Dark Path: Book Three of the Phantom Badgers Page 5

  Kustar frowned and studied the sketch more closely, then shook her head. Something was wrong: there were too few Felher for the number of losses suffered by the Anlarc, and more importantly, these were only lightly armed and armored rat-men, hardly the type to stand up and maul the heavily armed warriors commanded by the Anlarc. Lastly, there were no Felher dead near the remains of the Gate egran, despite the heavy fighting that occurred there. Felher cared nothing for their dead, and were not over-concerned with wounded; they would not have wasted time in dragging off casualties.

  The list of items found at the scene listed only the major finds, but it did note that the physical elements of the Gate were indeed of Felher origin; Kustar noted the lot number assigned to the items taken from the area on a wax-covered tablet, and returned her attention to the Anlarc's report. One could never discard the possibility that having had his command mauled the Anlarc had lied about the action to protect himself, although one high enough in the Temple to have been allowed to become an Anlarc should have very little to fear from any but the worst failures. Kustar stroked her nose and pondered the situation, turning it around and around in her mind like a raccoon with a shiny bit of metal.

  Rising, she rummaged on a table, finally locating a portfolio listing all the auxiliary reports submitted on the raid. Locating the one she wanted, she spent thirty minutes hunting through the wicker file baskets before finding it: a thirty-page document reporting the consumption of hecla in the initial raid.

  The report listed the use by unit, by fight, and finally by containers issued and returned. Hecla was a closely guarded secret, a thick liquid that when exposed suddenly to the air exploded into flame. It was issued in clay canisters of various sizes, each sealed and stamped with a lot number. Very little had actually been used in the raid, and the majority of the expended hecla had been clay canisters that fitted on javelins for firing out of a repeating ballista, a murderous short-range weapon that was particularly effective against bunched-up foemen. The rest of the fluid used were quart containers fitted with a rope harness for throwing by individual soldiers.

  It was the latter she checked first, only to discover that every canister issued had been accounted for. She almost gave up then, but ingrained training moved her to inspect the rest of the report. There she found something of interest: the javelin-canisters had one lot missing. A cartload of canisters attached to ballista javelins had been dispatched during the height of the raid, escorted by a section of troops; the section and the slaves assigned to pull the cart were found dead in a Felher ambush, and the cart and canisters were never accounted for. It was assumed that the Felher either used the hecla in starting fires, or carried it off with them for future use. There was not great deal of interest in the cartload’s fate as the alchemists assured everyone that it was impossible to determine the method of the fluid's creation from the finished product.

  Kustar nodded to herself. Flipping back to the report on the site of the Anlarc's battle, she noted that the property list carried twenty 'large spears' that had been emplaced as part of the defensive works; a cart, which had caught fire during the fight, had been in the corral. 'Large spear' could be another way to describe a ballista javelin, and if removed from the shafts and fitted with a rope harness, the pots of hecla could be hurled by a foot soldier, albeit for only a short distance. This proved it, she realized: the force the Anlarc had fought had been deeper in the Inner Keep, as evidenced by their capture of the hecla, and had retreated to a quiet area to escape. The dark-haired officer stared at the Anlarc's report, a wintery smile on her face: she had the first concrete evidence regarding a non-Felher group which had opened the Gates for the rat-men.

  Glancing at the water clock, she drew several pristine sheets of parchment from her desk and carefully began work. Taking her time, she expertly recopied the report, producing a good imitation of the deceased officer's handwriting. In the main she duplicated it word for word, changing only those passages which referred to the foemen being non-Felher; these were changed to portray them as elite Felher troops supported by wizardry. Finished, she lifted the false bottom from an ink tray kept locked in a lower drawer; the secret compartment there held several sticks of sealing-wax, one of which was the exact shade of the Temple security forces. A hot wire and a steady hand made a workable copy of the dead officer's rather plain seal; after one final review she handed over the altered report to Coke to be returned to the copier scribes at the central archives. Coke also received a voucher for a significant cash bonus for his diligence in securing the document before any of the other four investigators could see it.

  Carefully rolling the true report, she slipped it into a map case, a smug smile dancing across her face. In the Direthrell world success forgave all, and success, she was confident, was going to be hers.

  Summoning another clerk, she sent for a fresh map of the Inner Keep as it was before the raid, and turned to hunting the report on the ambush site where the hecla had been lost. That battle site was fairly straightforward: the dead guards, the dead slaves, plenty of dead Felher. Nothing really exceptional, at first or even second glance. There were some irregularities on closer examination, however: the guard section, made up of Thane troops, had been looted of most of their crossbows, which was not unusual as the Felher were chronically short of weapons, but the other weapons and armor were not disturbed, nor was their money looted from their belt pouches despite the fact that the Felher would have had plenty of time to do so.

  The basic Felher military and social unit was the pac; in military organizations it was made up of thirty to one hundred warriors plus supporting specialists or creatures. Pac membership was shown by tattoos, and each site report listed the tattoos on any Felher dead. It took only a moment to determine that the Felher dead from the ambush and the Anlarc's battle were from the same Pac.

  "You took the cart, the crossbows, and some dead Felher with you to your escape point," Kustar purred. "The corpses to cover your race; take your dead, leave Felher dead behind, and no one should know the difference."

  Refilling her glass, she sat back and pondered what she had learned: the Gate egran that had begun the raid had been opened by a force of non-Felher, who like as not had entered the Fortress by conventional means, and who had then escaped via a Gate which they had obtained from the Felher. Her suspected Den was an even more significant possibility, although they did not seem to have the numbers for the job; perhaps they were only half the force, the other half made up of rescued slaves, or another Den already in the fortress. It still left unexplained Who they were, exactly How they had gotten several egran into the hold, and above all Why they would help the Felher, but at least she had some leads to work with.

  After nearly filling her wax-covered tablet with supporting notes, she carefully marked the corral that was the Anlarc's battle site on the fresh map with a gold dot; the sites of the initial three Gate egran were marked with red x's. A black dot and a number showed the ambush of the hecla-bearing cart, and a green dot noted the guest quarters where her suspect Den had been quartered. Storing this map in the same case as the Anlarc's true report, she slung the case over her shoulder and tucked her atingo in her belt. It was time to cast her net further afield.

  Her clerks quickly busied themselves as she stepped out of her office and locked the door behind her; in truth, Coke could have handled the work-load she generated by himself, but she had been assigned this staff so protocol forbade releasing any of them. The clerks did what few chores she assigned them and tried to look busy, amusing themselves with molesting the tea-servant, who was a comely young woman whose trustworthiness was assured by the fact that she was illiterate and had had her tongue trimmed back so she could not speak. So long as they stayed out from underfoot, Kustar saw no reason to deny them their traditional entertainments.

  In the interests of deception she wasted three hours reviewing the items collected at the sites of two other fights that had occurred away from the primary raid area before
going to the goods from the Anlarc's battle. The salvage from the battle sites were stored in three large warehouses that had been subdivided with wicker partitions. The items were piled inside the partitioned areas, some with notes attached, others with no explanation at all. Kustar was in luck in that her site had been investigated by a dedicated officer who tagged nearly everything.

  A great deal of the items taken were junk, just battlefield debris, but even that held considerable interest. For example, the group defending themselves had used (besides captured Direthrell crossbows) human-forged throwing axes, javelins, and arrows; while this could be explained away by the fact that the weapons-poor Felher used anything they could buy or steal, Kustar did not believe it was the case in this situation.

  The prime finds were a great axe and a broadsword, the latter lacking most of its blade, both decorated with a snake motif; Golden Serpent in origin, Kustar knew, her hands trembling as she touched the filthy metal. Seated on an empty keg in a dusty warehouse that reeked of rotting blood she felt a burning tremor of excitement rising within her. Without consulting the notes on her tablet she knew that her suspect Den had carried throwing axes, javelins, bows, and at least two great axes. It was confirmation: the Den she suspected was involved.

  Excitement did not overcome the professional instincts; whether the traders had been real Golden Serpent who lied about their cult name, or merely well-informed impostors was still unknown, as were far too many other questions. Sorting through the rest of the equipment revealed very little of value, other than confirming that the spears used in improving the defensive positions were, as she had suspected, captured ballista javelins.

  A bag bearing a note identifying its contents as miscellaneous items found around the ruined Gate yielded another point of interest: in it, mixed in with the usual battlefield junk were two pieces of very fine ivory stalks not much bigger around than an arrow shaft, each roughly four inches long. Both had a carefully notched end; the other end was snapped off. The two pieces offered no immediate clue as to what their purpose was, but their presence seemed significant.

  Her task completed, Kustar quietly tucked the ivory shafts into her pouch and slipped the broken sword into her map case. The great axe was too large to remove without being noticed, so she rubbed more dirt on the engravings and hid it in the sheaf of ballista javelins. Done, she dusted her hands and nodded to herself: anyone following in her footsteps would have slender pickings indeed.

  It was nearly midnight by the time she had finished in the warehouse, but the sun had hardly cleared the horizon when she sat back down at her desk, skin still tingling from a hot bath and her wet hair still wrapped in a towel. Sipping a cup of tea, she reviewed a treatise on Felher uses of Gate-magic, and on the Gates used in the initial raid itself; the document made clear that the ivory shafts she had found had no place in such devices.

  She carefully referred to the appropriate reports before marking the locations where each of the Den members 'corpses' were found with numbered triangles in black. A quick glance at the roster showed that there were plenty of missing slaves and Thanes of the appropriate races and sexes to make deception a very reasonable possibility.

  Leaning back, she nibbled on a hot buttered roll and reviewed what she had developed so far. Her suspect Den had entered Alantarn, sold their goods, then sterilized their gear from a Seer's prying. They slipped out, opened the egran, planted items on the bodies of slaves or Thanes to fake their deaths, ambushed a cart...no, came across Felher who had just ambushed a supply cart, wiped out the surviving rat-men, and then retreated to the corral, dug in while the Gate was opened, and escaped.

  Kustar shook her head, absently licking butter off her fingers while she studied her map. No, it was too simple: the Anlarc had sensed the Gate being activated not long after the enchantment had begun, and that had happened as the fighting was dying down. There was too much time unaccounted for between opening the egran for the Felher and opening their Gate to escape. Her Den had been up to something else in the meanwhile.

  She frowned for a moment, then shrugged: more thought on that later. The Den was admitted in a violation of security procedures that was instigated by Era Ludio, head of a merchant faction in Alantarn. Treason? Not likely: Era Ludio ended up dead in the raid, or just before, Kustar was beginning to suspect. Ludio was probably working some sort of scheme for personal advancement, but outright treason seemed extremely unlikely. Digging into the background information on the Den's entrance into Alantarn, she located the passage that she was seeking: one day before the main party reached the Outer Line, two Den members delivered a letter addressed to Era Ludio to the road-fort on the Outer Line; the next day as the Den arrives, Era Ludio arranges for them to be admitted to the Inner Keep. Kustar nodded: the Den had more to trade than was listed on their manifest, and proved it either in their letter, or in an earlier message. Ludio got them into the Inner Keep as a protective measure, believing they would not dare murder him in the Inner Keep. What Ludio had not counted on, Kustar grinned, was that the killers had their own way out.

  That was the How she realized: with Ludio's cover letter, bought with some smuggled secret or item, the Den could be confident of getting into Alantarn without the stringent first-time security measures that would have foiled their plan no matter how cunningly hidden were the Gates. That left Who and Why. Who was partially explained; at least they knew what guise they had been in when they entered Alantarn, but the Why was still a mystery. Even with Ludio's help, it was an incredibly dangerous mission, which was executed with considerable skill. You couldn't buy skill like that with gold, not for a mission such as this.

  The report on Era Ludio’s involvement in the raid was brief as there was little to say: while taking a midnight stroll, a common habit of his, he was caught up in the raid and killed by a Felher dart. Several of his Thane bodyguards had likewise perished. Further information on Ludio was sparse, she discovered after checking several reports: most of Ludio’s personal staff had been slain in the second raid, their organization having been hit by an especially violent slave revolt in the opening hours, thus closing out any likely leads should Ludio have confided his plans with a trusted subordinate.

  Taking a fresh sheet of vellum, she carefully drew out a key of the symbols used on her map before indicating the spot where he died with a red dot. Marked it, and stopped, frowning. She hadn't noticed it from the location given on the report, but Ludio's body was found across the street from the back wall of one of the Treasury annexes, an annex used to store magical goods, and, more importantly, an annex that had been penetrated during the raid.

  Kustar swore as she dug through her index. It was typical that no one else had noticed: Merchant security would have done the report on Ludio, Treasury security would have done the report on the annex raid, and Pargaie officers would have done the reports on any fighting in the street. And none of them talked to each other unless they had to, so that without the whole picture it would be safe to assume that Ludio was in the wrong place at the wrong time. What Kustar suspected was that the Den had met secretly with Ludio and then marched him to the annex, using the presence of the Era as a cover. The dark-haired officer would dearly have loved to interview every patrol leader on duty that night to see if Ludio's presence had kept them from checking the identification of any group, but losses amongst the roving patrols had been nearly one hundred per cent as they were first to respond to the raid and faced the worst odds. Those few who had survived had been further decimated in the fighting during the second raid, making her chances of finding one virtually nil.

  Finally locating the report, she whistled. The annex had been hit not once, but twice during the raid. The heavily fortified building, which had a permanent guard force stationed there at all hours, had a back wall blown open by magical means just after the alarm was raised. The garrison was held from the breach in hard fighting while one of the strongrooms were rifled; the raiders then faded away. Shortly thereafter, a full Pac
of veteran Felher hit the annex and made away with still more loot. There being two attacks made exact determination of what was taken in each assault unclear; worse, none of the guard force survived the dual raids.

  There were several points that were very clear, however: while some Felher weapons were used in the first assault, some of the guard force had been killed by Human-forged throwing axes and javelins; other dead guards bore wounds such as heavy swords and axes would make. And the wall which had been breached was directly across the street from where Ludio's body lay.

  Kustar forced her hand to be steady as she marked a black 'x' on the annex. The Den meets Ludio, uses him for cover as they place the egran and take up position next to the annex; they kill him and breach the annex when the alarm is raised, loot the annex while they hold off the guards, leaving behind Felher weapons to cloud the issue. Crossing the Inner Keep they wipe out the Felher survivors of the cart-fight, where they secure corpses, crossbows, and hecla, before falling back to the corral, and escape. She paused, then frowned and shook her head. It still didn't fit; the timing was good enough, but the path from the annex to where the bodies were planted, to the cart ambush and then to the corral had a very pronounced dog-leg without any apparent reason for it. There was still something she hadn't uncovered.

  She dug out an inventory of the items missing from the annex, a hefty document containing as it did both physical descriptions and proprieties. Shaking out her nearly dry hair, she began to brush it with long, sure strokes as she worked her way through the lists. It was impossible to tell what was taken in which assault, but by the end of it she was sure of two things: there wasn't anything taken from the annex that was of itself worth the risk of the raid into Alantarn, and nothing taken had ivory shafts as part of its composition.