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suspicions himself-especially when he received pressure to extend the regiment posted to Ravelin.
    Ragnarson had, on several occasions, tried to convince the Guild factors that his little state just couldn't afford the protection. Ravelin remained heavily indebted from the civil war. He argued that only low-interest loans and outright grants from Itaskia were keeping the kingdom above water. If El Murid died or were overthrown, that aid would end. Itaskia would lose its need for a buffer on the borders of Hammad al Nakir.
    Following the inevitable bitter argument with Balfour, Bragi spoke to the Thing, doing his best to shuffle his three hats without favoring any one. Still, as chief of the armed forces, he concentrated on an appropriations measure.
    The bill was for the maintenance of the Mercenary regiment. The parliament supported its hire even less enthusiastically than Ragnarson.
    Such matters, and personal problems, distracted him so much during subsequent months that he took little notice of the enduring absence of his fat friend, whom he had instructed to disappear, so to speak, anyway.
    His immediate goal, Mocker decided, had to be Sedlmayr. Ravelin's second largest city nestled between the breasts of the
    Kapenrungs within days of Haroun's primary camps. He would make inquiries there, alerting Haroun's agents to his presence. Their response would dictate his latter activities.
    There were a dozen moving camps within fifty miles. He might end up wandering from one to another till he located Haroun.
    The rooftops of Vorgreberg had just dipped behind the horizon when he heard the clop-clop of a faster horse coming up behind him. He glanced back. Another lone rider.
    He slowed, allowing the rider to catch up. "Hail, friend met upon trail."
    The man smiled, replied in kind, and thereafter they rode together, chance-met companions sharing a day's conversation to ease the rigors of the journey. The traveler said he was Sir Keren of Sincic, a Nordmen knight southbound on personal business.
    M ocker missed the signs. He had taken Bragi at his word. No danger in the mission. He didn't catch a whiff of peril.
    Until the four ambushers sprang from the forest a half day further south.
    The knight downed him with a blow from behind as he slew a second bushwhacker with a sword almost too swift to follow. Half conscious, he mumbled as they bound him, "Woe! Am getting old. Feeble in head. Trusting stranger. What kind fool you, idiot Mocker? Deserve whatever happens, absolute."
    The survivors taunted him, and beat him mercilessly. Mocker marked the little one with the eye-patch. He would undergo the most exquisite tortures after the tables turned.
    Mocker didn't doubt that they would. His past justified that optimism.
    After dark, following back-ways and forest trails, his captors took him southeastward, into the province of Uhlmansiek. So confident were they that they didn't bother concealing anything from him.
    "A friend of mine," said the knight, "Habibullah the ambassador, sent us."
    "Is a puzzlement. Self, profess bambizoolment. Met same two nights passing, speaking once to same, maybeso. Self, am wondering why same wants inconsequential-though ponder-ous, admit-self snapped up like slave by second-class thugs pretending to entitlement?"
    Sir Keren laughed. "But you've met before. A long time ago.
    You gutted him and left him for dead the night you kidnapped El Murid's daughter."
    That put a nasty complexion on the matter. Mocker felt a new, deeper fear. Now he knew his destination.
    They would have a very special, very painful welcome for him at Al Rhemish.
    But Fate was to deprive him of his visit to the Most Holy Mrazkim Shrines. They were somehwere in the Uhlmansiek Kapenrungs when it happened.
    They rounded a bend. Two horsemen blocked their path. One was Guild Colonel Balfour, the second an equally hard and scarred Mercenary battalion chieftain. Mocker remembered both from the Victory Day celebration.
    "Hai!" he cried, for,