the walls, directed underneath the city proper.”
“Clever Solamnics,” muttered Vanderjack.
“So either we try the front gates,” said Theo, “or we go over the wall.”
“We’ll be a little conspicuous, won’t we? Mercenary and gnome.”
Theodenes stroked his beard. “Then we do both.”
Vanderjack looked at him. “We split up?”
Theodenes nodded. “I scale the walls. It will be a simple matter for me, especially with my mountaineering skills and well-honed physical prowess. You go around to one of the gates and find a way in. I suggest the west gate because it leads straight into the merchants’ quarter.”
“Sure. Nobody will notice a tall black bloody-nosed guy in an arming doublet tripping over himself.” He paused. “And we’re meeting where? And you know all of this local geography how?”
Theodenes sniffed. “Because I make it my business to know about my areas of operation. Now let’s see. We want to attend the chariot race because that’s where Cazuvel is most likely to reveal himself. Correct?”
“That’s right. Hopefully, he’ll reveal himself, Gredchen, the painting, my sword, and anything else worth revealing.”
“Then we should meet at the Alochtlixan Fields.” Vanderjack gingerly pressed around his nose with a cloth to make sure he hadn’t just started bleeding again.
“The where?”
“All of the equine specialists, representatives from the stabling yards, practice tracks, chariot builders, and those trained in animal husbandry frequent the Alochtlixan Fields, which are in the southeastern quarter of Wulfgar. Famous place.”
“Carrying a copy of
“I most certainly am not.
“How long is it until the games in the arena?”
“They begin midafternoon. We shall have more than enough time, assuming you are not caught or captured.”
Vanderjack grinned. “Now how often does that happen?”
Theodenes gave him an icy stare, and the sellsword laughed and sauntered off, not feeling as confident as he acted. The ground seemed to lurch beneath him; he was still feeling wobbly and weak. He was on an important rescue mission, he reminded himself. Lives and riches hung in the balance. Somehow he would have to get the job done.
Theodenes dropped to the ground on the other side of the city walls and looked around for a long stick.
Losing his multifunction polearm had been a blow, but he should be able to construct a new one. All he required was a little time and some materials, most of which he’d be able to scrounge together in any large and well-stocked city. He suspected Wulfgar was just a little too backwater for that, and there was not time for tinkering there anyway. It was a shame, he thought, so he would have to improvise.
In place of the polearm, Theo settled on a pitchfork. He pulled it free from a bale of hay, one of hundreds of hay bales stacked against the inside of the walls of the city. Theodenes also thought to snatch up a wide-brimmed hat from atop a sleeping local. With that and a poncho he tugged down from a nearby drying rack, he had the makings of a disguise. Of course, he was half the height of any other Nordmmaaran peasant, but he supposed if he hid his face and walked about as if he belonged, nobody would be the wiser.
The part of the city he was in was something of a residential district. It wasn’t the famed Solamnic Quarter, at that time almost completely turned over to the dragonarmies, and it wasn’t the Warriors’ Quarter, where the legendary Plumed Jaguars of Wulfgar would be carousing if the highmaster hadn’t driven them all from the city. The dilapidated single-story dwellings around him were more common in the city, which had been almost burned to the ground at the opening of the war.
He rounded a corner and saw, at the end of a wide street crusted with muddy clay, horse droppings, and straw, the wooden fences that divided the Alochtlixan Fields off from the city. Good. He was close to his destination, but glancing up at the sun, he saw that he had at least an hour in which to investigate the city further, so he made a mental note of his surroundings and headed due west.
The palace of the khan rose majestically above the streets; between it and Theo was the high-walled Horseman’s Arena itself. Theodenes crossed over the paved avenue leading directly from the south gate to the foot of the arena’s entrance ramp. Dragonarmy soldiers lined the street, most of them looking as though they needed only slight provocation to take a swing with their weapons. Here and there, Theo saw pairs of kapak and baaz draconians. As he recalled, they were expensive for the highmaster to keep stationed there. Where once she would have boasted whole brigades of kapaks, baaz, and even bozaks, nowadays she was scraping the bottom of the coffers.
His thoughts were interrupted by the commands of a heavily armored dragonarmy officer who shouted out to the pint-sized peasant from the opposite side of the street. The officer was accompanied by two thugs, Theo noted.
“Well, well, what have we here,” said the officer. His accent was strongly Nordmaaran, not uncommon in those days among the dragonarmies. “Is this one of those dread kender, boys?”
“I am but a simple gnome farmer,” said Theo, trying for honesty, hoping his voice sounded even and humble.
“A gnome?” said the officer, incredulous. “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you? A gnome away from home. Ha, ha, ha.”
The thugs joined the officer in laughing at his jest but showed no sign of actual merriment on their blunt and heavy features. Theo’s neck became hot and prickled.
“Surely your honors have heard of the gnomes of …” Theo’s mind raced. “… the Great Moors?”
The Great Moors was an enormous, swampy region in the southeastern corner of Nordmaar, a trackless waste of humid marsh and bog that nobody in his right mind would ever enter lest he be eaten by predatory lizards or devoured by swarms of giant, blood-sucking stirges. Theo hoped the gazetteer he’d read as a young gnome about the Great Moors was right and that it was still largely a mystery to even the most widely traveled of Nordmaarans.
“A gnome from the Great Moors?” the officer said, scratching at a loathsome boil behind his ear. “Are your hands and feet webbed, like they say the tribesmen from there are?”
Theodenes swallowed. Best not to make any boldfaced claims. “By the Abyss, no,” he laughed. “We Moorish gnomes are but simple folk, like thee and thou, sure enough.”
The soldiers squinted.
Theo added, “In service to the Queen of Darkness, of course.”
“Dark gnomes, then!” The officer beamed.
“Yes, of course,” said Theo, who was beginning to wonder where the conversation was going and how he was going to derail it. “Dark, savage gnomes. But without webbed hands or feet.”
“Just evil.” The officer nodded.
“Very,” said the gnome.
“All right, then. That’s good enough for me. What do you say, boys? Shall we let the evil gnome go about his business?”
The two thugs shrugged and grunted something incomprehensible to their officer, and the officer nodded. “All right. On your way, little gnome! And watch where you’re swinging that pitchfork.”
Theo breathed a huge sigh of relief. He touched his hand to the brim of his hat and turned to walk away. He’d gone no more than three steps when a new voice, deep and sibilant with a Nerakan accent, said, “What in the name of the Dragonqueen is a dark gnome?”
He froze. Thinking it a bad idea to scurry away suspiciously, he leaned his pitchfork against an adobe wall and crouched down idly, as if to lace up his boots.
“From the Great Moors,” said the officer’s voice.
A snort greeted his intelligence.
Heavy footsteps pounded on the paving stones, coming toward Theo. It was a one-armed sivak draconian,
