The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [133]
"Totally true. Have you considered the back paths?"
"Well, can't go through Irapuato now, we'll have to go around…"
"Around? This is more serious than it seems. There're those strange peddlers in Uahapan – four of them and armed to the teeth, while the tax collector with his algvasils is in Koalkoman three weeks early. I strongly dislike this."
"Yeah, tough… Uahapan, Koalkoman, Irapuato – we're surrounded. Unless…"
The baron waved the implied suggestion aside: "If you mean the road to Tuanohato, forget it – bet you that it already has a presence. Most likely traveling circus men who show tricks like putting out candles with a crossbow bolt or slicing apricot pits in midair with a scimitar. But that's all right; what bothers me is that we're surrounded, yet there are no visitors in our village. Why?"
"Haven't gotten around to us yet?"
"Nope – the only way to Uahapan is through Iguatalpa, right? Better tell me this: if such a team were to show up in our village, would they be able to take me?"
"No way! You've told us to watch out for strangers, and we have. Even if they came with a hundred gendarmes, I'd still have time to get you out of the village through backyards, and then good luck finding us in the mountains. Should there be dogs, I have tobacco with pepper."
"Right, and they know it as well as we do. So what does this mean?"
"You wanna say," the mountain man squeezed his dagger hilt hard enough to whiten knuckles, "that they've found out that you're in Iguatalpa?"
"For sure. It doesn't matter how at this point. That's number one. Number two that I really don't like is how crudely they're working. It only seems like all these peddlers, bandit catchers, and tax collectors are a net tightening around us. In reality, it's a bunch of noisemakers whose job is to chase the quarry towards the hunters."
"I don't get it."
"It's simple, actually. What did you immediately think about when you heard about gendarmes in Irapuato? Right – the back path through the mountains. Now, how smart does one have to be to station a couple of crossbowmen in camouflage gear by that path?"
Chekorello thought for a long time and then finally managed to say the obvious: "So what're we gonna do?" thus acknowledging Tangorn as the leader.
The baron shrugged: "We'll think, and most importantly, we'll not do anything rash, which is what they're trying to make us do. So: Uahapan, Koalkoman, Irapuato – all these are the noisemakers. Let's think of where the real hunters are and how to slip by them."
It's a standard problem, he thought. Once again I'm trying to catch a certain Baron Tangorn, thirty-two years old, brown hair, six feet tall, a Nordic complexion that really stands out around here, plus a recently acquired distinctive slight limp. Strangely enough, in reality it's not such a simple task – where should I deploy my line of hunters? And who should these hunters be? That last is pretty clear, actually – operatives who can recognize him, and no weapon-clad muscle boys visible from a mile away. The baron will certainly be in make-up and disguise, so even those who know him will have a hard time. How many such people are there? Hardly more than a dozen, more likely seven or eight – it's been four years, after all. Let's say a dozen; divide them into four shifts, since an observer can't be effective for more than six hours at a stretch. Not too many, is it? Makes no sense to split up the team, it has to be a fist, a squad of hunters; no way any of them can be a part of the noisemaking team, since by dividing them, we… Damn, but I'm stupid! No hunters among the noisemakers, who're not expected to meet Tangorn at all – he's not that much of a fool. Those teams actually have no need to know what this is all about; their job is just to rattle the bushes. So: key people are