"You're putting in more dents than you're taking out, oaf," the younger, taller of the pair complained, but Dubro went on hammering.
Walegrin and Thrusher moved closer without being noticed. A rope was tied across the doorway, usually a sign that Illyra was scrying. Walegrin tried to find the scent of her incense in the air but found only the smell of Dubro's fire.
There was a scream and a crash from the inside. Dubro dropped his hammer and bumped into Walegrin at the doorway. A third Stepson yanked the rope loose and attempted, unsuccessfully, to bully his way past both Dubro and Walegrin. The smith's hands closed on the Stepson's shoulder. The other pair reached for their weapons, but Thrusher already had his drawn. Everyone froze in place.
Illyra appeared in the doorway. "Just let them go, Dubro," she asked wearily. "The truth hurts him more than you can." She noticed Walegrin, sighed and retreated back into the darkness.
"Lying S'danzo bitch!" the third Stepson shouted after her.
Dubro changed his grip and shook the small man. "Get out of here before I change my mind," he said in a low voice.
"You haven't finished with the shield yet," the young one complained, but his companions hushed him, grabbed the shield and hurried into the rain.
Dubro turned his attention to Walegrin. "One might expect you to be here when something like this happens."
"You shouldn't let her see men like that."
"He wouldn't," Illyra explained from the doorway. "But that's the only kind that comes anymore-for mongering and scrying. The Stepsons scare anything else away."
"What about the women you used to see? The lovers and the merchants?" Walegrin's tone was harsh. "Or did the S'danzo not give them back?"
"No, Migurneal was not untrue. It's the same everywhere. No woman would venture this close Downwind anymore-and not many merchants either. They don't need me to tell them their luck if they run afoul of the Sacred Band."
"And you need the money because of the babes?" Walegrin concluded, then realized
he didn't hear the normal infantile sounds.
Illyra looked away. "Well, yes-and no," she said angrily. "We needed a wet nurse-and we found one. But it's not safe for her or the babies here. They're bullies. Worse than the hawk-masks were-those at least stayed in the gutters where they belonged. Arton and Lillis are at the Aphrodesia House."
It was not uncommon to foster a child at a well-run brothel where young women sold their milk. Myrtis, proprietor of the Aphrodesia, had an unquestionable reputation. Even the palace women kept their children in the Aphrodesia nursery. But fostering wasn't the S'danzo way and Walegrin could see Illyra had agreed to it only because she was scared.
"Have you been threatened?" he asked, sounding like the garrison office he had been.
Illyra didn't answer, but Dubro did. "They make threats everytime she tells them the truth. She tells them they're cowards-and their threats prove it. 'Lyra's too honest; she shouldn't answer the questions men shouldn't ask."
"But I'll answer your questions now, Walegrin," she offered, not facing her husband.
The incense holders were still scattered across the carpets. Her cards had been thrown against the wall. Walegrin watched while she set her things in order and seated herself behind the table. She had recovered from the birth of the twins, Walegrin judged. There was a pleasant maturity in her face but otherwise she was the same-until she took up the cards again.
"What do you seek," she asked.
"I have been betrayed, but I am still in danger. I wish to know whom I should fear most and where I might be safe."
Illyra's face relaxed into unemotional blank-ness. Her expressionless eyes stared into him. "The steel brings enemies, doesn't it?"
Though he had seen her in scrying trances before, the change chilled Walegrin. Yet he believed totally in her gifts since she had read the pottery fragment which had led him to the ore. "Yes, the steel brings enemies. Will it be the death of me? Is it the final link in a S'danzo forged chain?"
"Give me your sword," she demanded.
He handed her the Enlibar blade. Illyra stared at it a while then ran her palms along the flat and touched the edge tenderly with her fingertips. She set the metal on her table and sat motionless for so long that Walegrin began to fear for her. He had started for the door when her eyes widened and she called his name.
"The future has been clouded since I gave birth, Walegrin, but your future is as the fog to the sun.
"Steel belongs to no man but to itself alone- this steel even more so. It reeks of gods and magic, places the S'danzo do not see. But unless your betrayers work through the gods they will have no power over you. There is intrigue, treachery but none of it will harm you or the steel."
"What of the men of Ranke? Have they forgotten me? When I go north-"
"You will not go north," she said, taking hold of the sword again.
"'Lyra, I'm going north with my men and the swords."
"You will not go north."
"That's nonsense."
Illyra put the sword on the table again. "It is the clearest thing I've seen in a week, Walegrin. You will not go north; you will not leave Sanctuary."
"Then you cannot say no harm will come to me. What of the spy we trapped this morning. The stranger who got away. Do you see him?"
"No-he can mean nothing to you, but I'll try my cards." She picked up the deck, took his hand and pressed it against the cards."Perhaps your future is distinct from the steel. Make three piles then turn over the top card of each."
He placed the three piles where she pointed and flipped over the cards. The first showed two men dueling. Though blood dripped from their blades neither seemed injured. It was a card Walegrin had seen before. The second was unfamiliar and damaged by water running through the colors. It seemed to show a great mass of ships on the open sea. The third card showed an armored hand
clutching a sword-hill that changed to flame halfway up the blade. Without thinking Walegrin moved to touch the flame. Illyra's fingers closed over his and restrained him.
"Your first: the Two of Ores: steel. It means many things, but for you it is simply this steel itself. But you already know this.
'"Your second: this is the Seven of Ships, or it was the Seven of Ships. It was the fishing fleet, but ithas become something else." She squeezed his hand. "Here is all danger and opportunity. Not even the gods see this card as we see it now. The Seven of Ships sails out of the future; it sails for Sanctuary and nothing will be the same. Remember it!" she commanded and overturned the card again. "We were not meant to see what the gods have not yet seen.
"Your third is not a sword, though you thought it was. It is the Lance of Flames-the Oriflamme: leader's card. Coming with steel and the revealed future it places you in the vanguard. It is not a card for a man who believes in S'danzo curses."
"Don't speak in riddles, Illyra."
"It is simple. You are not cursed by the S'danzo-if you ever were. You have been marked by the gods; but remember what we say about the gods: it is all the same whether they curse or favor you. Since the birth of my children this is the first future which is not clouded. I see a huge fleet sailing for Sanctuary-and I see the Oriflamme. I will not interpret what I see."
"The men in Ranke will not reach me and Balustrus will not sell me?"
The S'danzo woman laughed as she gathered her cards. "Raise your eyes, Walegrin. It doesn't matter. Ranke is to the north and you're not going north. The steel, the fleet and the ori-flamme are right here."
"I do not understand."
The incense had burned down. Sunlight came in through the roped-off door. Illyra emerged from the aura of mystery to be herself again. "You are the only one who can understand, Walegrin," she told him. "I'm too tired, now. It doesn't really matter; I don't feel your doom- and I've felt doom often enough since the mercenaries started coming. Who knows. Maybe you aren't the one who understands. Things happen to you, around you, and you just muddle through. Tell Dubro I'll see no-one els
e today when you leave."
She stood up and went behind a curtain. He heard her lie down; he left quietly. Thrusherwas helping Dubro with a wheelrim, but both men stopped when they saw him.
"She wishes to be left alone the rest of the day," he said.
"Then you best begone from here."
Walegrin headed out from the awning without argument. Thrusher joined him.
"Well, what did you leam?"
"She told me that we will not go north and that a great fleet is headed for Sanctuary."
Thrusher stopped short. "She's mad," he exclaimed.
"I don't think so, but I don't understand either. In the meantime we'll follow our original plans. We'll come back to the city tonight and speak to the men you've found. There should be twenty-five swords finished by now-if there aren't, we'll cut our losses and leave with what we've got. I want to be out of here by sunrise."
6
The light in the tiny, upper room was provided by two foul-smelling candles. A man stood uncomfortably in the center of the room, the only place where he could stand without striking his head on the rough-hewn beams. Walegrin, deep within the comer shadows, fired questions at him.
"You say you can use a sword-do you fight in skirmish or battle?"
"Both. Before I came to Sanctuary, two years back, I lived a time at Valtostin. We fought the citizens by night and the Tostin tribes by day. I've killed twenty men in a single day, and I've got the scars to prove it."
Walegrin didn't doubt him. The man had the look of a seasoned fighter, not a brawler. Thrusher had seen him single-handedly subdue a pair of rowdies without undue injury or commotion. "But you left Valtostin?"
The man shifted his weight nervously. "Women-a woman." "And you came to Sanctuary to forget?" Walegrin suggested.
"There's always work for such as me; especially in a city like this."
"So you found work here, but not with the garrison. What did you do?"
"I guarded the property of a merchant..."
Walegrin did not need to hear the rest of the explanation; he'd heard it often enough. It was as if the surviving hawkmasks had settled on a single excuse for their past involvement with Jubal. In a way there was truth in it; Jubal's trade wasn't fundamentally different from the activities of a legitimate merchant especially here in Sanctuary.
"You know what I'm offering?" Walegrin asked flatly when the man had fallen silent. "Why come to me when Tempus needs Stepsons?" __
"I'd die before I served hint."
That too was the expected response. Walegrin emerged from the shadows to embrace his new man. "Well, die you might, Cubert. We quarter in a villa to the north of town. A sign says 'Sighing Trees,' if you read Wriggle. Otherwise you'll know it by the smell. We're with Balustrus, metal-master, for one more night."
Cubert knew the name and did not flinch at the sound of it. Perhaps he did not have the abhor-ence of magic and near-magic that most mercenaries had. Or he was simply a good soldier and accepted his lot with resignation. Thrusher emerged to open the door.
"Was that the last?" Walegrin asked when they were alone again.
"The best, anyway. There's one more, another hawkmask, and-" Thrusher paused, " a woman."
Walegrin's sigh made the candles flicker. "Very well-send her in."
It was not the custom of the army, even here in the hinterlands, to consider a woman fit for anything but cooking and fornicating. Jubal's rejection of this time-honored attitude was, to Walegrin, far more outrageous than any of his other activities. Unfortunately, with the Stepsons changing the face of the Downwind side of town, Walegrin was forced to consider these distaff aberations if he was to leave town with a dozen men-soldiers-swords, whatever, in his command.
The last candidate entered the room. Thrusher slid back under the eaves as soon as he had shut the door.
There were two types to these women Jubal had hired. The first was small-built, all teeth and eyes and utterly devoid of the traditional virtues almost every soldier brought into battle. The second type was a man save for accident of birth-big and broad, strong as any man of equal size, but as lacking in military honor as her scrawny sister.
This one was of the first type; her head barely reached Walegrin's chest. In a way she reminded him of Illyra and the resemblence was almost enough for him to order her out on the spot.
She was shaking out her short kilt; repairing a knot at the shoulder of her tunic which tried to conceal a small breast as grimy as the rest of her. Walegrin judged she hadn't eaten for two or three days. A half-healed slash stiffened her face; another wound ran down her hard, bare arm. Someone had tried to kill this woman and failed. She tugged wide-spread fingers through her matted, dark hair, doing nothing to improve it.
"Name," he demanded when she stood still again.
"Cythen." Her voice was remarkably pleasant for one so callused.
"You use a sword?"
"Well enough."
"A lad's sword, not a man's, I suppose."
Cythen's eyes flashed from the insult. "I learned the sword from my father and my brothers, my uncles and cousins. They gave me theirs when the time came."
"And Jubal?"
"And you," she stated defiantly.
Walegrin was impressed by her spirit-and wished he could hire her relatives instead. "How have you survived since Jubal's death-or don't you think he's dead?"
"There's not enough of us left for it to make a difference. We always had more enemies than friends. The hawkmask days are over. Jubal was our leader and no one could take his place, even for a few weeks. Myself, I went to the Street of Red Lanterns-but it's not to my taste. I was not always like this.
"I saw your man face down a Stepson-so I've come to see you and what you're worth."
A man shouldn't look at his prospective officer that way-not that she was flirting. Walegrin felt she was trying to reverse their roles.
"Jubal was smart and strong-maybe not as smart and strong as he thought he was; Temp us got him in the end. I put a high price on my loyalty and who I give it to. What are your plans? It's rumored you have hard steel. Who do you use it for?"
Walegrin did not reveal his surprise; he just stared back at her. He had far less experience than the slaver, fewer men and far less gold. Ranke, in the form of Tempus, had brought Jubal down-what chance, truly, did he have? "I have the steel of Enlibar forged into swords. The Nisibisi do not fight in neat ranks and files; they ambush and we will ambush them in turn until we've made our names. Then with more swords-"
She sighed loudly. For one raging moment Walegrin thought she would turn on her heels and leave. Had she honestly expected him to scrabble for Jubal's lost domain? Or did she sense the hollowness of his confidence?
"I doubt it-but at least I'll be out of Sanctuary," she offered him her hand as she spoke.
A mercenary captain welcomed his men with a hand-shake and a comrade's embrace. Wale-grin did not embrace women as comrades. When he needed to he found some ordinary slut, laid her on her back and, with her skirts up to hide her face, took what he needed. He had seen women, ladies, that he would not treat in such a manner-but they had never seen him.
Cythen was no slut, and she'd hurt him if he treated her that way. She was no lady, either- not with her clothes half-gone and covered with dirt. Still, he wasn't about to set her back on the streets-at least not until she had a good meal. After quickly wiping his hand on his hip, Wale-grin took hers.
She had a firm grip, not man-strong but strong enough to wield a sword. Trying to make it seem natural, Walegrin raised his other arm for the embrace and was saved from the deed itself by a thumping, shouting commotion on the stairs outside.
Thrusher was flat against the wall. Walegrin had a knife out of its forearm sheath and just enough time to see Cythen remove a nasty assassin's blade from somewhere in her skirt before the door burst open.
"They've taken her!"
The light from the torch on the landing blinded Walegrin to the details of the sc
ene before him. There was a central figure, huge and yelling; writhing attachments to it, also yelling and presumably his guards, and finally Thrusher, leaping out of the darkness to wrap lethal arms around the neck of the unsubdued invader. The dark hulk groaned. It fell back, squeezing Thrusher against the wall. It twisted, freeing its right arm, then calmly peeled someone off its left side and threw him into the eaves.
"Walegrin!" it bellowed. "They've taken her!"
Cythen was crouched on the balls of her feet, beneath the giant's notice but not Walegrin's. She was ready to strike when he laid a hand on her shoulder. She relaxed.
"Dubro?" Walegrin asked cautiously.
"They've taken her!" The smith's pain was not physical, but it was real nonetheless. Walegrin did not need to ask who had been taken, though he could not imagine how they had gotten past the smith in the first place.
"Tell me slowly: Who took her? How long ago? Why?"
The smith drew a shuddering breath and mastered himself. "It was just past sundown, a beggar-lad came up. He said there'd been an accident on the wharf. 'Lyra bid me help if I could, so I followed the lad. I lost him almost at once^ there was nothing on the wharf-" he paused, taking Walegrin's wrist in a bone crushing grip.
"It was a trap?" Walegrin suggested, grateful for the gauntlet that protected his wrists from the full power of Dubro's despair.
The smith nodded slowly. "She was gone!"
"She hadn't simply followed you and gotten lost-or gone to visit the other S'danzo?"
A deep-pitched groan forced its way out of Dubro's throat. "No-no. T'was all torn about. She fought, but she was gone-without her shawl. Walegrin, she goes nowhere without her shawl."
"She might have escaped to hide somewhere?"
"I've searched-else I'd have been here sooner," the smith explained, shifting his grip from Walegrin's wrist to his less-protected shoulder. "I roused all the S'danzo-and they searched with me. We found her shoe behind the farmer's stall by the river, but nothing else. I went home to look for signs." Dubro shook Walegrin for emphasis. "I found this!"
He withdrew an object from his pouch and held it so close that Walegrin couldn't see it. A measure of calm returned to the smith, he released Walegrin and let him study the object. It was a metal gauntlet boss, engraved and distinctive enough to identify its wearer, should he be found. But Walegrin did not recognize it. He handed it to Thrusher.
Storm Season tw-4 Page 14