All Darkness Met

TWENTY-SEVEN: Mocker Returns

The brown man watched from the shadows. He shivered, sure Varthlokkur would notice him. But only one man glanced his way, a squat, hard looker he didn't recognize. The youth didn't react to his stare.

His breath hissed away. Relieved, he waited till they rounded a corner, then followed.

What were they up to? Bragi and Varthlokkur had no business being in Necremnos. And who was the Necremnen? Everyone seemed to know and fear him.

The brown man interrupted a street cleaner.

"Self, beg thousands pardon, sir. Am foolish foreigner, being ignorant of all things Necremnen. Am bestruckt by puzzlement. Am seeing man pass, moment gone, ordinary, with foreign companions, and people hide eyes from same. Am wondering who is same?"

"Huh?"

Necremnen was one of the languages of Mocker's childhood. He could reduce any tongue to unintelligibility.

He tried again.

"Him? That's the high and mighty Aristithorn, that is. Him what makes himself out to be a little toy god, out in his little toy castle.... Here now. Where're you going already?"

Mocker had heard enough. He had never met Aristithorn, but he knew the name. Bragi had mentioned it often enough.

So the big bastard was recruiting old accomplices into his schemes, eh?

He slid hurriedly through the crowds. But he had wasted too much time with the street cleaner. He had lost them.

He traced them to the waterfront. Again he was too late. Hedid learn that they had visited shipping firms and the master of the fishers' guild.

Boats. A lot of them. That had to be it.

Why would Bragi be in Necremnos trying to build a navy? It didn't make sense-unless he was on some adventure with Ravelin's army.

It seemed possible, with Argon a probable target, but reason failed him at that point. He could conceive of no cause for Ravelin to attack Argon. Nor could he figure how Bragi hoped to get away with it. Bragi had pulled off military miracles before, but this was unrealistic.

Mocker knew Argon. Ragnarson didn't. The brown man knew that the city boasted a population greater than that of Ravelin. The biggest force Ravelin could muster would simply vanish into the crowds....

But Bragi had Varthlokkur with him. That could make all the difference. It had for Ilkazar.

He might be guessing wrong. Bragi might need boats to ferry across the Roe.

He kept on the trail. This needed investigation.

It was time he started moving. He had been here for a month and a half accomplishing nothing. He had gambled away almost the entire fortune Lord Chin had provided him before transferring him here. He knew what he was supposed to do, but old habits, old thought patterns, died hard.

Chin would throw a fit next time they met. He should have been in Ravelin by now.

Hunger taunted him. He touched his purse. Empty again. It was a long walk to his room, where his final emergency reserve lay hidden. He considered stealing, didn't try. He wasn't as quick as he used to be. Age was creeping up. Soon he'd be able to commit robbery only by the blade. He hadn't lost his skill with a sword.

Cursing all the way, he trudged across town, retrieved his poke, bought a meal twice too big, downed it to the last drop of gravy. Overindulgenee was his weakness, be it in food, gambling, or drink.

He finally overtook Aristithorn three days later. Bragi and Varthlokkur were long gone. Their visit had caused little public comment.

But something was happening.

The half-ruined stone pile palace of Necremnos's Ring hadcome alive. The captains of Necremnos's corrupt, incompetent army swarmed there, coming and going with ashen faces. They were hobby soldiers, allergic to the serious practice of their craft. They hadn't signed on to die for their country, only to bleed its treasury. In the taverns soldiers patronized, there was both grumbling and anticipation.

Mocker was there, listening.

The subject was war with Argon. No one seemed to care why. Pessimists argued that penetrating Argon's defenses was impossible. Optimists verbally spent the booty they would bring home.

Regiments mustered at the Martial Fields south of the city, slothfully, in the tradition of all Necremnen state activity.

Mocker was there, too. He wasted no time insinuating himself into the camp following. He recruited a half-dozen young, enthusiastic, attractive girls capable of drawing the big-spending officers. He put them to work. And listened.

He quickly determined that the high command was stalling. The generals would never admit it, but they knew they were incompetent. They knew they couldn't manage forces like these against Argon. That city's army was poorly trained and equipped, and its officers as corrupt as they, but it did take war seriously.

Finally, sluggishly, like a bewildered amoeba, the Necrem-nen host stumbled southward, following the east bank of the Roe. A hundred thousand regulars, levies, allies, and plunder-hungry auxiliaries had responded to the raising of Pthothor's war baton. The movement went forward in dust and confusion. Despite Aristithorn and the King, the mass never did quite sort itself out.

Its first skirmish nearly resulted in disaster, though the enemy numbered no more than ten thousand. The regulars and levies almost panicked. But hard-riding auxiliaries from the plains tribes finally harried the Argonese border force into retreating, then swept ahead, burning and pillaging.

After the near-disaster the army began suffering seizures of near-competence. Pthothor hanged fifty officers, dismissed a hundred more, and demoted scores. When someone grumbled about losing traditional prerogatives, Pthothor referred him to Aristithorn.

No one challenged the cranky old wizard.

The army eventually blundered into the Valley of the Tombs,where countless generations of Argonese nobility lay with their death-treasures. The Argonese came out to forestall looting and vandalism.

An unimaginative battle raged among the tombs and obelisks from dawn till dusk. Thousands perished. The thing came to no conclusion till the steppe riders broke free, circled the valley, and began plundering Argon's suburbs. They captured the pontoons to a dozen outlying islands. During the night the Argonese command brought up thousands of hastily mobilized citizens, and might have turned the tide had the news not come that the Queen's bastion had fallen.

Mocker whooped when he heard that Bragi's banners flew everywhere over the Fadem.

The Necremnens took courage. The Argonese began melting away, running to salvage what they could from their homes.

Pthothor pushed on, occupying islands which had failed to destroy their pontoons and bridges.

Mocker couldn't believe the confusion on both sides. This had to be why Bragi believed he could best Argon. Kavelin's troops were superb compared to these, and the quality of their leaders was incomparable.

Haaken and Reskird would be here, he knew, with the Vorgreberger Guards and the Midlands Light. Ahring and Altenkirk, too, probably with the Queen's Own and the Damhorsters. And, knowing Bragi's fondness for archers, TennHorst and the King's Memory Bows.... Maybe even the Breidenbachers and the Sedlmayr Light, and who knew what from the Guild....

The more Mocker thought, the bigger the army he conjured from imagination, till he pictured the Fadem crawling with the entire adult male population of Kavelin....

His depression began receding. He showed flashes of the Mocker of old, amazing his girls with his lighthearted nonsense. For a time he forgot the pressure....

The officers he entertained knew little about Bragi. Aristithorn and Pthothor were tight-lipped, trusting none of their staff. Mocker wished he could get the wizard into his tent.

His girls went along most of the time, but that they wouldn't tolerate. Aristithorn had a reputation. He took home girls who caught his fancy. They were never seen again.

So Mocker just tagged along, the officer's best friend, and awaited the opportune event.

His moment came soon after The Valley of the Tombs.

A Necremnen barge came meandering up a delta channel. Aboard were Bragi, his son, Varthlokkur, Haaken, Reskird, Trebilcock and his squat friend, and-Nepanthe!

They were hunting Aristithorn and Pthothor, allegedly to arrange coordinated action against Argon, most of which remained unconquered.

Mocker spotted Nepanthe long before she saw him. And couldn't believe what he saw. She was laughing with Haaken and Reskird about the clown army of their allies. The immaculate, perfectly disciplined troopers of the Queen's Own made the ragtag Necremnen loafers at Pthothor's headquarters look pathetic. Like poorly organized bandits.

Mocker eased as close as he could without revealing himself.

Nepanthe was supposed to be in the dungeons of Castle Krief.

He didn't see Ethrian, and that disturbed him more than his wife's presence. The boy seldom strayed from his mother's side. She wouldn't let him.

She was going to make Ethrian a mama's boy in spite of himself.

He was so intrigued by his wife's presence, and by trying to eavesdrop, that he ignored everything else-especially the others in Bragi's party.

Beyond being able to get into trouble anywhere, Aral Dantice had one noteworthy talent. He remembered. Now he remembered a dark face seen only momentarily in Necremnos when he noticed the same face peeping from an ornamental hedge. He whispered to Trebilcock.

It didn't occur to them that they shouldn't nab suspects on Necremnos's turf. They decided, they split, they drifted round till they could take the watcher from behind.

Mocker's first warning was a grip of iron closing on his shoulder.

He squealed, "Hai!" and jumped, kicked, sent Dantice sprawling-and found himself staring into the cold, emotionless eyes of Michael Trebilcock, along the blade of a saber.

He whipped out his own blade, began fencing. In silence, which was one of the most un-Mocker-like things he had ever done.

The clash of steel drew a crowd.

He had meant it to be a quick passage at arms, perhaps wounding the boy as he whipped by and fled across the yards and hedges....

But Trebilcock wouldn't let him.

Mocker's eyes steadily widened. Trebilcock met his every stroke and countered, often coming within a whisker of cutting him. Nor did the younger man give him any respite in which to calculate, or regain his wind.

Trebilcock was good.

Mocker's skill with a blade was legend among his acquaintances. Seldom had he met a man he couldn't best in minutes.

This time he had met one he might not best at all. He managed to touch Trebilcock once in ten minutes, with a trick never seen on courtly fields of honor. But Trebilcock wasn't daunted, nor did he allow the trick a second chance.

Trebilcock couldn't be intimidated. Mocker couldn't perturb him. And that scared Mocker....

"Enough!" Ragnarson shouted. "Michael, back off."

Trebilcock stepped back, lowered his guard. Perforce, Mocker did likewise.

He was caught.

Wham!

Nepanthe hit him at a dead run. "Darling. What're you doing? Where've you been?" And so on and so on. He couldn't get in a word.

"Come on," said Ragnarson. "Back to the barge. It's time we moved out. Nepanthe, keep a hold of him."

Mocker looked everywhere but at Bragi. He could feel Bragi searching his face.

He considered pretending amnesia, rejected it. He had given himself away by responding to Nepanthe. Some fast thinking was in order.

As he clambered aboard the barge, Ragnarson said, "Michael, you handle a blade damned good."

"Sir?"

"I've never seen anybody go to draw with Mocker."

"Wasn't a draw. He was tiring."

"That's why I stopped you. Where'd you learn?"

"My father's fencing master. But I'm not that good, really. At the Rebsamen...."

"You impressed me. You men. Get this sonofabitch cast off. We've got to disappear before they find out I told them a pack of lies."

Nepanthe slackened her fussing. Mocker took the opportu-nity to look around.

He didn't like what he saw.

Haaken leaned against the deckhouse, a piece of grass between his dark teeth, staring. Varthlokkur stared from the bows. Reskird, directing the bargemaster, stared. They didn't have friendly eyes.

The safest course would be to tell ninety percent of the truth.

He was confused. Nepanthe was babbling all the news since his capture. It piled up dizzyingly. She and Ethrian had been kidnapped by agents of Shinsan? Possibly by Chin, his supposed rescuer. Though he tried, he couldn't make the evidence of his own kidnapping indict Chin. If the Tervola had stacked it against Haroun, he had stacked it perfectly. The accusation against Bragi could be due to misinformation....

When it came to question time he told the exact truth. All he held back was his feeling that it hadn't ended, that he still had to make up his mind which way to jump.

For the moment he leaned toward his old companions, despite bin Yousif's apparent perfidy. He could be on Bragi's side without being on Haroun's.

"Get those lazy bastards rowing," Bragi yelled at Reskird. "Damn." He slapped at a mosquito. It was everybody's hobby. "Let's get some miles behind us before those clowns change their minds."

Mocker frowned puzz.ledly.

"Stealing a march, old buddy. One from Haroun's book. Kind of hate doing it to Aristithorn. He's not a bad guy. The others.... They deserve whatever they get."

"Self, am wondering what old friend blathers about. Is getting more governmentalized all time, till cannot speak with meaning."

"I made a deal with the junta that took over when we got rid of the Fadema. We finished what we came for. We got Nepanthe. Only reason we've been hanging around is we couldn't get out. So I told them, let us go home, we'll leave without bothering you anymore. If they didn't, I'd whip on them from behind the whole time they were trying to handle Necremnos. Argon's in a bad way. They'd didn't have muchchoice. My boys have been turning them every way but loose. They didn't have any stomach left for storming the Fadem, against my bows, with the Necremnens behind them. So they agreed. Ahring and TennHorst are moving out already.

"Of course, if they saw a chance to plunder us back, they'd jump on it. So hurry, damnit, Reskird."

"What about Necremnens?" Mocker asked.

Ragnarson grinned. "Their bad luck. They didn't show up because we needed help. They came to plunder. And they'd jump us too, if they thought they could get away with it. Old Pthothor hedged every time I tried to pin him down about designating plunder areas."

"Old friend is right. Trick is worthy of Haroun."

"Think they'll report to Pthothor?" Haaken asked after they debarked and joined the escort Ahring had left for them. The Necremnen rivermen were wasting no time heading upstream.

"Not unless he heads them off," Bragi replied. "Those boys are scared. They're homeward bound."

Later, as they hurried along a road raised above rice paddies, Visigodred's roc made a clumsy landing a few hundred yards ahead. Marco tumbled off, landed with a hearty splash and heartier cursing. He came boiling up the embankment, blood in his eye. He fell back. Sputtering, he tried again.

"Goddamned overgrown buzzard, you did that on purpose. We're gonna bring this pimple to a head. You're lower than snake puke, you know that, you big-ass vulture?"

He slipped again. Splash!

"Throw him a rope," Ragnarson suggested.

The bird quietly preened, ignoring everyone.

"I'm gonna carve out your gizzard and make me giblet stew," Marco promised. Soldiers helped him dry off. He bowed mockingly toward Ragnarson.

"Got a word for you, chief," he said. "And that's get your butt home. That creep Badalamen is kicking ass all over Hammad al Nakir. And El Murid told him to wale on Kavelin next." He snatched a lance from,-a trooper, rushed the bird, whacked it between the eyes. "Listen, bird, if I wasn't allergic to walking...."

Ragnarson waved his companions past and hurried onward. Marco was still cursing when they passed out of earshot.

The army gulped huge distances daily. Ragnarson walked himself, to demonstrate that anyone could manage. The columnbecame strung out. Plains riders came for a look, but withdrew when they saw the Thing and the Egg prowling the column's flanks.

Ragnarson halted near Throyes, sent a party to the city for supplies, and to inform the Throyens of Varthlokkur's presence. The Throyens might have been tempted otherwise. The loot of the Fadem was considerable.

Mocker went along.

He had been given plunder money and he knew Throyes of old. He knew its gaming houses well.

It was in one of those that the Throyen Nine contacted him.

The emissary was fatter than he. Sweat rolled off him in rivers, and he smelled. Flies loved him. Yet men made way for him when he approached the table where Mocker, having an apparent run of luck, was amazing the house with his bets.

The man watched during three passes of the dice. Then he whispered, "I would speak with you, fat man."

"Hai! Is case of kettles calling pot black. Begone, ponderous interrupter of...."

"You want these people to check your dice?"

Mocker rattled the bones slowly, wondering if he could resubstitute without the fat man noticing.

"Come. We have to talk."

Mocker collected his winnings, apologized to the onlookers. The house didn't object, which was surprising. He was into it deep.

He did manage to switch dice before departing.

He followed the fat man outside and into an alley....

He grabbed the fatter man, laid a dagger across his throat. "Self, being old skulker of alleys, take steps first, before trap springs," he murmured. "Speak. Or second, redder mouth opens under first."

The bigger man didn't seem perturbed. "I speak for the Hidden Kingdom."

Mocker had wondered if the contact would ever come. He hadn't done much to please Lord Chin.

"Speak." He didn't relax.

"The message comes from the Pracchia. A directive. Dispose of the man named Ragnarson."

"And in case of possibility former adherent, self, has changed mind?"

"They have your son. You choose which dies."

"Pestilential pig!" He drew the blade across the fat man's throat.

But when he turned to flee he found someone blocking his path. The man threw dust into his face.

He collapsed.

Endlessly repetitive, droning voices told him what he had to do....

"Here he is," Haaken called. Several Kaveliners joined him in the alley. "The fat guy must be the one he left with. Poul, look out for the Watch. This other one looks like Mocker nailed him before he went down."

A soldier knelt beside Mocker. "He's alive, Colonel. Looks like he got knocked in the head."

"Check his purse."

"Empty."

"Funny. It's not like him to get caught this easy. Here. Blood. Looks like he hurt a couple more, but they got away." He stirred a third body with his foot. Mocker's sword still pierced its heart. "What the hell was he doing down an alley with somebody he didn't know? With that much money on him? And why the hell didn't they kill him?"

"Colonel...." Poul shouted too late.

The Watch identified the man with Mocker's blade in him as a notorious cutpurse. The fat man was an important magistrate. They took detailed depositions. Their mucking around enraged the managers of the gaming house. The police wanted to hold Mocker. Blackfang fumed and stormed and threatened to have Varthlokkur roast their tongues in their mouths. They finally released Mocker on condition that his deposition would be presented as soon as he recovered.

When Mocker came round he found Bragi, Varthlokkur, Nepanthe, and Haaken waiting over him.

"What happened?" Bragi demanded.

"Give him a chance," Nepanthe pleaded. "Can't you see... ?"

"All right. Get some of that soup down him."

Mocker took a few spoonfuls, desultorily, while trying to remember. Voices. Telling him he had to.... To what? Kill. Kill these men. Especially Bragi. And Varthlokkur, if he could.

He felt for his missing dagger.

The compulsion to strike was almost too much for him.

Varthlokkur eyed him suspiciously. He had been doing so since the island encounter. This would take cunning. He had to get himself and Nepanthe out alive.

He had to do it. For Ethrian.

His friend of more than twenty years, and his fa-ther.... Already the necessities gnawed his vitals like dragon chicks eating their ways out.

Varthlokkur was the illegitimate son of the last King of llkazar. He had killed his father, indirectly. It was the curse of the Golmune line. The sons slew the fathers.... Mocker had slain Varthlokkur once already, long ago, over Nepan-the.... But that spooky little man with the winged horse had revived him.

Mocker told his lies, and his mind strayed to his own son. Ethrian. Would he, too, someday, be responsible for the death of his father?