“We’re done,” said Erik. “Let’s get back to your shop.”
They walked through the surprisingly bustling streets of Sarth. The town was always a fairly busy one, with many fishing villages bringing their catch to market. It was also an important secondary port between Ylith and Krondor, one which many traders and not a few smugglers from the Free Cities or Queg visited. Kingdom customs had been more lax there, and as a result the city had quite a large population of people who were enterprising, irrespective of who was governing, Kingdom or some recent invader.
Armed men were everywhere, yet the mood was relaxed. The mercenaries from Novindus who were billeted in Sarth obviously felt they were far enough behind the lines to not be taken unawares.
Erik and John hurried back to John’s business, and moved through the front, then into the rear storage room, where a very bored Roo sat in a corner, half dozing. Without preamble, he said, “Are we leaving?”
Erik nodded. “Tonight.”
John said, “I’ll have a boat down at the smugglers’ cove. You’ll carry cargo, and the two men who we left down there will be happy to get back home.”
Erik said, “Roo, look at this.”
Roo stood and came to where Erik opened up his sketches. He moved them around until they formed a map of the region around the town of Sarth. “You’ll need to memorize this, so if you get back and I don’t, you can redraw it.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Roo.
“I can’t risk carrying these.” He looked at Roo and John. “If we get stopped, and we’re carrying these maps, we’re going to be dead before anyone blinks. If we don’t have them, we might be able to bluff our way out.” He looked at John. “If you hear we are caught, John, you’re going to have to try tomorrow night to get down to Krondor.”
“Me?” said Vinci.
Roo said, “That’s all right, John. It’s not going to happen.”
“But if it does,” said Erik, “you’re going to have to carry word to Duke Duko and Owen Grey lock.” He pointed to the assembled pieces of paper. “Look at this, and remember everything.
“Natural terrain is the enemy,” said Erik. His finger showed a point where the checkpoint had been erected. “This is a bottleneck, this gap where the road runs atop the cliffs above the ocean and hard against the steep hillside.”
Sarth was built north of that gap, where the road swung suddenly westward and through the town. The southern edge of the town was hard against a cliff face, dropping down into a rocky beach where, even at low tide, there was no decent footing. The coast turned northwest after a while, and there Sarth’s harbor could be found, with a long sandy beach and several fishing villages to the north.
“Even if we landed support troops at the smuggler’s cove, we are still south of that gap,” said Erik.
His finger indicated the harbor. “They’ve only got one ship in the harbor, but look where it is.”
Roo said, “So if anyone sees a Kingdom fleet rounding the point south of town, they can move the ship to the mouth of the harbor and sink it.”
Erik said, “I’m no sailor, but I don’t think any ship we have can come from the south and make it through the harbor before they can move that ship and scuttle her.”
Roo said, “Unless we take her first.”
“We?” asked Erik.
“Figure of speech,” said Roo with a grin.
Erik shook his head. “We can’t get a message down to Krondor and return with a squad to take that ship. Owen will reach Krondor in three days’ time. We need to be down there in two, so we can give him the latest intelligence.”
Roo said, “If you stay and use that band of thugs John hired, you could take that ship.”
Erik said, “No. Orders. I’ve got to be back day after tomorrow.”
Roo looked at Vinci. “John?”
John held up his hands. “Not me!” He patted his ample gut and said, “I’m an old fat man, Roo, and I never was a fighter on my best day.”
Then Erik looked at Roo and said, “Would you care to volunteer for one last mission for King and Country?”
Roo frowned. “To what good?”
“You might save the lives of a lot of good men, shorten the war, and regain your lost wealth that much faster.” Erik pointed to the northeast end of town. “If we can chase Nordan’s soldiers up the coast and get ships up from Port Vykor into that harbor, we can resupply and move north that much faster.”
Roo said, “How many men do they keep on that ship, John?”
“A light crew, from what we can see. It’s been sitting there since winter. Every once in a while someone rows back and forth between the ship and the town, and we think they’ve loaded some ballast on it, but we’ve never seen any significant cargo; just a box of provisions now and again. So maybe it is a blockade ship.”
Roo scratched his head. “I’m an idiot for this, but I’ll take that ship for you, Erik. When is Greylock supposed to get here?”