They went through the border and entered Valisandra. Almost instantly the landscape seemed a little meaner, a little more threatening, and the atmosphere seemed thick and menacing.
There was no real physical difference, nothing you could put your finger on or put into words, but it was tangible none the less. There was the smell of evil about, and it was unmistakable and unpleasant. Even the horses sensed it and grew a bit more nervous.
“Jeez! I’m as pissed off as you are about the hair,” he told her.
“I am only sorry you no longer find me pleasing to look at, Master,” she replied. “I was warned of this back in Terdiera, when I suggested to the Imir that the alchemist might wish to dye my hair in disguise as well.”
“You knew? Why didn’t you say something, then?”
“There was no purpose to it. We had to come, so it was inevitable.”
“Well, for the record, I don’t think you look bad at all. Incredibly different, but I guess I’d look different with all my hair off, too. But it makes you look sexy and exotic. On some people it would be a disaster.”
“You are kind to say so, Master.”
“I can see that it bothers you, though. When we get back, we’ll have the good Doctor Mujahn put it back as good as before. If he can grow hair on an old Injun like me, he can sure do it for you.”
“Thank you, Master. I do not know how it looks, but it makes me feel, oddly, naked in a way I have not ever felt before.”
“Well, we’re going into colder climates pretty quickly now. The only direction other than north is up. What the hell is the hafiid they talked about? Sheesh! Seems to me like you’d want more hair in a place like we’re going, not less!”
“I believe the idea is to insure a slave is always under control,” she responded. “The hafiid is a garment, much like a robe, usually of wool, and a headdress of sorts. One wears it with boots or barefoot while outside. There is also a mask and gloves for when it is very cold. When a slave enters a warm place, she surrenders it to her master, or to the person in charge of the place, and gets it back when she leaves. You are unlikely to go outside or into places you should not when you are like this and it is cold out.”
“Huh! What do they do with the guys?”
“I, too, was curious about that. Much the same, although they are allowed a codpiece. Their garment is a hooded black woolen robe, tied at the waist.”
“Huh! They get shaved, too?”
She nodded. “All over. The same. They are often, but not always, neutered as well. I believe when Valisandrans speak of geldings they are not speaking of horses.”
He felt a twinge in the vital areas there. “This has been a custom in Valisandra?”
“No, Master. It is a custom in most of the tribes of Hypboreya, the only land left in all Husaquahr where the child of a slave is a slave as well. Some of the same tribes lived across the river here and practiced Hypboreyan customs. Clearly those customs are now becoming the law here, until both countries are the same. What you see here is what would be extended to Marquewood as well, if they win, and High Pothique, and then all Husaquahr.”
“Well, it certainly puts-new juice to do the job and do it right here.” He shook his head. “And they call me a barbarian!”
In most of Husaquahr slaves were always regarded as people; they were just legally domestic animals. Here, or at least in the customs that had dribbled over and were now law, slaves were. regarded as animals, not human at all. Somehow that sounded like a nice distinction, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. Maybe it was mostly in the fact that in southern society slavery at least wasn’t inherited.
Of course, back home once, millions of men fought a bitter war to end slavery and they won, so now the descendants of slaves had the right to sharecrop a farm or get hooked on drugs or live in squalid ghettos as welfare wards, right? And high-sounding academic types could go on talk shows and blabber about liberation and equality while thousands more kids got hooked on drugs or put in a pimp’s “stable” and forced to work the streets, and those high-sounders could forget that most of the rest of the world lived not much different than Husaquahr. Maybe it was only different by degree after all. He broke off that reverie since it got him nowhere and did nobody any good. But, man, it was tough not to get real cynical when the good guys weren’t really good, they just weren’t as all-out bad as the bad guys.
At least they’d passed the first hurdle, the first real test, and if the truth about Mia hadn’t come out, both of them would have flunked, and he knew it. Tiana, no matter what, would have killed herself rather than allow them to do to her what was just done to Mia, and he’d have turned around and said the hell with it rather than sit back and watch it done.
“How’d you find out so much about this?” he asked her.
“I, too, had my briefing, Master,” she replied.
“Oh, yeah? Anything else you know that you’re not telling me?”
“Nothing of importance.”
He looked around. “I wonder where Marge is? It’s pretty late for her to be up, but I hope she didn’t go to sleep in that forest waiting for us. There’s something just, well, dangerous about this place.”
Marge, however, finally did appear, sleepy but aware. “Oh, boy!” she said, looking at Mia. “They really do a job, don’t they? Hey, it doesn’t look so bad! Just wear the big earrings to set it all off.”
“What took you so long?” Joe asked. “I was beginning to get worried.”
“When I saw you hung up at the station, I took the time to do a little scouting of the land. It’s real oppressive. Can’t you feel it?”
He nodded. “You can cut it with a knife.”
“Even the forest’s ugly. The trees are starting to grow weird and twist around, and there are lots more ugly weeds.”
He stared emptily into the trees for a moment, then said, “It’s because the wood nymphs are sick. They can’t do their job properly. If this keeps up, they’ll eventually die, and the satyrs who husband the animals will turn wild and vicious.”
Now, how did he know that? Not by learning, but instinctively. And he felt it, the nausea from the trees.
Marge frowned, knowing how he knew what he did. “So maybe there really is such a thing as an evil wood. If this is the way it is just inside the country, and a country that’s only controlled by the bad guys, I’m not anxious at all to see their land.”
He nodded. “You watch it. There’s a lot of evil fairies ascendant in this land. Maybe as bad or worse than evil humans. And some of them can fly, too.”
“Uh-huh,” she responded, settling in for her sleep.
Mia looked around. “It is as if there is a great shadow on this land, darkening all that live within it,” she said. “Is that not what we are to try and lift?”
“Yeah, that’s the idea, but we’ve got a long way to go.”
Just a few miles farther on, though, came the second test. Someone had built an ersatz gate of logs across the road, and that someone was six of the meanest-looking guys he’d seen in a long time.
He came up to just in front of the gate and stopped. “What is this about?” he demanded to know.
Their leader, a big man, dressed in black jerkin and leather boots and carrying a crossbow under his arm stepped forward. Joe could swear he could count the fleas on the man.
“This here’s a tollgate,” he said in the light tone of a man who is totally in charge. “You got to pay a toll to go on.”
“I see. And you are with the government?”
Several of the men sniggered at that.
“Yeah, we collect for the guv,” the leader responded, and there was more sniggering.
“Uh-huh. And how much do you collect?”
“All we kin git,” one of the others said, chuckling evilly.
Joe slid off his horse in a casual way, at one and the same time shifting his swordbelt to the proper position.
“Now, why don’t I believe you?�
� Joe mused aloud, almost taunting.
“You can believe this, foreigner,” the leader responded. “There’s six of us and you got just you and the bitch.”
Mia slid off her horse to the other side, coolly reaching into a saddle pocket and picking up a small throwing knife, which she deftly palmed. Even this naked, without even the hair, it was possible to hide things if you just stood right and moved right.
Joe looked them over. The leader was fairly near; no problem. Three of the other five looked pretty relaxed; they would waste precious time bringing any kind of weapon to bear. The one with the loaded crossbow aimed straight at his chest was the immediate problem. He calculated position, trying to insure that he had the proper angle and that nothing else would be in the way. Mia had moved closer to the men but out of the line of fire and stood there kind of sexily, but tense.
“Six is a problem,” Joe admitted. “Five is much simpler. But, of course, you give me no choice. It is give you everything and live, or refuse and die.” He had his hand on the sword hilt now, and he could feel Irving’s anticipation, its energy, even sheathed, feel its power uniting his arm and its dwarf magic.
“That’s the choice.”
“I think I choose that you all die,” Joe responded, and the answer caught the leader off guard for a precious fraction of a second. Joe leaped and the great broadsword sang and sliced clean through the leader’s neck, sending his head, still with a bewildered look on its face, high in the air.
At the same moment, Mia smoothly threw the knife into the chest of the man with the cocked crossbow. He screamed and bent over and the bolt shot harmlessly into the ground several feet from anybody.
Reacting to a two-pronged attack, the remaining four split, three fanning out against Joe, swords drawn, while one, with a maniacal leer, came right at Mia. She waited patiently for him, then, at almost the last second, leaped and kicked him straight in the chest, sending him backward while she whirled and retained her balance. The man she’d struck was hurt badly, probably with crushed ribs, but he was getting to his feet. She ran at him and gave him a kick to the side of the head; then, spying the crossbow bolt in the ground, she reached down, pulled it out, and plunged it into the man’s neck.
Joe faced the trio, waiting for one to get brave enough to close.
“Come on, come on,” the big man invited them. “I haven’t got all day. I want to be in town by dark!”
“Big talk!” one snapped. “There’s—”
”Three of you now,” Joe finished. “We’re halfway done and I haven’t even had any fun yet. If you stay like this too much longer, my girl’s going to have an easy time plugging each of you in the back and I won’t even get to fight!”
There was a sound like a giant rubber band being sprung at high tension and the middle man screamed, then pitched over, a bolt in his back.
The other two backed up nervously. “Okay, Mister, okay! Call it off!” one of them cried. “No toll for you!”
“You don’t get off that easily,” he told them. “You insulted my girl. She doesn’t like anybody calling her a bitch but me. And I don’t like ragtag bandits.”
They both threw down their swords. Mia, who’d had enough time to reload and recock the bow, looked very disappointed.
“All right! All right! We give up! Just let us go!” one of them pleaded.
Joe sheathed his sword but called, “Mia, keep them covered. Shoot the first one who so much as scratches his fleas and I’ll have time to take the manhood from the other one!”
“Your wish is my command, Master,” she responded, never enjoying that line more than now.
Methodically, never taking his eyes completely off the pair, he rifled the headless corpse of the leader, coming up with two small bags. Straightening up, he quickly looked into them and found, as he’d expected, one had coins, the other gems. He turned to the pair. “Now, the first thing you are going to do is tear down that barricade,” he told them.
“Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” they both said, going to it with a vengeance. Within minutes, they had it reasonably cleared.
“Now—where are your horses? Your horses! Where?”
They pointed to the trees, and he went over to Mia and took the crossbow. He never liked them; one shot and then you had nothing, but if he couldn’t take one of these idiots barehanded he didn’t deserve to be out here. “Mia, go get the horses and any belongings you find that won’t have to be burned,” he ordered. She went, and soon came back, leading the horses two at a time.
“See if you can tie off all six to ours,” he told her.
”You ain’t gonna leave us with no horses!” one of the robbers wailed. “We couldn’t get no place afore dark on foot!”
“Two grown men afraid of the dark,” he mocked. “If you’re that scared, you can make the border before sunset with a good pace. Do you good. And, by that time, you’ll have no problems thinking up a good story for the nice men there. And it’ll be a doozy, I bet. Take off all your clothes!”
“Why, you can’t ask us to do that! It’s against the Rules or somethin’!”
“Ain’t fair,” the other agreed.
He laughed. “You boys want a code of honor, you better head way south,” he told them. “Haven’t you got it yet? I am robbing you!” He uncocked the crossbow almost inviting them to come at him, and tossed it away, then went again to his sword. “Now, which is it? Your clothes or your manhood? I wonder if a man could make it back to that entry station that way without bleeding to death?”
They raced each other to get it all off.
He gestured at the two men, who looked even worse in the buff than they looked in those clothes, then at the road back the way they came. “Now, run!” he ordered. “I’m going to count as high as I can, then I’m gonna pick up that crossbow and fire it right down that road.”
“How high kin you count?” one asked.
“I don’t know. Let’s see, I got one finger, two fingers…”
They were off like a shot, making a hilarious sight running down that road, and even Mia laughed at them as they quickly were out of sight.
“Anything but the horses?” he asked her.
“Saddlebags, Master. A couple of crossbows, extra bolts, and a fair amount of Marquewood silks. Also two dead men. It appears we were not their first victims of the day.”
He nodded. “Well, pack up what you can. Can you tie up the horses so we can take them all in? They’re pretty average looking but they ought to bring some money.”
She went to do that and he looked around at the four dead bodies. He felt terrific! His old confidence was completely back. And yet, he realized, he’d only been responsible for one of them directly and another by misdirection. Mia had done most of the work and as good as any fighter he’d ever seen.
Mia was soon back. “All set?” he asked her.
“But for one thing, Master,” she responded, running to the first man she’d killed and removing the knife, then cleaning it on his tunic.
“You were amazing,” he told her honestly. “Tiana could not have done any better.”
She beamed. “I was sure about the first one, Master, but not the second. It is very odd, but I had never been able to do that sort of kick before. I think my hair always got in the way or threw me off. This time I did not have to allow for the hair. Perhaps this is not such a tragedy, after all.”
“Well, don’t get too cocky!” he warned. “These guys were dangerous, yes, but they were common thieves. Professionals would have reacted without thinking, and they would not have taken you for granted.”
She spat on the ground near a body. “That sort of man always takes girl slaves for granted, Master.” She ran lightly back and jumped atop her horse, then gathered what reins she could and tied everything off. They looked now like horse-breeders on their way to market.
Joe mounted his own horse and started past the former barricade. “On the road again,” he sang. “Can’t wait to get back on the road again …”
<
br /> Marge stirred from under her tarp and peered out fuzzily. “Huh, wuzzit?” She looked around and suddenly saw a whole lot more horses around her. “Where’d they come from?”
Joe laughed. “Poor Marge! Go back to sleep! A robbery and a fight can’t wake you up, but my singing does it every time!”
Marge peered blurrily at the horses, then at Mia and Joe, frowned, shrugged, and crawled back under her tarp.
It wasn’t much of a town, but it was clearly seeing better days because of the proximity of military units. There had been a lot of new and obviously slipshod construction along its one main street, probably to serve the military forces who had first passed it by, then returned in the truce and remained nearby.
The stable manager was taken aback at the number of horses. “They’re for sale,” Joe told him. “Cheap.”
The livery man, a stout, middle-aged man, with gray hair and mustache dressed in brown, who looked and smelled as if he’d been born in the stable, looked them over. “Ain’t much,” he commented. “Serviceable, though. You got clear title?”
“The men who owned them won’t be coming to claim them, if that’s what you mean,” Joe answered. “They made a serious mistake of trying to rob me.”
“Well, I’ll be swaggered! I thought that was Stirt’s horse there!”
“Scruffy man, fleas, dirty gray clothes?”
“The very one!”
“If he returns, he’ll be carrying his head under his arm,” Joe told the liveryman. “If he does and still wants his horse, I’ll refund your money.”
The liveryman looked suddenly frightened. “You shouldn’t oughta joke like that, son. Not ’round here. It ain’t all that improbable!”
“Was he a friend of yours?”
“Nope. Real backstabber. Bad from the start. It’s just that he owed me money. Not that I was gonna get it anyway, but…”
“Thirty for the lot and you put up my three for the night,” Joe told him.
“Ain’t possible! I’ll be lucky to resell the lot for twenty-five afore some nosy somebody from the military district comes in and confiscates them as necessary for the defense. Ten plus the board and feed of yours.”
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