CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

The excursion into Laifya was brief and bloody. Azrat, operating again with the men who had already attached themselves to him, killed and robbed independently of the main force which attacked and completely destroyed a small, isolated Murak garrison. At night Nopin hunted victims of his own, and had to make a larger bag for his collection of trophies.
Before the Muraks were able to respond, the Imperial Horse had slipped back over the Nontock and vanished into the Sairish forest. It moved south, informed of what lay ahead by numerous scouts. Towns, villages and hamlets were given a wide birth; thoroughfares were crossed with extreme caution.
As a guide, Redz was useless; not once did he recognise where they were, but Chaldez knew that as long as they kept the rising sun on their left they had to be going roughly in the right direction. It was Azrat who eventually identified their position. He told Chaldez that they were in the border province of Fromond. The name meant nothing to Chaldez, but in fact he was at that moment within half a day's ride of the royal lodge where he was born.
Azrat drew a crude map of the region with the point of a stick in the sand beside a stream.
"Here," he said, making a groove with his stick, "is what they call the Cy Gorge. It's between us and Kroya. We're on this side, Kroya's there." and he indicated an area beyond the gorge. "It's crossed at this end," he said, making a mark in the sand to show where he meant. Then he looked up at Chaldez. "There's a bridge - the greatest bridge in the world; I've seen it," and as though to show off his knowledge, he added that it was overlooked on the Kroyan side by the castle and town of Lowith. Returning to his map, he broke up an elongated patch of sand with the point of his stick. "This is all marsh and bog - very dangerous," he said, and from its position Chaldez gathered that it began near the bridge and continued in the same direction as the line of the gorge. Again Azrat looked up at Chaldez. "Bedekka's Bog they call it. People go in there and are never seen again. Whole armies have disappeared." He jabbed the stick into the sand. "Somewhere here is the Morden Serpent. They say it's body is thicker than a tree trunk and that its eyes are bigger than a man's head.”
Chaldez looked at him with alarm.
"The road to Felewith," went on Azrat, as though he had said nothing remarkable, "comes this way," and he had to move his feet so as to be able to draw it. "We're about here," - he prodded the sand, "and the River Put is somewhere here," and he added a squiggly line just in front of Chaldez's toes.
"Are there no other roads out of Kroya?" Chaldez asked.
"None," said Azrat. "Look. The gorge is on this side and the bog on the other. There's no other way."
"You mean everything that leaves Kroya has to go over this bridge?"
"Yes."
Something occurred then to Chaldez. Quickly he looked at Dan, but there was no hint in his expression that he was thinking the same thing. Chaldez was suddenly brisk. "We'll make camp here," he ordered, "and tomorrow we'll find out how close we are to the road to Felewith."
While everyone else was busy constructing bivouacs and erecting the few tents they carried with them, Chaldez got Dan on his own. "Azrat said nothing about Reard," he said, straightaway.

Dan looked at him blankly.
"You know Reard! Where we got separated from Doo . . . "
Dan shrugged. "Yes, I know Reard."
"Azrat said nothing leaves Kroya except over the bridge. When he drew that gorge I thought it was the one we sailed up - you know, to Reard. But it's a different one. There's no bridge at Reard, and we didn't have to cross a bog. It's obvious he doesn't know anything about Reard."
Dan had difficulty seeing the point.
“The way out of Kroya to Eujinni is through Reard. That's the way we went, and that's the way Cregitzig will be getting his supplies. According to Sigmar his army swept through Eujinni and he's now somewhere in the east. It's obvious, his supplies will be coming by boat from Raggan and up that gorge to Reard. You see that, don't you?"
Dan said "Yes, but there's nothing we can do about it. We can't very well tell Azrat, unless you want him to know everything . . . "
"Whatever we do here," said Chaldez, his tone despairing, "is going to be useless, as far as Sigmar is concerned."
Dan shrugged. "I don't see what we can do. If Azrat's never heard of Reard he's not going to be able to get us there. Sigmar should have thought of that before he sent us away. It's his fault."
That night Chaldez went over the problem again and again in his mind, but could find no solution. He would just have to forget about Reard and attack the convoys using the road to Felewith. It was going to be very unsatisfactory.
It was from that moment that his disillusionment with the mission began. He increasingly allowed Dan to take command, and when Dan once more pressed the case for allowing the Imperial Horse to split up into separate units so as to confuse the enemy, widen the area of attacks and make discovery harder, he gave way.
A complex system of signs, calls and rhythms beaten out on hollowed pieces of wood was evolved so as to enable the different units to locate each other, but to all intents and purposes the Imperial Horse ceased to exist in all but name. Chaldez took little interest in what was going on, and began to hate the style of operations, with their increasing stench of banditry. As his soldiers grew richer, so they became greedier, and more cunning and murderous. He wanted nothing to do with them. He became isolate and withdrawn, and inactivity gave him time to think about Tamasi. He yearned for her so intensely that he fell into a sort of decline, and when Dan suggested that he should rejoin the main army and leave the Imperial Horse, whose operations he obviously found so distasteful, he seized the idea as though his life depended on it. He began to make plans at once.
Three days later he left Fromond. He had chosen as travelling companions his friends from the Empire, Tsem, Rassi and Zikir, and he took Nopin to be his personal attendant, and Gudgar, the hunter/guide, to help out generally. At his final meeting with Dan before they rode away he implored him to maintain as far as possible the identity of the Imperial Horse as a military command. "I will send for you when we are ready to finish Cregitzig," he said.
Dan said "Yes." He was looking at him in an intense manner. "Sigmar murdered your mother and father," he said abruptly. "He would have murdered you if he had had the chance, and he will murder you if he finds out who you are. He stole your father's throne, and he and his children will keep it from you and yours. Sigmar is your great enemy. I think you have sometimes forgotten that, but I haven't, and I'll always remind you. When the Muraks have been destroyed, it will be Sigmar's turn. It is your destiny to be king of Sair. I know it. Remember how I knew when the meat we were eating was poisoned? I saved your life then. In the same way as I knew then, I know now that you will be king. I have known it ever since we sailed for Theigia."
Chaldez had rarely seen Dan so earnest, and began to feel defensive. "This life doesn't suit me; you saw that. I'm not going because I prefer to be at Sigmar's side than at yours but because I can give nothing here. I have no instinct, no inclination for all this," and he waved his hand to indicate their surroundings. "If I am good at anything it is devising tactics in a battle. You and I, we achieved things to be proud of against the Karandi, but here I'm useless . . . "
Dan did not contradict him. "I know all that. I also know that the real reason why you are so discontented here is because of Tamasi, and that's what worries me."
"Don't worry!" Chaldez exclaimed. Then he lied. "Tamasi meant no more to me than any of the others. I'll find Doo one day, and I'll make her my queen. Tamasi caught me at a moment when I needed someone, and anyway she'll not be with Sigmar's army . . . " but how he hoped she would!
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