The Diamond Throne Read Free

his damp cloak to reveal the leather-bound hilt of the plain broadsword belted at his side.
    There was a quick, startled silence in the dark street, followed by the rapid patter of fleeing feet.
    The big roan snorted derisively.
    ‘My sentiments exactly,’ Sparhawk agreed, pulling his cloak back around him. ‘Shall we proceed?’
    They entered a large square surrounded by hissing torches where most of the brightly coloured canvas booths had their fronts rolled down. A few forlornly hopeful enthusiasts remained open for business, stridently bawling their wares to indifferent passers-by hurrying home on a late, rainy evening. Sparhawk reined in his horse as a group of rowdy young nobles lurched unsteadily from the door of a seedy tavern, shouting drunkenly to each other as they crossed the square. He waited calmly until they vanished into a side street and then looked around, not so much wary as alert.
    Had there been but a few more people in the nearly empty square, even Sparhawk’s trained eye might not have noticed Krager. The man was of medium height and he was rumpled and unkempt. His boots were muddy, and his maroon cape carelessly caught at the throat. He slouched across the square, his wet, colourless hair plastered down on his narrow skull and his watery eyes blinking nearsightedly as he peered about in the rain. Sparhawk drew in his breath sharply. He hadn’t seen Krager since that night in Cippria, almost ten years ago, and the man had aged considerably His face was greyer and more pouchy-looking, but there could be no question that it was Krager.
    Since quick movements attracted the eye, Sparhawk’s reaction was studied. He dismounted slowly and led hisbig horse to a green canvas food vendor’s stall, keeping the animal between himself and the nearsighted man in the maroon cape. ‘Good evening, neighbour,’ he said to the brown-clad food vendor in his deadly quiet voice. ‘I have some business to attend to. I’ll pay you if you’ll watch my horse.’
    The unshaven vendor’s eyes came quickly alight.
    ‘Don’t even think it,’ Sparhawk warned. ‘The horse won’t follow you, no matter what you do – but I will, and you wouldn’t like that at all. Just take the pay and forget about trying to steal the horse.’
    The vendor looked at the big man’s bleak face, swallowed hard, and made a jerky attempt at a bow. ‘Whatever you say, my Lord,’ he agreed quickly, his words tumbling over each other. ‘I vow to you that your noble mount will be safe with me.’
    ‘Noble what?’
    ‘Noble mount – your horse’
    ‘Oh, I see I’d appreciate that.’
    ‘Can I do anything else for you, my Lord?’
    Sparhawk looked across the square at Krager’s back. ‘Do you by chance happen to have a bit of wire handy – about so long?’ He measured out perhaps three feet with his hands.
    ‘I may have, my Lord. The herring kegs are bound with wire. Let me look.’
    Sparhawk crossed his arms and leaned them on his saddle, watching Krager across the horse’s back. The past years, the blasting sun, and the women going to the wells in the steely light of early morning fell away, and quite suddenly he was back in the stockyards outside Cippria with the stink of dung and blood on him, the taste of fear and hatred in his mouth, and the pain of his wounds making him weak as his pursuers searched for him with their swords in their hands.
    He pulled his mind away from that, deliberately concentrating on this moment rather than the past. He hoped that the vendor could find some wire. Wire was good. No noise, no mess, and with a little time it could be made to look exotic – the kind of thing one might expect from a Styric or perhaps a Pelosian. It wasn’t so much Krager, he thought as the tense excitement built in him. Krager had never been more than a dim, feeble adjunct to Martel – an extension, another set of hands, just as the other man, Adus, had never been more than a weapon. It was what Krager’s death would