At breakfast the next morning, when King Lamont and all his guests gathered in the feasting chamber, the two Gem Lords were sat half way down the long tables from him between genuinely minor nobles who spent the whole meal talking about breeks.
The two Gem Lords had read up on the subject before leaving Domandropolis, their habits and various strategies for hunting them, and were able to hold up their end of the conversation quite well, but they made no pretence of having engaged in this sport before. They knew there was no way they could have concealed their lack of experience. They told the others that, having heard tales of what great fun it was, they'd become eager to try it for themselves.
"Yes indeed," cried the King, laughing. "And when I heard that my good friends were up for it, I invited them up here to show them what it's all about!"
"We were honoured to receive your invitation," said Barl, bowing his head, "and accepted with what must have appeared unseemly haste. What uncultured louts we must have seemed to His Majesty!" A polite ripple of laughter spread around the table.
"Oh nonsense! Nonsense!" cried the King, however. "Who wouldn't jump at an opportunity like this? We can enjoy ourselves and talk business at the same time, eh?"
The others pricked up their ears at this and Tak's heart missed a beat as he started with alarm. After all their efforts to avoid drawing attention to themselves, why would the King deliberately draw attention to them?
King Lamont knew what he was doing, though, as Barl explained to him that evening when he'd had a chance to consider the situation. The other guests weren't fools. They knew the Gem Lords could only have come to meet privately with the King. He was giving nothing away by confirming it. They would only have grown even more suspicious if he'd tried to deny it.
Now, though, they would begin to think that it couldn't be anything all that important, nothing worth losing any sleep over, and that idea would spread until it reached the spies and agents of the King's masters. They would back off a little, not wanting to risk exposing themselves over any trivial matter, and would return their attentions to the other guests, all of whom were also subjects of intense scrutiny. And it had all been accomplished with a few cast away words! The King might have been weak militarily, but he was no stranger to the great game of statecraft.
Sure enough, the other guests paid them less attention after that, returning to their own plotting and scheming. Each of them having their own reasons for being there which the others wanted to find out. The two Gem Lords were beginning to realise that this wasn't really any kind of holiday for the King at all. He didn't dare leave the reins of power unattended for long because of what his enemies might do in his absence. His position, already precarious, required his constant attention if he wasn't to lose what little freedom he still had.
No, this 'hunting trip' was really just an opportunity to escape from his jailers for a little while, to conduct business away from their prying gazes. It was probably the only chance he ever got to meet the people currently gathered around the table, whom his 'ministers', really Yinnfarsian agents, would never have allowed into his presence. Tak wondered what that must be like. To be the ruler of a city, in name anyway, but needing the permission of his supposed underlings before he could make the smallest decision. Kept away from anyone his enemies didn't control. It made you wonder why they allowed him to take these hunting trips. Surely they must know what he was really up to...
He sat up with a start of realisation. Of course they knew! And the King knew that they knew! His enemies were using these meetings to find out who the King was plotting with, who his friends and allies were. All the guests were probably there under false names, so the Yinnfarsians would have a harder time finding out who they really were. The King was probably the only man present who was really who he said he was. Was it possible that some of these other guests could be recruited as allies?
Tak decided that that would be too dangerous. He didn't doubt that some of them were Yinnfarsian agents, and even those who were genuine enemies of Yinnfarsia might not necessarily be friends of Domandropolis. Best to leave all that to Barl. He was better at it than he was. Tak's job was just to get his friend out of danger if trouble started.
Just thinking this made him feel better. He could manipulate the raw essence of life itself and command forces to scatter armies and tear down mountains, but politics and intrigue left him floundering dangerously out of his depth. Better for him to stick to what he was best at.
The sport began an hour after breakfast had finished, when all the guests had had a chance to digest the large meal and change into their hunting pinks. Their servants produced changes of clothing for them that they changed into while admiring a huge and splendid portrait hanging on the wall of their morning chamber. The portrait showed someone bearing a close resemblance to the King, probably an ancestor, sitting on a horse and blowing on a long trumpet while dogs of a strange breed he'd never seen before milled around him. A small crowd of other hunters trailed behind, many of them grossly overweight, making Tak feel sorry for their horses.
The whole scene had a faintly ridiculous look to it, making the wizard wonder whether the artist had been trying to communicate some subtle message in his work. Tak had mixed feelings about hunting himself. On the one hand he couldn't help but feel sorry for the breeks whose end, being speared through the back and then clubbed to death, couldn't be pleasant, but on the other hand people had a right to enjoy the sport of their choice, and breek hunting was no worse than many other sports enjoyed by people throughout the human world. Tak himself enjoyed the occasional wager on the cock fights that took place in the streets of the city he helped to rule, and since animals suffered in the natural world anyway, fighting each other with tooth and claw, what was wrong with people finding sport in it?
Tak had learned how to ride a horse in the aristocratic fashion since the Gem Lords had risen to power, so he could take part in the twice annual ceremonial processions that wound through the streets of Domandropolis, during which crowds would wave and cheer and throw flowers in their path in gratitude for their deliverance from the rak Khalkedon. He'd never attempted anything faster than a gentle trot, though, while maintaining the rigidly upright sitting position that etiquette demanded from the nobility.
He climbed into the saddle, from which a short lance and a heavy hammer hung from leather straps, and gave the horse a few simple commands, leading it around in a small, tight circle and then up to the end of the courtyard and back, trying to resist the temptation to assume a more relaxed and comfortable posture. Something that would betray him as lowborn in a moment, to the ruin of their whole mission. The master of the hounds had gathered his dogs by the gates, and Tak saw that they were the same breed as the creatures in the portrait. Long bodied with short, stubby legs with long toes that looked as though they would function pretty well as paddles. They bore a strong resemblance to otters and had clearly been bred for swimming, but they were pretty fast on land as well and were tearing back and forth across the hard packed earth of the courtyard with all the speed of a much longer legged breed.
The other riders, meanwhile, were saddling up, waiting for the King to give the signal to begin. He had the hunting horn in his hand now and was fiddling with the mouthpiece as he glanced around at the others, seeing if they were ready to go.
"Open the gates!" he commanded, and the gatekeeper swung back the huge wooden crossbeam on its carefully balanced hinge. Another man then pulled the gates open, and the dogs howled their delight, jumping excitedly and straining at the leash. The master of the hounds led them out through the gate into the warm sunlight beyond and the horsemen filed through after them.
They rode out through the gates at a gentle walk, the King in the lead. The master of the hounds rode behind him, the dogs' leashes tied to the pommel of his saddle, and the other guests and their entourages followed behind in more or less single file, although some rode side by side so they could talk. They reached the marshes after half an hour, and then followed their edges for the most part, occasionally moving a little way inland to avoid patches of dangerously wet ground.
It was a couple of hours before they reached the spot the King had chosen for the day's sport. It was flat country, with nothing for miles around to obstruct visibility except a line of trees barely visible on the far horizon and, behind them, a line of rolling hills. In between there was nothing but flat empty grassland in which a few grazing cows watched them warily, while on their other side the steaming fens reached all the way to the horizon. A nightmare of sucking mud, treacherously shifting drylands and pools of deep, dark water in which slimy creatures swam and preyed on each other.
A light breeze was blowing across the flat ground bringing the rank smell of decay, but Tak was the only one who seemed to be bothered by it. The others were looking about with interest, examining the lie of the land with experienced eyes and making arcane comments to each other which made no sense to Tak at all. Things like the ground being 'fast' and the air 'helpful'. He looked at Barl, who could only shrug his own mystification.
"Ah, the sevenwolds," said Lord Tallow, one of the other guests, who'd moved up to ride beside the King. "An excellent choice, your Majesty. I believe it was here you bagged that fourteen pounder the other year, wasn't it?"
"Creep," muttered a man close to Tak as the King agreed that it had been an exceptionally fine catch and that pure luck had been as much to thank as his own skills.
"He never misses an opportunity to toady up to him," Tak was informed soberly. "He thinks he'll get a better deal as a result, as if the King were really that shallow."
"What kind of a deal?" asked the Gem Lord, but the other man was moving away now, walking his horse in the other direction, to where two other hunters were engaged in a whispered conversation. They broke off as the third man approached, then resumed their conversation, glancing at the King and his admirer from time to time. Tak was bewildered by the discovery that the King's guests were plotting with each other as well as with their host and thought that the politics going on around him would probably make a morass as large and treacherous as the fenlands. He just hoped Barl was able to keep up with it all because he was quite sure he wouldn't be able to. A brief summary of all the alliances and deals being made and broken around him right at this moment would probably have filled quite a large book.
King Lamont raised the hunting horn to his lips and blew a long, warbling note. A note that soared out across the steaming fenlands startling clouds of birds into the sky and bringing the hounds to an even greater frenzy of excitement.
"Let the hunt begin!" he cried, and the master of the hounds let the dogs off their leads. They bounded off into the marshes, diving into the water and swimming briskly with a frantic paddling and a supple flexing of their long bodies. They spread out in different directions, barking madly at each other, occasionally climbing out onto rises of dryer ground to sniff around, their coats plastered to their sides by the rank, muddy water.
The hunters watched eagerly, occasionally shouting their encouragement. "Come on girl! Go find him!" and "He's got a scent! Look, he's got a scent!" Whether the dog in question had a scent or not, though, there was no apparent change in his behaviour and they continued to spread out until there were only a couple still in view.
Barl brought his horse close alongside Tak's and called across to him. "Remember, on no account take your horse into the swamp," he warned. "The temptation to chase a breek back into the marshes may be almost overwhelming, but if you do..."
"Don't worry, I'm not stupid," replied Tak a little indignantly. "I'm not going to risk getting sucked under. I enjoy my life too much."
"Easy to say," said one of the other hunters, however. An elderly man with grey hair and a monocle, "but people tend to lost all their good sense in the thrill of the hunt. Happened to my brother five years back. Was on the tail of a huge breek. At least fifteen pounds. Would have made a fine trophy and he meant to have it, but it turned and headed back out. Bloody fool tried to follow it. Thought he could see where the firm ground was. Next minute, gone. Just like that. Horse and all, so watch out, my man. Heed your friend's good advice."
Tak thanked him for his words and promised to keep himself in check.
Suddenly a cry went up and Tak looked up to see the dogs yapping excitedly as they converged on a point a hundred yards out, where something was bubbling in the water as it burrowed into the hoped for safety of the silty lake bottom.
"There!" cried the monocled man, pointing with a long, bony finger. "They've found one!"
Tak strained his eyes to see the creature, but it was still burrowing into the soft silt, the amphibious creature having no need to breathe. The wizard wondered how the dogs would winkle it out. A moment later he saw. The first hound to reach the spot dived to the bottom and there was a great splashing and thrashing as it dug down after its quarry. A few moments later other dogs arrived to join in, the first surfacing for a moment to gulp the air, its silky fur matted with dark mud. Eventually the breek decided that hiding was futile and exploded back to the surface, where it swam madly in the only direction available. Due east, away from the watching hunters.
Tak saw a lizard like creature about three feet long with a broad, flat head and webbed feet. Sleek and graceful, a powerful swimmer. The dogs were faster, though, and chased after it, rapidly cutting it off and guiding it back towards the edge of the swamp. The creature clearly knew there was dry land in that direction and kept trying to escape back into the expanse of fenlands behind it, but the dogs were herding it like a sheep, keeping it on course for the waiting hunters who were spacing themselves out along its path. Waiting to see which of them it would emerge closest to.