When She of the Veils sank into the back hills of Migla and the sky was filled with the shifting light of the Twins, Planath brought me the news I quailed to hear, had known I must hear, and which distressed me greatly.
“They were taken, Horter Prescot. Taken by a patrol and now they languish in the dungeons of Mungul Sidrath.”
I sat there, on the settle, the blackjack in my hand, and I could have broken into curses that would have frizzled this comical worried ugly little halfling’s ears off.
Mungul Sidrath, I was told, was well-nigh impossible to break into. The citadel stood on a solid bed of rock jutting into the River Magan and it dominated the city. In the old days the royal family had lived there with their hired mercenary guards, and they had smiled on the city of Yaman and on the daily worship to Migshaanu, and the suns had shone. Now the city commandant lived there, controlling the city by terror. He had many regiments under his hand as well as mercenary troops, very wild and vicious, quite unlike the old king’s mercenaries, who had served him all their lives and grown fat and happy with their job, which consisted, in the main, of providing honor guards and rows of guardsmen with resplendent uniforms and golden-headed stuxes. Well, I had to break into Mungul Sidrath. There was no need for me to do this foolhardy thing.
The Star Lords had commanded me to bring out Mog, and I had done so, and she was safe. After that, I was free to return home. There would be no blue radiance and no scorpion this time. I felt sure of that, now; now when it was too late. Of course I could fetch the airboat from the sacred grove of Sidraarga and fly north-northwest and so come to Valka.
I could.
There was nothing to stop me.
Turko and Rapechak and the girls were hanging in chains in the dungeons of the Canops in Mungul Sidrath, but they were no concern of mine. My concerns were all with Delia and little Drak and little Lela, and Vallia and Valka, with Strombor and my clansmen. What was this local petty matter to me?
It was no good cursing. All the Voxes and Zairs and Makki-Grodno oaths would not change one iota of this mess.
I stood up.
“I have to go to Mungul Sidrath, Horter Planath. Would you give me food and drink?” I took out the golden deldys.
Planath bristled. He thrust the money away.
“Ploy!” he shouted. “Hurry, woman, and prepare food. Horter Prescot is hungry!”
After I had eaten and drunk I wiped my lips and laid down the cloth and looked at these Miglas. Old Mog had silently walked in. Now she said, “You are a fool, Dray Prescot.” Her voice had lost all its stridency. “A get-onker. But you are a man, and, I now know, beloved of Migshaanu. She will go with you on this desperate venture.”
“That is good-” I was about to say just her name, Mog. But I paused, and then said: “I shall be glad of the help of Migshaanu the Glorious, Mighty Mog.”
Her hard agate eyes appraised me and her nutcracker jaws clamped, then she relaxed. I think, even then, she realized I had given over mocking her — for a space, at least. Wearing the wherryman’s old blue jersey with its rips and stains and with the flat leather cap pulled down over my forehead I went up against the citadel of Yaman. I went without weapons in my hands. I kept to the shadows and as I went I bent over and shambled. And so I came to the outer stone wall of the fortress where it reared, pink in the moonlight, rising against the stars of Kregen. The place was old, for there is much that is ancient in Havilfar, and although well-built in olden time was much crumbled and fallen away in parts. An arm of the Magan encircled the fortress like a moat and the bridges were guarded by smart and well-drilled infantrymen of the Army of Canopdrin. As I skulked in the shadows from the towers, where the Twins threw down their roseate-pink light, I saw something I had never seen before on all of Kregen.
I stared, for a moment letting the urgency of my mission slide, staring at the soldiers who guarded this massive pile. These foot soldiers wore armor, like the men of the Third Regiment of Foot I had earlier seen. They wore bronze helmets with tall plumes, weird under the streaming moonslight, and their greaves gleamed in that light. They carried the stux, and at their waists were belted thraxters. They did not carry crossbows. I stared at what made them, as far as I was concerned, unique in all of Kregen — if you did not count my old slave phalanx from the warrens of Magdag, and they must now be scattered and slain or slaving once more on the monolithic buildings of the overlords. Not even the Ochs counted here. For these soldiers carried shields.
The shields were oval, like the windows in
I went around the angle of a bastion — for the towers were square-angled and not rounded — and prowled on, brought back to my senses by the hurtling passage of a lesser moon across the heavens. I found the man I sought leaning on his stux and opening a packet made from soft leaves to get at the wad of cham inside. I hit him cleanly on the back of the neck, below the neck-guard, and he pitched to the stones.
Dragging him back into the shadows of a wall and stripping him took little time. I had been careful, the man I wanted not being the first sentry I had seen, and his equipment fitted — but only just. Dressed and accoutered as a soldier of the Army of Canopdrin I stepped out, leaving the man bound and gagged, and marched boldly for the bridge.
While it is true to say that the necessary demands of discipline and organization make one army very much like another, and the better an army is the nearer it approaches to an unattainable ideal, there must of necessity be many differences between army and army, details that are unique to any fighting force. I felt confident I could bluff to a great extent; after that, I would just have to take my chances, for there was precious little chance of finding another way into the fortress as quickly as this. Common sense had dictated that I find a bridge as far from the one the sentry’s comrades would be guarding as I could. On my shield, below the embossed image of the leaping leem, there had been painted in white the stylized representation of a fluttrell, with the figures for six and five. By their relative sizes I judged this would be the sixth regiment and the fifth subdivision of that regiment, called what I did not know as yet, for Planath had no knowledge of military organization. The men guarding the bridge I chose, besides having a different color arrangement of the streamers over their shoulder armor, carried on their shields the silver leem and, below it, a blue-painted zorca with the figures for eight and two. I marched in boldly and, as I had seen the men do on the bridge, brought the stux up and across in a salute. Without breaking step I strode on. An ob-Deldar looked across and called: “It’s your guts, is it, soldier?”
An ob-Deldar is the lowest one can get — as any ranker will say — and so I answered hoarsely: “Too true, Deldar. They pain something awful.”
The ob-Deldar laughed with great malice and so I passed on into the dark shadows of Mungul Sidrath. Observation that had helped me thus far could no longer give me a guide on the behavior patterns of the men of this army.
Down in the dungeons, Planath the Wine had said, shaking his head. Therefore, I must go down, and to descend I had to find a stairway of some kind. I had ideas on the proper situation of stairways in fortresses, and I found that whoever in the ancient times had designed Mungul Sidrath had come a long way along the path of fortress construction. The stairway was exceedingly narrow, and spiraled the wrong way — that is, it had been designed so that a man going down, as I was, had the advantage of the curve. This could only mean the designer had recognized the possibility of entrance below and had decided on the main-gate level as his central stand-area. He had ruled out any idea of defenders running below against a successful entrance by attackers through the gate. Going up into the towers the curve would be against a man.
The stones were surprisingly dry, considering the Magan flowed nearby, and only occasional runnels of water trickled across the stones. Where they did so they stained darkly and lichens grew. The air grew unpleasant but breathable.
At the bottom the stair curled in on itself, so that a man might stand and loose against men running up the passageway. The ceiling here was low and I took off the tall helmet. Farther along the way widened and two guards, their stuxes leaning against the wall, were crouched over tossing dice. They looked up suddenly as I approached, saw I was a mere ranker, and pulled back to get out of the way. Farther along there might be a single
