The Golden Steed

«Do not worry, Raza. I will tie you up so that it will look like I overpowered you. Ornilan will not hold that against you, surely. In return you will tell me-quickly-where this camp is and how to get out of it without anybody knowing.» She stared at him as though he had just sprouted purple fur all over his body. «I said quickly, Raza. Otherwise I will tie you up anyway and try to escape on my own. But I will probably be captured. Then I will say that you helped me to escape. I doubt if Ornilan will like that very much.»

For a moment it looked as if Raza was going to break down a third time. But somehow she found a few bits of self-control. She began to talk, rapidly and clearly enough that Blade could pick all the information he needed out of what she was saying. In a few minutes he knew he had learned all he was going to learn, and the time for action had come.

He pulled on his clothes and slung his sandals from his belt. Then he pulled Raza's robe and hood over his own clothes. He checked the impression in a mirror. In the darkness, with the hood pulled well down to cover his close-cropped hair, he would pass. At least he would pass as long as he kept his mouth shut, and as long as the sentries weren't too inclined to question anybody wandering around in Raza's cloak.

Blade left Raza well tied up as he had promised, and gagged as well. He arranged her so that to anybody peeping in, it would look like Blade was still in the bed. Then he scrambled out the window and slipped away into the darkness.

The gamble paid off. In the dead of the night most of the well-disciplined Lanyri were asleep in their tents. Those he met were sentries or members of punishment details, the first unwilling and the second unable to challenge him. Striding freely through the camp with an air of «I've got a perfect right to be here,» he reached the horse lines within a few minutes.

The horse lines were more closely patrolled than the rest of the camp because the Rojag allies were notorious horse thieves. Blade got through the sentries without betraying himself, but not completely without trouble. Only a little trouble for him, but much trouble for the sentry who challenged him.. Two swift strides forward, a knife-hand chop to the man's neck just below his helmet, and a body was sprawled in the dust.

It was all that Blade could do then to keep himself from breaking into a run. But he forced his feet to move one step at a time across the well-trodden ground among the horses. They were all trained war horses; they kept silent. They even kept silent when he untethered one and swung himself onto its bare back. The soft clop of hooves was the only sound as he rode slowly out of the camp. When he saw its watch-fires vanish behind a spur of hill, he dug his heels into the horse's side. It swept forward into the darkness at a gallop.

He was still galloping when dawn broke over the hills. In the clear rose and gold light he saw an abandoned Pendar village. Outside its walls stood a tall stone pillar on which were marked the direction and distance to Vilesh.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It took Blade less than five days to cover that distance to Vilesh, for he literally did not spare the horses. He kept the first one going at a gallop until it dropped, well into the afternoon of the first day. He was within a mile of a village, small and poor, but it had a few horses. After Blade slipped into the village stables that night, the village had one less horse.

That horse still had a good deal of life in it at sunset the next day. Then good luck brought Blade up with one of the Royal Scouts. The man was carrying messages from one of the patrols keeping watch on Lanyri. Blade was careful to pick up those messages, along with the scout's clothes, badges, weapons, gear, and horse. The scout himself he deposited, stu

Blade was determined to keep his identity concealed from everybody whose loyalty to the king he didn't trust. At least until the moment he had his sword at Klerus' throat, he added to himself. And there was nobody outside the palace itself he trusted.

Blade succeeded, thanks to the scout's badges and gear. A Royal Scout was a man privileged to ask and receive help in any form he might need from any subject of the King of Pendar. To refuse a scout's request for aid or delay him in his passage, even through negligence, was treason.

So stable doors opened and the best horses were led forth and saddled and bridled for Blade. Saddlebags were packed full of the choicest food the villages could offer. Leather bottles of wine and water were pressed on him. In some of the villages he might have received baths and even girls if he had been willing to stop. But he was not. All the girls saw of him was his back as he vanished down the road to Vilesh in a cloud of dust.

He reached Vilesh on the evening of the fifth day. By that time he was confident that no one, not even Princess Harima or Guroth, could recognize him as the Pendarnoth. A five-day growth of beard covered his face, and a five-day accumulation of yellow and gray dust covered the beard. His clothes were so stiff with sweat they could stand up by themselves. He suspected he could be smelled a hundred feet upwind. Over one eye he wore an improvised patch made from Raza's cloak, and on his left arm was an equally improvised bandage made from the same material. There was even a little dried blood on «the bandage, smeared on it from a carefully cut thumb. The picture he presented was not merely enough to confuse, it was enough to frighten. Children pointed and ran screaming into the houses along the high road as he thundered toward the towers of Vilesh.

For all his travel-worn appearance, Blade was not tired. He knew he should have been nearly ready to fall out of the saddle, but somehow he was not. Perhaps it was sheer nervous energy. Perhaps it was also the knowledge that within a few hours he would finally be at grips with the High Councilor. He had spent too many weeks using his wits and his tongue as his main weapons. Now the time was coming to use his sword, and use it on the best target in this whole Dimension. Ornilan at least was a soldier and a good one as far as Blade could tell. But Klerus-there was nothing at all to be said for him.

The sentries at the main gate of the city let him through after a single look at his badge. That was welcome for the moment, but Blade knew he would have to speak to Nefus about the Royal Scouts. False badges could easily be made and distributed, and assassins and saboteurs bearing them admitted to Vilesh. The Pendari would have enough difficulty defending their city from the enemies outside without having to cope with others inside.

At the palace gate, however, the guards looked Blade over a bit more carefully. He recognized two of the eight men on watch as members of the Pendarnoth's Guard. That was encouraging. It meant that Klerus had not yet purged all the «unreliable» men from the palace guards. But Blade could not appeal to the guardsmen's loyalties without revealing his identity. He had to sit quietly in the saddle while his badges and message bag and sword were inspected with everything but a magnifying glass.

He also had to fight back the desire to ask questions about «the fate of the Pendarnoth.» He could not be sure whether or not his capture had been kept a secret, but he suspected it had been. Certainly there had been no signs of mourning in the city or the villages around it.