king will prize more contracts from them in return for their lives,” said Murlock with the air of one who understands the business of affairs of corrupt courts. “Now can I go?”

“Just don’t get caught, you Spry, you hear?”

“Once I depart from your company, I have every right to be here visiting my cousin.”

“Well, if you take him Risslaca Ichor, he’s a bigger fool than his cousin.”

“Remberee, horter. I hope I see you again.”

“I shall want a slap up first breakfast!”

“Ha!” And off he went to see his cousin.

No matter how many times you creep into a tent to rescue somebody, no two times are alike.

Each and every time can see your fool head off and bouncing. I hadn’t missed Murlock’s way of taking his leave. That: “Once I depart from your company” when he would normally have said a far more colloquial way of taking off.

And, as I am sure you will have realized, all this time I was wrestling with my conscience over my usage of the Lamnians in quite this way. My conscience is sometimes an elastic beast, and at others a constricting dungeon of the deepest depths and finest steel bars. Of course I’d do what I could to help the Lamnians escape. That is obvious, by Vox! As to squeezing their money out of the king — well, that was a splendid idea and one I subscribed to. Just how it was to be done remained a mystery, to me, at least.

The guard wore a broad green and blue sash over his armor, which was of a common kind, and the sash across my jack gave the same impression. Often where armor is not all that easily come by and no two sets of harness are alike, regiments and formations are denoted by sashes, favors, feathers. In his helmet tufted blue and green feathers. I put the helmet on and then strapped up the longsword over my back. I’d taken a drexer from the calsany pack in place of the thraxter I’d worn when first venturing into Gorlki.

So, with the sash and the feathers, I looked just another hired guard. I pushed the pakzhan down out of sight.