nursing she could get, and if he could get the two of them to Chazdark, then
His eyes brightened, and he nodded.
“Come along, then, if you’re minded to run with us. And I’ll not forget this, Tala.” She opened her eyes, and he smiled crookedly. “I’m thinking my thanks won’t matter much if they lay us by the heels, but if they don’t, I’m minded to send Farmah to my father. She’ll be safe there-and so will you.”
“Thank you, M’lord,” Tala whispered, and he wondered if he would ever have had the courage to trust anyone after so many years in Navahk. But then she shook herself with some of her old briskness and touched his arbalest with a faint smile. “You seemed none too happy to leave this behind, M’lord. Suppose I bundle it up in a bag of dirty linen and have one of the serving men carry it around to meet you outside the palace?”
“Can you trust them?” Bahzell asked, trying to hide his own eagerness, and her smile grew.
“Old Grumuk wanders in his mind, M’lord. He knows where the servants’ way comes out-he taught it to me himself, before his wits went-but he’ll ask no questions, and no one ever pays any heed to him. I think it’s safe enough. I’ll pass the word to him as we leave; by the time you can make your way out, he’ll be waiting for you.”
The creeping trip through the palace’s decaying core took forever. The slaves who used the passages to sneak in and out for what little enjoyment they might find elsewhere had marked them well, once a man knew what to look for, but Bahzell had never tried them armored and armed and they’d never been built for someone his size in the first place. There were a few tight spots, especially with the sword and rucksack on his back, and two moments of near disaster as teetering stone groaned and shifted, but it was the time that truly frightened him. Likely enough Harnak would never wake again, given that dent in his skull, but if he did, or if he was found, or if Tala and Farmah had been stopped after all-
Bahzell lowered his ears in frustration and made himself concentrate on his footing and how much he hated slinking about underground at the best of times. That was a more profitable line of thought; it gave him something to curse at besides his own stupidity for mixing in something like this. Fiendark only knew what his father would have to say! The world was a hard place where people got hurt, and the best a man could do was hope to look after his own. But even as he swore at himself, he knew he couldn’t have just walked away. The only thing that truly bothered him-aside from the probability that it would get him killed-was whether he’d done it to save Farmah or simply because of how much he hated Harnak. Either was reason enough, it was just that a man liked to feel certain about things like that.
He reached the last crumbling passage and brightened as he saw daylight ahead, but he also reached up to loosen his sword in its sheath before he crept the last few yards forward. If Tala had been stopped, there might already be a company and more of the Guard waiting up ahead.
There wasn’t. Steel clicked as he slid the blade back home, and the aged slave squatting against a moss- grown wall looked up with a toothless grin.
“And there ye be, after all!” Old Grumuk cackled. “Indeed, an’ Tala said ye would! How be ye, M’lord?”
“Fine, Grumuk. A mite muddy about the edges, but well enough else.” Bahzell made his deep, rumbling voice as gentle as he could. The old man was the butt of endless blows and nasty jokes, and his senile cheerfulness could vanish into whimpering, huddled defensiveness with no warning at all.
“Aye, them tunnels uz always mucky, wasn’t they, now? I mind once I was tellin’ Gernuk-or were it Franuzh?” Grumuk’s brow wrinkled with the effort of memory. “No matter. ’Twere one or t’other of ’em, an’ I was telling him-”
He broke off, muttering to himself, and Bahzell stifled a groan. The old man could run on like this for hours, filling even the most patient (which, Bahzell admitted, did not include himself) with a maddening need to shake or beat some sense into him. But there was no longer any sense to be beaten, so he crouched and touched Grumuk’s shoulder, instead. The muttering mouth snapped instantly shut, and the cloudy old eyes peered up at him.
“D’ye have summat fer me, M’lord?” he wheedled, and Bahzell shook his head regretfully.
“Not this time, granther,” he apologized, “but I’m thinking it may be you have something for me?”
The old man’s face fell, for Bahzell knew how he hungered for the sweetmeats a child might crave and often carried them for him, but he only shook his head. His life was filled with disappointments, and he dragged out a huge, roughly woven sack. Bahzell’s eyes lit as he unwrapped the dirty clothing Tala had wadded around the arbalest and ran his fingers almost lovingly over the wooden stock and steel bow stave, and Grumuk cackled again.
“Did good fer ye, did I, M’lord?”
“Aye, old friend, that you have.” Bahzell touched his shoulder again, then straightened and slung the arbalest over his right shoulder. The old man grinned up at him, and Bahzell smiled back.
“You’d best bide here a mite,” he said. He turned to squint at the westering sun, then pointed at the broken stump of a drunken tower whose foundations, never too firm to begin with, were sinking slowly into the muck and sewage of the swampy river. “Sit yourself where you are, Grumuk, until the sun touches that tower yonder. Do you mind that? Will you do that for me?”
“Oh, aye, M’lord. That’s not so hard. Just sit here with m’ thoughts till th’ tower eats th’ sun. I c’n do that, M’lord,” Grumuk assured him.
“Good, Grumuk. Good.” Bahzell patted the old man’s shoulder once more, then turned and jogged away into the shadows of the abandoned keep’s walls.
The raucous stench of Navahk’s streets was reassuringly normal as Bahzell strode down them. Screaming packs of naked children dashed in and out about their elders’ feet, absorbed in gods knew what games or wrestling for choice bits of refuse amid the garbage, and he drew up a time or two to let them pass. He kept a close hand on his belt pouch when he did, other hand ready to clout an ear hard enough to ring for a week, but he no more blamed them for their thieving ways than he blamed the half-starved street beggars or whores who importuned him. Whores, especially, were rare in Hurgrum-or most other hradani lands-but too many women had lost their men in Navahk.
He made himself move casually, painfully aware of the armor he wore and the rucksack and arbalest on his back. Afternoon was dying into evening, thickening the crowd as the farmers who worked the plots beyond the wall streamed back to their hovels, but most he passed cringed out of his way. They were accustomed to yielding to their betters-all the more so when that better towered a foot and more above the tallest of them with five feet of blade on his back-and Bahzell was glad of it, yet his spine was taut as he waited for the first shout of challenge. Whether it came to fight or flight, he had a better chance here than he would have had in the palace . . . but not by much.
Yet no one shouted, and he was almost to the east gate when he spied two women moving slowly against the tide ahead of him. Farmah leaned heavily on the shorter, stouter housekeeper, and a tiny pocket of open space moved about them. A few people looked at them and then glanced uncomfortably away, and one or two almost reached out to help, but the combination of Farmah’s battered face and the palace livery both of them wore warned off even the hardiest.
Bahzell swallowed yet another curse on Churnazh and all his get as he watched men shrink away from the women and compared it to what would have happened in Hurgrum. But this wasn’t Hurgrum. It was Navahk, and he dared not overtake them to offer his own aid, either.
It was hard, slowing his pace to the best one Farmah could manage while every nerve screamed that the pursuit
