devolved the responsibility for rescuing Sean Sarazin upon the Rovac warrior Thodric Jarl, Master of Combat for the Watch.
This move was legally permissible. Indeed, the fact that any army officer could command any officer of the Watch was a sore point indeed with the Watch. Nevertheless, for the Watch to be dragged into the chase was, to say the least, unusual. Jarl did not see how Sarazin could have arranged it. Unless…
As it happened, Thodric Jarl had entertained certain suspicions about Epelthin Elkin for some considerable time. So, making sure he was wearing a certain amulet which he believed would protect him against all magic, he dared a confrontation with the old scholar he thought might possibly be a wizard.
'I am to be sent hunting after Sarazin,' said Jarl, with his hand on the hilt of his sword. 'How came that to pass?'
Why,' said Elkin, 'set a thief to catch a thief, or so they say. Friend Thodric, you look a very terrorist yourself, standing there so stalwart with death in your hand and blood in your eye.' 'There are no terrorists,' said Jarl, 'as you know well.' Tell me what I know,' said Elkin.
'That Sarazin has stage-managed his own kidnapping,' said Jarl. That he wishes to ride to Shin, and for me to ride with him. That he plans to rendezvous with me some eight days from now. Do you deny that you know it?'
'Why,' said Elkin, 'how can I deny knowing what you have just told me?'
There's more,' said Jarl. 'I suspect that Sarazin made the army put me in charge of rescuing him. How did he manage that?'
'I know not,' said Elkin, 'but suspect bribery. Anyone can be bought, or so they say.'
'Do they now?' said Jarl. 'But I hear this: that Sarazin has not money enough to buy himself a whore, far less to bribe the army's high command. Here, methinks, is a mystery.'
'You think I have the answer?' said Elkin. 'I think,' said Jarl, 'you know more than the world believes.'
'Of course I do,' said Elkin impatiently. 'I know myself, for example, to be one of Lord Regan's spies, just as you are. Do you think Lord Regan has but the two of us in this city? Likely there's a third agent, if not a fourth, a fifth and a fiftieth. Perhaps the fourth or the fiftieth is a source of funds for Sean Sarazin.'
This was such a logical, reasonable explanation that Jarl chastised himself for not thinking of it, and realised he must be more than a little bit paranoid to think such a harm- less old scholar a possible wizard, and hence one of the traditional enemies of Rovac.. .
That very same day, Thodric Jarl left Selzirk with a posse of 30 men of the Watch. Their mission was, very simply, to ride to Chenameg, to seek out the terrorists who had kidnapped Sean Sarazin, to kill the terrorists and liberate Farfalla's son.
As any attempt to liberate slaves was always taken very seriously in Selzirk, no expense had been spared in equip- ping Jarl's expedition. Every man was well-armed and had a horse for himself and a spare mount besides. In addition, the posse had 20 baggage animals carrying food enough for 60 days, plus a thousand sanarands to be used for bribing informants once they got to Chenameg.
Jarl kept his plans to himself as his posse travelled eastward along the northern bank of the Velvet River. He planned to cross the most easterly dam to the southern side of the river, then head to the South Road for a rendezvous with Sarazin.
However, on the long journey to the east, Jarl's paranoia had plenty of time to go to work. He began to suspect that this was all part of a devious plot for the disposal of
Thodric Jarl, and that soldiers from Selzirk would be waiting at the rendezvous to arrest him.
In his madness, Jarl considered all kinds of people possibly guilty of such a plot. Maybe Plovey of the Regency, suspecting Jarl to be a spy from the Rice Empire, had enlisted Sarazin's help to prove Jarl's guilt. Or perhaps Farfalla was behind it all. Or someone who hoped to succeed Jarl as Master of Combat for the Watch.
Jarl knew the road to the north of the Velvet River was his logical route to Shin, which in turn was the logical place for him to start his operations in Chenameg. He had no good excuse to take the road lying south of the river.
– Leading my men to the South Road might in itself be proof sufficient to see me condemned for conspiracy. But if I keep to the North Road, nothing can be proved against me. No harm will come to Sarazin, since there will surely be soldiers at the rendezvous point already, waiting to arrest me.
– On the other hand, what if there is no conspiracy? Sarazin will wait at the rendezvous point. And wait. And wait. And then? Why, that's over to him. After all, a ride of but a few days will take him from the border to Shin. - Surely Sarazin can manage that on his own.
Shortly after so thinking, Jarl revealed his strategy to his men:
'We ride first to Shin, King Lyra's capital, the greatest city in Chenameg. There we stay for thirty days, gathering intelligence. By then, I trust, we will know where to strike to destroy the terrorists and liberate Sean Sarazin…'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The South Road: a road to the south of the Velvet River. Every map of Chenameg extant in Selzirk confidently shows it running east from Chenameg's western border through the forests to Shin. But, as Sarazin is beginning to realise, it is long indeed since such maps were updated…
The dark and gloomy forest stretching away to the east was most certainly that which marked Chenameg's western border. And Sarazin knew he was at the start of the South Road, for he had found the vital landmarks which all the maps agreed on: a burial mound one league west of the forest and two gigantic time-disfigured heads of black stone squatting at the forest's edge.
The maps claimed the South Road started between the two heads. Well, the mound was there, the heads were there… but the road was but a senile track strangled by waspthorn and brambles.
None lived thereabouts for it was cursed, and any settlers would find their every child stillborn. It was an uncanny place to camp alone. Often Sarazin lay awake in the darkness while uncouth things crashed through the forest. Bears? Monsters? Ghouls? Who knows?
Worse things stalked his dreams, and more than once he woke from nightmares with a scream, his hand snatching for the hilt of the doughty blade Onslaught. At the end of his twelfth day of futile waiting he had his most terrible nightmare yet, in which he saw Thodric Jarl die a death too terrible to relate. He woke shaking, terror- stricken.
Was the dream an omen? Or what? It certainly helped him come to a decision. Jarl might have died, or met with an accident, or might have refused to leave Selzirk to search for Sarazin. Anything could have happened. Meanwhile, Sarazin's rations were getting lower. And his noble steed was not proving much of a conversationalist. 'We ride,' said Sarazin. 'We ride for Shin. Today.'
Thus decided, he mounted his horse (well, technically a pony – but, as a poet, he was surely entitled to a little poetic licence) and, with his vorpal blade at his side, set forth. The gloomy overcast weather worsened the dooming darkness of the moss-choked forest through which roughed his road, often forking and rejoining as it outflanked fallen trees, bog holes and mud spills. Towards noon, Sarazin passed a gross grey skull, so huge that half a dozen trees sprouted from holes in its dome. It gave him such a shock that he thereafter suspected the forest of evil intent, and scanned each thicket for ambush by werewolf or worse.
Fairly late in the afternoon, he finally realised he had been so intent on the trees that he had lost sight of the woods. Failing to keep track of his progress through the forest, he had become disorientated. Geographically embarrassed, in fact.
– But surely I could find my way back if I wanted to. Couldn't I? Or else follow my own tracks back…
To reassure himself, Sarazin tried retracing his steps. But the path forked and branched wildly, and nothing he saw looked familiar. He searched the mud for his own tracks – and found those of people, horses, wild catde, pig, deer. Some fresh, others not. He was baffled by the confusion of signs.
'East, then,' said he, trying to persuade himself he felt bold and brave. 'East, to King Lyra's palace. To Shin.'
Shin was to the east, was it not? All the maps said so. If only he had some sun, so he could check his direction. The sky was swamped with clouds as dirty as dag-end wool. Mud and wet weather. Soon, doubtless, it
