Chapter one
At the sign of the Headless Zorcaman
Naghan Raerdu was a most entertaining character. He had a remarkable penchant for laughing so much the tears squeezed out of his closed eyes and no one took much notice of what else he was doing. His face expressed habitual surprise that people never took him seriously, and his body, short, stout, robust, supported on thick waddling legs, conveyed an impression of undirected manic energy. He was apim, a member of Homo sapiens, with brown Vallian hair and eyes and a blobby chunk of gristle for a nose. He’d been a soldier in the Phalanx, rising from brumbyte to Relianchun. With his bright popping eyes, his highly colored cheeks, his glistening mouth from which a glass was seldom absent, he looked quite unlike what he was.
Naghan Raerdu had turned into a first-class spy.
His jolly red-faced exterior concealed the mentality more often associated with the gray, inconspicuous secret agent. And he liked to laugh.
He finished laughing now as he said, “This fellow Chuktar Mevek — leastways, that’s what he calls himself — means what he says. In a matter this important he will deal only with the emperor.”
“It’s a trap.” Turko spoke in a dismissive way, perhaps a little warm at having to state the obvious. He stretched his arms in which the sinuous muscles spoke eloquently of the enormous man-crushing power of him. He had the wrestler’s trick of emphasizing statements by physical movements. Since his elevation to the nobility he had flowered wonderfully and yet he remained a good comrade. Naghan Raerdu’s spying mission had been into Falinur, near the center of Vallia, Kov Turko’s new province.
“I think not, kov.” Raerdu spoke up stoutly. He was often called Naghan the Barrel for obvious reasons. “I took soundings.” He laid a chubby finger alongside that blob of gristle that passed for a nose.
“A trap,” repeated Turko. He half turned away, and his profile showed, keen as an eagle’s. “That unhanged villain Layco Jhansi wants to lure the emperor into his clutches by this story, and then — chop.”
“With respect, kov, this Mevek has suffered and has no love for Layco Jhansi.”
“He told you this?” Nath Karidge, that tearaway cavalry commander spoke up. He happened to be here because a new task was to be set to his capable hands. Now his reckless face was thoughtful in the shadows under the trees. “Or — you saw for yourself?”
“Both, and yet it was the way Mevek spoke that impressed me. I have seen men’s faces when they talk like that. I was Relianchun in the First Phalanx at the Battle of Sicce’s Gates, and, after we were beat... That was a bad time for Vallia.” Naghan the Barrel did not laugh. “It is my view that Mevek speaks honestly and can do what he promises.”
The problem was a knotty one. Around the heap of tumbled ruins that had once been a pretty village, up here in the north of the province of Vindelka, the trees grew vigorous
