Jezzil jerked his chin at the distant fortress. “The Amato has assigned the two of us to scout the place and help plan the attack.”
Barus’s dark eyes lit up and his teeth flashed briefly in a broad grin. “Superb! I can hardly wait!”
Jezzil’s mouth twitched. “Contain yourself. There are over a hundred soldiers quartered there, guarding Zajares.”
The junior officer dismissed the thought with a flick of his left hand in a rude gesture. “We are the Silent Ones. We’ll cut their throats before they even know we’re among them.
This is a great opportunity for us. If we do well …”
Jezzil nodded. “My thought exactly.”
The two scouts quickly checked their weapons and armor, abandoning their swords for the moment in favor of several knives and throwing discs of assorted sizes concealed in sheaths and holders beneath their loose-fitting tunics and trousers. Jezzil slipped a vial of poison into the holder sewn into the top of his riding boot, where it was hidden by the thick tooling on the outside calf. Gathering his shoulder-length hair in his hand, he secured it with a leather thong, then wound a coil of cutting wire around the thong so it appeared to be held by a silvery mesh clasp. He tucked the leather-bound free ends under, concealing them. His leather wrist guards could also be unwound and used as strangling cords.
While he was doing this, the words of the training song all cadets learned in their first year of schooling, “The Arming Rhyme of the Silent Ones,” ran through his head.
Helmet rivet solid, plates without a crack
Body armor fastened, front and side and back
Neck and arms and body, free to stoop or stand
Weapons in their scabbards, ready to the hand.
Check if blades are solid; pommel, grip, and guard
Weapon belts all fastened? Check them quick and hard
Jump and see what rattles. Tie and pad it fast
Second chances never come. Fool’s luck doesn’t last!
Check the shadow weapons, set and out of sight
Steel and cord and poisons, stopped and fastened tight
Skin and face all darkened, metal dulled of shine.
What’s your ordered mission? What’s your place and time?
What’s the secondary plan? What way in and out?
Where’s the second rally point? What’s the hidden route?
Feet and hands are weapons, but number one’s your head.
Stay relaxed and use it, and you may not end up dead.
As the final words ran through Jezzil’s mind, he slipped two ruby studs into the holes in his left earlobe. Each stud had a tiny drop of a powerful soporific coating the inside shaft, which was inserted into the thicker, outside wire. All the young Chonao had to do was twist the inner shaft free of the outer sheath, and he held a tiny, sharp, potent dart. One pinprick would be enough to fell a strong opponent in less than two minutes.
Falar nickered softly and bunted him gently as he loosened her girth and tethered her close to a bush with succulent leaves. “I’ll be back, lady,” he told her, stroking her satiny neck for a moment. “Wait here for me.
Stay
.”
Then the two scouts, clad in their traditional garb that was the color of shadow, eased out of the forest. Meadows encir-cled the hill where the fortress stood, and the two young warriors moved quickly across them until they came to the narrow fringe of trees and undergrowth that had sprung up on the bank of the moat.
Barus and Jezzil crouched in the shadow of a scrubby oak and stared up at the fortess. The sun had set, and twilight gathered around it like a dark cloak. The spires that had appeared so proud and stately in the sunlight now looked bladelike and forbidding. The stone domes seemed to hunker down between the spires like animals hiding in burrows.
Jezzil, who had a lively imagination that he tried sternly to ignore—too vivid an imagination was a drawback for a soldier—repressed a shiver.
“Let’s get on with it,” Barus said, his voice barely a breath on the evening air. “We know what we’re looking for.”
The two Chonao began a systematic search in the waning light. Each was equipped with a night lantern, should that become necessary, but both young men had excellent eyesight, and they found what they were seeking before the last light had faded away.
A trapdoor, set into a tiny clearing, was carefully camou-flaged with cut brush that must have been replenished only yesterday. Most men would have walked past it without noticing the drooping leaves, but the Silent Ones were well-trained in ferreting out secrets. A moment’s investigation revealed the cut branches and the wooden slabs set flush with the ground.
“No ring,” Barus said, staring down at the uncovered trapdoor with a frown.
“Of course not,” Jezzil said. “They don’t want anyone using it to get
in,
they just want to make sure they can get
out.
”
“We’ll have to dig and lever it up,” Barus said. “And that’s going to make noise. I’ll give you good odds there’s a sentry down there.”
“No doubt,” Jezzil agreed. “There’s probably another at the exit on the other side of the moat. We’ll have to take care of both of them before we can get into the fortress.”
Barus glanced around the clearing, evaluating it as a site for an ambush. “You start digging, and I’ll take care of him when he appears.”
Jezzil opened his mouth to protest, then shut it and shrugged.
Barus was a better swordsman and hand-to-hand fighter than he was, even on his best day. The steppe warrior was the acknowledged champion of the troop. “Oh, very well,” he said gruffly, but he was conscious of a stab of relief. He had been in two battles and fought hard, but there was a difference in deliberately luring a man to his death by stealth, rather than killing him in open warfare. Besides, as long as the job was done, and done well, who was he to protest?
Walking over to the concealed door, Jezzil dropped to one knee and began hacking at the dirt on the opening side with the point of his dagger. There had been little rain for weeks, so it was as hard as stone, but crumbled once it was loosened. He made no effort to disguise the scraping noises he made.
The young Chonao had a brief moment of apprehension then; what if the sentry sent for reinforcements before coming up to investigate? But then, he thought, surely the man would want to assure himself that there wasn’t some animal up here digging.
His reasoning was borne out a second later when the door suddenly burst open and an armed guard catapulted himself out of the ground.
Jezzil fell back with a half-genuine squawk of dismay, deliberately lost his footing and went sprawling onto his backside, scrabbling to put distance between himself and the guard. He had only a moment to glimpse a bared sword in the other’s hand before a dark shadow flowed across the little clearing and merged with the guard’s moving figure. The man was jerked back on his heels, and had barely time for one muted gasp before he dropped limply to the ground.
Barus stood where the man had been, a broad smile on his face, his garroting wire swinging from his hand. Red
droplets flowed along it. “You make a perfect decoy, my friend,” he said admiringly, extending a gauntleted hand down to help his partner to his feet. “You chose the wrong profession. You should be on the stage. I’ve never seen anyone look both stupid and scared more convincingly.”
Jezzil chuckled hollowly as he stared down at the fallen sentry. The body gave one final twitch, then lay still.
“We’ve got to hide him, before he’s missed,” he said.
Barus nodded, then eyed the prone figure measuringly.
“He’s closer to your size. Take his armor and surcoat. We’ll dump him in the moat.”
Carefully, Jezzil turned the sentry over and began tugging at the fastenings. Barus had slipped the garroting wire in so expertly that there was little blood; only a few drops stained the top of the surcoat. Jezzil donned the armor, concealing his own weapons beneath the scout’s metal-studded leather kilt. Buckling on the short, straight Taenarith sword, he slapped the helm on his head. “How do I look?”
Barus studied him critically. “Stay in the shadows,” he advised. “In a dim light, you’ll pass.”
Quickly, the two scouts grabbed the stripped body and carried it down the bank of the moat. After listening for a moment, they swung it back and forth, then sent it splashing into the dark waters, where it sank with scarcely a bubble or ripple.
“They say—” Jezzil began, only to fall silent and step back hastily as a monstrous, barely seen form slid past in the black water.
“Wh-What was that?” Barus sounded, for once, faintly unnerved.
“I was about to tell you. They say there are monsters in the moat.”
“I would say they are correct,” muttered Barus. “I wouldn’t swim across that thing for a year’s pay.”
Returning to the trapdoor, the scouts levered it up out of its frame and prepared to descend into the torchlit tunnel at the bottom of the ladder. “You first,” Barus said. “If you meet anyone, don’t try to talk to him. Your accent would give you away.”
Jezzil gave his friend an exasperated glance. “I know that.
Stop treating me like a first-year recruit.”
“Sorry,” Barus muttered.
The Chonao warriors made their way along a stone-blocked tunnel. Green ooze and the faint sheen of oily water stained the sloping walls, ceiling, and floor, making the footing treacherous. They did not speak, only conversed in the Pen Jav Dal’s language of signed gestures.
When the tunnel began sloping upward, obviously nearing its end, Jezzil gestured for Barus to stay behind him. His friend gave him a quick victory gesture with thumb and two fingers and dropped back.
Jezzil eased forward, inwardly cursing the clumsy Taenarith boots that made squelching noises in the wet muck on the floor. Mentally, he assessed the armor he had donned, calculating its weak points. The metal strips studding the boiled leather shirt started several inches above the belt …
Flexing his right wrist and little finger, he felt the blade strapped to the inside of his forearm ease downward. A hard squeeze and twist would send it sliding down into his waiting grasp.
The guard at the top of the slope turned as he heard a faint splash. Seeing Jezzil, he visibly tensed. “What’s going on?
It’s not time for shift-change.”
Jezzil shook his head grimly within the concealing shadow of the helm and, turning, pointed back down the tunnel. “What did you say?” he mumbled in Taenarian, careful to keep his voice muffled so it echoed oddly in the tunnel.
“What?” asked the guard, coming toward him. “Speak up, Carad!”
Jezzil coughed, clearing his throat like a man who was catching a rheum from the dank air. Just as the man reached him, he bent over, hawked and spat. When he straightened, the knife was in his hand, a muted metal flash in the torchlit dimness. Jezzil put the entire force of his body into the thrust; the razor-honed blade entered the sentry’s body just above his heavy belt, stabbing upward through leather, flesh, and viscera in one swift stroke. Jezzil’s aim was exact; the blade found its target in the left chamber of the man’s heart.
The sentry gasped with the force of the blow, gurgled once, and sagged, dead already.
Jezzil stepped back, yanking his blade free with a practiced gesture, then, feeling queasy, he stood looking down at the blood soaking his gauntlet and dripping off his knife.
He’d practiced that stroke thousands of times in sparring practice or against wood and sawdust dummies, but had never before used it on another living being.
“Nice work,” Barus commented, grinning broadly. “Almost as smooth as if I’d done it. Next time twist your wrist a little harder to the right, and you can get both chambers.
Even quicker that way.”
“We’d better get rid of the body,” Jezzil said. “Do you want to put on the armor?”
Barus turned the man over and regarded the blood-soaked form measuringly. “No, too stained,” he said. “You stay here, so they’ll think the sentry is still on duty, and I’ll scout the fortress, count how many troops.”
Jezzil nodded, and together they lugged the body out of the tunnel and dumped it into the moat. As before, it barely sank before something they could only glimpse was upon it.
Then Jezzil took up his supposed station, while Barus stole into the fortress.
The young Chonao fretted as he stood guard, his unfortunate imagination presenting him with images of Barus discovered, attacked, killed, and m’Banak alerted and impossible to take from within—their mission a total failure.
Nobody came near him. Jezzil had little way to judge the passing of the time; only his increasing need to relieve himself made him guess that nearly an hour had passed before a gray shadow flowed down the ladder leading up into m’Banak.
Jezzil repressed a sigh of relief. “What took you so long?”
Barus gave him a quizzical glance. “I came and went as quickly as I could. What’s wrong? Place giving you the jumps?”
“Of course not,” Jezzil snapped. “Are you ready to report?”
Barus nodded. “Zajares is quartered in the west dome, on the top floor. The guards are all wearing surcoats with his in-signia, just as Intelligence said. If we put on the ones we brought with us, taken from those prisoners, we can march right in.”
“How many?”
“No more than sixty. They’ve got patrols out, all right.”
“What if one of those patrols returns while we’re attacking?”
Barus made a dismissive gesture. “You worry too much.”
“What about the security surrounding Zajares?”
His friend shook his head. “That will be harder,” he admitted. “They change the passwords with every shift of the guard. But we should be able to divide our force, set fire to the main hall, and use that as a diversion. Then we’ll just have to deal with Zajares’s personal guard. The door’s locked, but we can handle that. We’ll get in, never fear, youngster.”
Jezzil glared at his friend. Barus was a year older than he, and never let the younger Chonao forget it.
“You’d better get back to Gardal and report. I’ll stay here,” Jezzil said, with a swift glance up the ladder. “Try to bring the troop in before midnight. I’m betting that’s when the guard changes.”