The Serpentwar Saga

He thought it ironic that he was on guard in the midst of an army that would turn on Calis’s Crimson Eagles in an instant if they understood their real purpose, and from what he had no idea, as no enemy was closer than fifty miles. Still, he was told to go stand guard, and that he did.

Nakor stood at the edge of the crowd, watching the priest lift up the dead sheep. The Saaur warriors closest to the fire let out a yell of approval, a deep-throated hissing, that echoed through the night like a chorus of enraged dragons. Those humans behind the circle of lizard men watched in fascination, for these rites were unknown to any but the Saaur. Many humans made signs of protection to their own gods and goddesses.

A great celebration was under way and Nakor was wandering freely through the various companies of men. He had seen many things and was both gratified and horrified: gratified that he had uncovered several key elements of the mystery that would help Calis best decide what to do next, and horrified because in his long life he had never met a gathering of evil men so concentrated in both numbers and malignancy.

The heart of this army was the Saaur, and a large company of men who called themselves the Chosen Guard. They wore both the common emerald armband and green scarves tied around their heads. Their malignancy was clearly demonstrated by one of their number who stood a short distance from Nakor, wearing a necklace of human ears. Rumor in the camp had it these were the most violent, dangerous, and depraved men in an army of dark souls. To join their ranks, one must have endured several campaigns and distinguished oneself by deeds black and numerous. It was rumored that the final act of acceptance was ritual cannibalism.

Nakor didn’t doubt it. But having visited cannibals in the Skashakan Islands in prior years, he also knew these men indulged in practices that would have revolted most cannibals.

Nakor nodded and grinned at a man covered in tattoos who held a young boy tightly to him. The boy had an iron collar around his neck and his eyes had a drug-induced vacancy in them. The man snarled at Nakor, who merely grinned even more as he moved away.

Nakor was trying to move around the largest clump of celebrators so he could gain a vantage point from which to see the Emerald Queen’s pavilion. Strange energies floated on the night wind, and old, familiar echoes of distant magic sounded between the notes of song; and Nakor was coming to a conclusion about who and what he would find there.

But he wasn’t certain, and without certainty he couldn’t return to find Calis on the other side of the tributary to tell him what he must do next. The only thing of which he was certain was the need to return to Krondor, to warn Nicholas that whatever he had feared was occurring in this distant land, far worse forces were being unleashed. Subtle, behind the ancient magic of the Pantathians, a lingering scent of alien origin hung in the air.

Glancing skyward, Nakor smelled demon essences in the clouds, as if ready to fall like rain. He shook his head. ‘I’m getting tired,’ he muttered to himself as he picked his way among giant Saaur warriors.

One of Nakor’s better tricks, as he called his abilities, was the knack of moving in crowds without attracting undue notice, but it didn’t always work, and this moment was one such time.

A Saaur warrior looked down and snarled, ‘Where do you go, human?’ Its voice was deep and its accent sounded harsh to Nakor.

Nakor regarded the hooded eyes, deep red irises surrounded by white. ‘I am insignificant, O mighty one. I cannot see. I move to a place from which I may better observe this wondrous rite.’

Nakor had been curious about the Saaur when he had first reached the heart of the camp, but now he was anxious to remove himself from them. They were still a mystery to him. They bore as much resemblance to the Pantathians as humans did to elves, which was to say that superficially they looked very similar, but upon close examination they were totally unrelated. Nakor was almost certain they came from another world entirely, and that they were warm-blooded creatures, like men, elves, and dwarves, while he knew the Pantathians were not.

He would have liked to be able to discuss such theories with an educated Saaur, but all he had encountered were young male warriors with an attitude toward humans that could only be called contemptuous. He had no doubt that should the men in this camp not be servants of this Emerald Queen, the Saaur would have been delighted to murder every human in the camp. They could barely keep their antipathy for humans in check.

The average Saaur stood between nine and ten feet in height. The Saaurs were massive in chest and shoulder, but strangely delicate of neck, and while their legs were strong enough to control their massive horses, they didn’t seem to be a race of runners or jumpers. On foot, any good company of humans should prove their match, thought Nakor.

The lizard man grunted, and Nakor didn’t know if that was approval or not, but he took it as permission to move on and he did so, judging he would deal with the consequences of being wrong if he turned out to be.

He was not. The warrior returned his attention to the welcoming ritual.

The pavilion of the Emerald Queen was raised up on a giant dais, constructed either of wood or of earth – Nakor couldn’t tell which – but six feet higher than the other tents in this part of the camp. The structure was surrounded by a host of Saaur, and for the first time Nakor saw Pantathian priests beyond. Even more, he saw Pantathian warriors as well. Nakor grinned, for this was a new thing to his experience, and he always enjoyed discovering the unfamiliar.

The priest now turned and threw the slaughtered sheep onto a pyre and then cast scented oils after it. The smoke that rose was fragrant and thick, dark and coiling. The priest and the rest of the Saaur watched intently. Then the priest pointed and spoke in an alien language, but the tone was positive, and Nakor guessed he was saying the spirits were pleased with the offering or the portents were good, or some other priestly mumbo-jumbo.

Nakor squinted as a figure emerged from within the depths of the pavilion: a man in green armor, followed by another, who made way for a third, whose green armor was trimmed in gold. This powerful-looking man was General Fadawah, First Commander of the host. Nakor sensed evil hung around the man like smoke around a fire. For a soldier, he fairly reeked of magic.

Then came a woman with emeralds at her neck and wrists, dressed in a green gown cut low in front so that the fall of emeralds at her throat could be better shown. Upon her raven hair she wore a crown of emeralds.

Nakor muttered, ‘That is a lot of emeralds, even for you.’

The woman moved in a way Nakor found disturbing, and when she came forward to answer the cheers of her army, he became deeply troubled. Something was profoundly wrong!

He studied her and listened as she spoke. ‘My faithful! I who am Your Lady, who am but a vessel for one much greater, I thank you for your gifts.

‘The Sky Horde of the Saaur and the Emerald Queen promise you victory in this life and immortal reward in the next. Our spies return to tell us the unbelievers lie in wait just three days’ march to the south. Soon we shall move to crush them, then fall upon the heathen cities and reduce them to cinders. Each victory comes more swiftly than the last, and our numbers grow.’

The woman called the Emerald Queen stepped forward to the very edge of the dais and looked down on the faces of those nearest to her, both Saaur and human. Pointing to one man, she said, ‘You shall be my messenger to the gods this night!’

The man raised his fist in triumph and ran up the first four steps to the dais. He threw himself across the final two, so his head was on the floor before his mistress. She raised her foot and placed it on the man’s head for a moment in ritual, then removed it, turning to move back into the tent. The man rose with a grin, winked back at his comrades who cheered him, and followed the Queen into her pavilion.

‘Oh, this is very bad,’ whispered Nakor. He glanced around and saw the celebration was building in intensity. Soon men would be drunk and fighting, as much as was allowed, and given the lax discipline Nakor had seen in this part of the army, he suspected much brawling and even bloodshed were tolerated.

Now he would have to work his way through a company of very drunk, drug-crazed killers, and seek a way across the river to Calis – assuming he could locate Calis’s camp.

Nakor was never one to worry, and this certainly wasn’t a time to begin. Still, he was anxious that he not delay too long, for now he knew what was behind all the conflict that had been under way for the last twelve years, and what was more, he realized he might be the only man on the world who would fully understand all the different aspects of what he had just seen.

Shaking his head in consternation at the complexities of life, the little man started negotiating his way back away from the edge of the Emerald Queen’s pavilion.

A courier rode up and asked. Are ‘you Captain Calis?’

Calis said, ‘I am.’

‘Orders. You’re to take your company and ford the river’—he motioned to some place to the north of him, so Erik, who sat nearby, assumed a ford must be close at hand – ‘and conduct a sweep along the far bank, for ten miles downstream. Gilani tribesmen were seen by one of our scouts. The generals want to keep the opposite bank free of such pests.’

He turned and rode away as Praji said, ‘Pests?’ Looking after the retreating courier, he shook his head in disbelief. ‘Obviously that lad has never encountered any of the Gilani.’

‘Neither have I,’ said Calis. ‘Who are they?’

Praji spoke while he casually picked up his kit and made ready to ride out. ‘Barbarians.’ He paused and said, ‘No, savages, really. Tribespeople. No one knows who they are or where they come from. They speak a tongue only a few can master, and they rarely give anyone from outside a chance to learn it. They’re tough, and they fight like maniacs. They wander the Plain of Djams or up in the foothills of the Ratn’gary, hunting the big bison herds or chasing elk and deer.’

Picking up his own bedroll, Vaja said, ‘Most of the trouble folks on this side of the river have with them is over horses. They’re the best damn horse thieves in the world. A man’s rank is earned by how many enemies he’s killed and how many horses he’s stolen. They don’t ride them; they eat them. So I heard.’

‘Will they give us much trouble?’ said Calis.

‘Hell, we probably won’t even see one,’ answered Praji. He tossed his bedroll to Erik and said, ‘Hang on to that for me for a minute.’ He bent to get a bag that contained the rest of his personal belongings. ‘They’re tough little guys, about half again the size of dwarves,’ and with an evil grin he pointed at Roo: ‘just like him!’

The men laughed as Praji reclaimed his bedroll from Erik and they started moving toward the picket line of horses. De Loungville and Foster began calling orders to the company to ride. Praji said, ‘They can vanish into that tall grass across the river like they were spirits. They live in these low huts they put together out of woven grass, and you can be standing ten feet from one and never see it. Difficult folks to figure.’

‘But they can fight,’ said Vaja.

As they started readying their horses, Praji said, ‘That, indeed, they can do. There, Captain, now you know as much about the Gilani as just about any man born in these parts.’

Calis said, ‘Well, if they want to avoid trouble, we should be able to make a swing ten miles to the south and back before sundown.’ As if concerned over something, he looked back at the main body of the camp, then said to De Loungville, ‘Leave a squad to look after things.’ Lowering his voice, he said, ‘And tell them to keep an eye out for Nakor.’

Foster motioned to another squad that was moving to saddle their horses and gave them instructions. Erik glanced back as he lifted his saddle to place it on the back of his own mount. Where was Nakor? he wondered.

Nakor grunted as he picked up the plank, silently cursing the fool at the other end who didn’t seem to realize something existed called ‘coordinated effort.’ The man, whose name was unknown to Nakor but whom he thought of as ‘that idiot,’ insisted on lifting, moving, and dropping without bothering to mention it to Nakor. As a result, over the last two days, Nakor had accumulated an astonishing collection of splinters, scrapes, and bruises.

Nakor had encountered difficulties returning to Calis’s company. The muster had finally halted with the core army to the north of this tributary to the river Vedra, while Calis and other new mercenary companies were to the south. Passing across the smaller river was now accomplished only by riders with official-looking passes, issued by the generals. Nakor had three such passes in his bag, having stolen them two nights before, but he didn’t want to try to use one until he could study it, and there hadn’t been any place to study the documents without attracting attention. Besides the risk of losing such documents, Nakor had a predisposition not to call attention to himself unless there was a reason to do so.

But the generals had ordered a bridge rebuilt across this tributary and a work gang was diligently doing just that. Nakor figured he would pose as a worker and when the bridge reached the opposite shore, he would simply vanish into the crowd on the other bank.

Unfortunately, the work was going more slowly than he had hoped, since the labor turned out to be slave labor and, as such, the workers were in no hurry. Also, he was now being closely guarded at night. The guards might not have noticed him when he arrived – if there was an extra slave in a squad, the guard would merely assume he had miscounted in the morning – but he would be certain to notice if there was one less.

Which meant Nakor would have to wait for exactly the right moment to vanish into the companies of mercenaries. He knew that once he was free of the guards watching the work gang he would have no trouble staying free, but he wished to create as ideal a moment as possible before he attempted it. A manhunt in the southern camp might prove amusing, but Nakor knew that he must share what he had learned with Calis and the others before too long, so that they could start planning their escape from this army and their eventual return to Krondor.

‘That idiot’ dropped his end of the plank before Nakor could move, and as a result he took more splinters in his shoulder. He was about to do one of his ‘tricks’ in retaliation, a sting to the buttocks that would make the man think he had sat on a hornet, when a chill passed over him.

He glanced back and felt his chest tighten, for a Pantathian priest stood not ten feet away watching the construction, speaking quietly to a human officer. Nakor set down his end of the plank and hurried back for another, keeping his eyes down. Nakor had encountered the Pantathians and their handiwork before, while traveling with the man who was now Prince of Krondor, but he had never seen a living Pantathian that close. As he passed the creature he noticed a faint odor, and remembered having heard of this smell before: very reptilian, yet alien.

Nakor bent to pick up another plank and saw ‘that idiot’ stumble over a rock. He lost his balance and took a half-step toward the Pantathian. The creature reacted, turning with a clawed hand sweeping out. The talons struck across the idiot’s chest, ripping his tunic as if they were knives. Deep cuts of crimson appeared as the man cried out. Then he went weak in the knees and collapsed, to lie twitching on the ground.

The human officer said to Nakor, ‘Get him out of here,’ and Nakor and another slave grabbed the fallen man. By the time they had moved him back to the slaves’ compound, the man was dead. Nakor studied the face, frozen in death with eyes open, and watched closely. After a few minutes, he was certain he knew exactly what poison the Pantathian had on his claws. It was no natural venom, but something created by mixing several deadly plant toxins together, and Nakor found this revelation fascinating.

He was also fascinated by the Pantathian’s need to demonstrate before the human officer his deadly ability to kill with a touch. There were politics here in the camp of the Emerald Queen that were not obvious to those far from the heart of power, and Nakor wished he had the time to try to uncover more about them. Any struggle in the enemy camp was good to know about, but unfortunately, he couldn’t afford to spend the time insinuating himself where he could observe the byplays of power.

A guard said, ‘Drop him there,’ pointing to a garbage heap that would be hauled away by wagon at sundown and dumped at a fill a mile or so away from the river. Nakor did as he was bid, and the guard ordered the two slaves to return to work.

Nakor hurried down to the building site, but the Pantathian and the human officer were now gone. He felt a brief regret that he couldn’t study the Serpent priest any longer, and even more regret that ‘that idiot’ had been killed. The man had deserved to have his backside stung, but he hadn’t deserved to die painfully as a poison shut down his lungs and heart.

Nakor worked until the noon meal. He sat on the bridge, now only a few yards from the other bank, dangling his feet above the water as he ate the tasteless gruel and hard bread to keep his strength up. All the while he ate, he wondered what Calis and the others were doing.

Calis motioned for the outriders on the right flank to keep an even line of sight, one man to the next, for a half mile. Signals from the closest man indicated the order was understood.

They had been riding since noon and still had no sign of anyone near the bank. Either the report of those tribesmen being nearby was in error, or they had left the area, or they were, as Praji had said, able to keep themselves from being seen.

Erik watched for any unexpected movement in the grass, but it was a breezy afternoon, and the tall grass moved like water. It would take eyes far better than his to see someone moving through this sheltering plain.

A short time later, Calis said, ‘If we don’t find something within the next half hour, we should return. We’ll be getting back to the ford in the dark as it is now.’

A shout from an outrider, and everyone looked to the west. Erik used his hand to shade his eyes against the afternoon sunlight, and saw a rider frantically signaling from the base of a large mound. Calis motioned and the column turned toward the rider.

When they reached the base of the hillock, Erik could see it was covered in the same grass as the plains, making it look like nothing so much as an inverted shaggy bowl. Almost completely round, it was some distance from the next rise, the beginning of a series of hills leading toward the distant mountains.

‘What is it?’ asked Calis.

‘Tracks and a cave. Captain,’ answered the outrider.

Praji and Vaja exchanged questioning looks, and dismounted. They led their horses close to the cave and inspected it. A short entrance, one a man could enter stooped over, led back into the gloom.

Calis glanced down. ‘Old tracks.’ Then he moved to the entrance and ran his hand over the stone edge of the cave. ‘This isn’t natural,’ said Calis.

‘Or if it is,’ said Praji, also running his hand along the wall, ‘someone’s done some work on it to make it more sturdy. There’s stonework under this dirt.’ He brushed away the dirt and revealed some fitted stones underneath.

‘Sarakan,’ said Vaja.

‘Maybe,’ conceded Praji.

‘Sarakan?’ asked Calis.

Praji remounted his horse and said, ‘It’s an abandoned dwarven city in the Ratn’gary Mountains. All of it underground. Some humans moved in a few centuries back, some cult of lunatics, and they’ve died out. Now it just sits empty.’

‘People are always stumbling across entrances down near the Gulf,’ said Vaja, ‘and in the foothills near the Great South Forest.’

Calis said, ‘Correa me if I’m wrong, but that’s hundreds of miles from here.’

‘True,’ said Praji. ‘But the damn tunnels run everywhere.’ He pointed to the hillock. ‘That one could be connected somewhere over there’ – he pointed at the distant mountains – ‘or it could simply go back a few hundred feet and stop. Depends on who built it, but it looks like one of the entrances to Sarakan.’

Roo ventured, ‘Maybe it’s built by the same dwarves, but it’s a different city?’

‘Maybe,’ said Praji. ‘It’s been a long time since any dwarves lived anywhere but the mountains, and city folk don’t linger on the Plain of Djams.’

Calis said, ‘Could we use this as a depot? Leave some weapons and supplies here if we need to come down this side of the river?’

Praji said, ‘I wouldn’t, Captain. If the Gilani are around here, they may be using this as a base.’

Calis was silent for a moment; then he spoke loudly enough for the entire troop, except for the other outriders, to hear. ‘Mark this location in your minds. Check the distant landscapes. We may be very needful of finding this exact spot, soon. If we need to break from the camp, for any reason, or fight our way out, if you can’t make straight for the city of Lanada, make for this mound. Those who do meet here, make your way to the south the best you can. The City of the Serpent River is your final goal, for one of our ships should be waiting there.’

Erik looked around and then looked down at his mount. If he put her nose in line with two peaks in the distant mountains, the one that looked like a broken fang, and the other that looked like a clump of grapes, to his imagination, and kept the river at his back while keeping another distant peak off his left side, he thought he should be able to find his way back here.

After the men had taken their bearings. Calis turned to an outrider up on a distant hill who was watching. Calis made the arm signals to indicate they were turning back.

The man acknowledged the order, then turned and signaled an even more distant rider, while Calis gave the order to return to the host of the Emerald Queen.

• Chapter Eighteen • Escape

Nakor waved.

He had learned years ago that if you didn’t want to be accosted by minor officials, look as if you know exactly what you’re doing. The officer standing on the far end of the dock didn’t recognize Nakor, as the Isalani knew he wouldn’t. Slaves weren’t people. One didn’t take note of them.

And now he didn’t look like a slave. He had ducked out of the slave pen the night before so that the morning and night head count would match. He had wandered around the camp, smiling and chatting, until he had reached the place where he had secreted his belongings when he had run off to play construction worker.

Then at dawn he had wandered back to the slave pens and fallen in a few yards behind the work gang. He had moved along the newly constructed bridge, past a guard who started to ask him something when Nakor patted him on the shoulder in a friendly fashion and said, ‘Good morning,’ leaving the guard scratching his chin.

Now he called to the officer, ‘Here, catch!’ and threw him his bundle of bedroll and shoulder sack. The officer reacted without thought and caught the bundle, then set it down as if it were covered in bugs.

By then Nakor had jumped the five feet separating the end of the bridge and the south-shore foundation of rocks. He landed and stood up, saying, ‘I didn’t want to take the chance of dropping the bundle in the water. There are important documents in it.’

‘Important …?’ asked the officer as Nakor picked up his bundle.

‘Thank you. I must be getting those orders to the Captain.’

The officer hesitated, which was his undoing, for in that moment, while he tried to frame his next question, Nakor slipped behind a party of horsemen riding past, and when they had moved on, the little man was nowhere in sight.