CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

Dan and Chaldez rode on in silence, the river on their left. After a while Chaldez began to slap his thigh, repeatedly; Dan noticed that his shoulders were shaking.
"What's the matter?" he called.
Chaldez turned. He was laughing.
"It's not very funny," Dan said, irritably.
"Oh but it is!" said Chaldez. "The gods have made a great joke. Don't you see? They have sent us scurrying all over the world; made us fight battles we had nothing to do with; gave us riches and men, and poof! They have taken them all away. We are no better off than we were when we escaped from Reard all those years ago. We had nothing then and we have nothing now. It's all been for nothing. The gods are laughing at me. This is their big joke. Look at me!" he shouted at the sky, "I am laughing at your joke."
Dan saw that his cheeks were shiny with tears, but they were not tears of laughter, and now Chaldez was sobbing. "I should be dead!" he bellowed. Then he turned to Dan, the tears still running down his face. "How have I offended the gods that they should do this to me? What did I do? I think my coming into this world offended them. The lord Sigmar is their favourite. I am the one they hate."
Dan was too confused and alarmed to say anything. Chaldez gradually calmed down, and then Dan said "You realise we can't go back? You heard Sazarat, and even if he doesn't kill us we'll never get back to the Empire over that pass."
"So we ride on," said Chaldez. "We have food for another two days at the most. Then we die. It doesn't seem to matter what we do."
Dan said nothing. After a while Chaldez spoke again. "Why did she take the ruby? I thought she liked me," and he told Dan how he had played for her, and how she had gazed at him and sighed.
"It's simple," said Dan. "She wanted you and you made it clear she couldn't have you. Women are like that: love you one minute and destroy you the next. You made her hate you."
Chaldez wondered if he had, and found it hard to believe. "We were never alone," he objected. "That Dislowag was always with us. If she'd wanted that she'd have sent her way."
"She was waiting for a signal from you."
"I don't believe she was."
"So why did she take the ruby?"
"To save us? As they said?"
"Rubbish," said Dan, and they became silent again.
The next day they both heard the thud of horses' hooves coming down the valley behind them. They looked at one another. Chaldez said "I'm going to die here," and turning his horse around, drew his sword.
Two horsemen came into sight. They galloped up quite close, then reigned in their horses. For a moment they hesitated, as though uncertain as to what to do next, their horses shifting impatiently beneath them. Chaldez recognised them as being from the village. He and Dan waited.
"Greetings from the lord Sazarat's daughter!" called out one of them. His delivery was that of a person who has committed something to memory without understanding it.
"What does she want?" Chaldez called back.

"Greetings from the lord Sazarat's daughter," the man repeated.
Chaldez sheathed his sword and Dan did the same. The two villagers rode nearer.
"The lord Sazarat's daughter," said the spokesman, with slow deliberation, "wishes you to receive this gift."
Chaldez and Dan waited.
"What gift?" Dan demanded. The villagers looked at one another.
"What gift?" Dan shouted again.
The look of confusion on their faces gave way to smiles. "Gift," they repeated. The spokesman dismounted and walked up to Chaldez; he was holding out a small package. Chaldez leant down and took it, and knew at once what it contained.
"It's the ruby, isn't it?" said Dan.
Chaldez beamed at him and then unwrapped it. In another moment he was holding the locket and chain, and inside the locket was the ruby. "She gave it back!" he shouted. Dan thumped Chaldez on the back as he stared at the glowing jewel. Chaldez looked at the two villagers. They were now preoccupied with unfastening a bundle that was attached to the saddle of one of the horses. When it was free they offered it to Chaldez, repeating the word "gift" as they did so, but before taking it he dismounted.
He placed it on a rock and started to unwind the strips of material with which it was bound, it's weight and shape making him dread what he would find. Beneath the first few layers a patch of blood appeared; it became larger and wetter the deeper he went, and as he removed the final strips, tufts of hair showed.
Inside the bundle was the head of Valtrern; Chaldez stood back. The man's eyes were open and staring. Chaldez spoke to the villagers. "Thank Sazarat's daughter for her gifts." he pointed at the two men. "You repeat: 'Prince Chaldez thanks Sazarat's daughter for her gifts.'"
It was a while before they grasped what was required of them, and then they both hesitantly repeated his words, and he smiled and nodded, and they repeated them again. Chaldez clasped their shoulders and indicated that they might leave.
They were riding away when he remounted, but neither he nor Dan stirred; they both stared at the head, lying where he had left it on the rock and surrounded by the blood-soaked strips of material with which it had been bound. "A prettier thing I never saw," said Chaldez, and Dan laughed. Quickly Chaldez drew his sword, and with its point pierced the head through its cheek so that it became impaled, then he lifted into the air, and addressing it he said "the gods have punished you, Valtrern, as surely as they will punish the lord Sigmar. And now I give you to the birds," and he flung it away.
Later that day they again heard the sound of horses' hooves in the valley behind them, and this time when they stopped and turned they saw a crowd of mounted men bearing down on them. Dan was the first to recognise them. "They're ours!" he exclaimed. Soon he and Chaldez were in the midst of the survivors of their expedition. After greeting them, Chaldez shouted to Dan "I expected this! After the ruby was returned I knew Arwarnhi had remembered me."
The Seians said that they had been roped together after Chaldez and Dan had gone, and that from Valtrern's behaviour they got the impression that he was in charge of them. Preparations were made to take them out of the village, no doubt for them to be sold, but before Valtrern was ready to leave there was a burst of activity; he was seized, brought to the village square, and at the command of the headman, beheaded. The Seians were set free, fêted by the villagers, given back their horses and allowed to go.

Chaldez could only speculate what lay behind Valtrern's and his own sudden changes of fortune. Of one thing only he was sure: that his friend Orsar, the headman's daughter, was somehow responsible.
In this he was right.
Despite her apparent unconcern at the time, his denunciation of Valtrern when he had first gone to her house had made a deep impression on her. She was aware, too, that her husband distrusted and disliked the Laifyan for having displaced him as her father's most trusted adviser. It was easy to work on him and convince him that the Laifyan must be destroyed.
When it became known that her father had agreed to sell Chaldez and the others as slaves, she told her husband about the Roe-Aada ruby and said he must demand it at the last moment in return for Chaldez's and Dan's freedom. As soon as it was in her possession she arranged for it to be hidden in Valtrern's house, and then, pretending that it had gone missing, she caused a huge scene. Part of the plot involved Valtrern's woman, a relative of Orsar's companion, Dislowag. It was she who revealed that Valtrern had the ruby. His house was searched, and the ruby discovered, and before the day was out, Valtrern was dead. Sazarat, easily persuaded that Chaldez had been wronged, ordered the immediate release of the Seians.