face was exhausted and bloodstreaked, one of her
eyes was blackened and swelling shut and she had
livid bruises all over her body. On top of that she
was covered in dust, and filthy, sweat-lank locks of
hair were straggling into her face. But despite all of
that, her eyes still held a certain amusement. "In
case you hadn't noticed, these little costumes of
ours are real gold and gems. We happen to be wear-
ing a small fortune in jewelry."
"Warrior's Truth!" Tarma looked a good deal
more closely at her scanty attire, and discovered
her partner was right. She grinned with real satis-
faction. "I guess I owe that damn blade of yours an
apology."
"Only," Kethry grinned back, "If we get back
into our own clothing before dawn."
"Why dawn?"
"Because that's when the rightful owners of these
trinkets are likely to wake up. I don't think they'd
let us keep them when we're found here if they
know we have them."
"Good point—but why should we want anyone to
know we're responsible for this mess?"
"Because when the rest of the population scrapes
up enough nerve to find out what happened, we're
going to be heroines—or at least we will until they
find out how many of their fathers and brothers
and husbands were trapped here tonight. By then,
we'll be long gone. Even if they don't reward us—
and they might, for delivering the town from a
demon—our reputation has just been made!"
Tarma's jaw dropped as she realized the truth of
that. "Shek," she said. "Turn me into a sheep!
You're right!" She threw back her head and laughed
into the morning sky. "Now all we need is the
fortune and a king's blessing!"
"Don't laugh, oathkin," Kethry replied with a
grin. "We just might get those, and sooner than you
think. After all, aren't we demon-slayers?"
Eight
Someone wrote a song about it—but that was
later. Much later—when the dust and dirt were
gone from the legend. When the sweat and blood
were only memories, and the pain was less than
that. And when the dead were all but forgotten
except to their own.
"Deep into the stony hills
Miles from keep or hold,
A troupe of guards comes riding
With a lady and her gold.
Riding in the center,
Shrouded in her cloak of fur
Companioned by a maiden
And a toothless, aged cur."
"And every packtrain we've sent out for the past
two months has vanished without a trace—and with-
out survivors," the silk merchant Grumio concluded,
twisting an old iron ring on one finger. "Yet the
decoy trains were allowed to reach their destina-
tions unmolested. It's uncanny—and if it goes on
much longer, we'll be ruined."
In the silence that followed his words, he studied
the odd pair of mercenaries before him. He knew
very well that they knew he was doing so. Eventu-
ally there would be no secrets in this room—even-
tually. But he would parcel his out as if they were
bits of his heart—and he knew they would do the
same. It was all part of the bargaining process.
Neither of the two women seemed in any great
hurry to reply to his speech. The crackle of the fire
behind him in this tiny private eating room sounded
unnaturally loud in the absence of conversation.
Equally loud were the steady whisking of a whet-
stone on blade-edge, and the muted murmur of
voices from the common room of the inn beyond
their closed door.
The whetstone was being wielded by the swords-
woman, Tarma by name, who was keeping to her
self-appointed task with an indifference to Grumio's
words that might—or might not—be feigned. She
sat across the table from him, straddling her bench
in a position that left him mostly with a view of her
back and the back of her head. What little he might
have been able to see of her face was screened by
her unruly shock of coarse black hair. He was just
as glad of that; there was something about her cold,
expressionless, hawklike face with its wintry blue
eyes that sent shivers up his spine. "The eyes of a
killer," whispered one part of him. "Or a fanatic."
The other partner cleared her throat and he grate-
fully turned his attention to her. Now there was a
face a man could easily rest his eyes on! She faced
him squarely, this sorceress called Kethry, leaning
slightly forward on her folded arms, placing her
weight on the table between them. The light from
the fire and the oil lamp on their table fell fully on
her. A less canny man than Grumio might be
tempted to dismiss her as being very much the
weaker, the less intelligent of the two; she was
always soft of speech, her demeanor refined and
gentle. She was very attractive; sweet-faced and
quite conventionally pretty, with hair like the fin-
est amber and eyes of beryl-green. It would have
been very easy to assume that she was no more
than the swordswoman's vapid tagalong. A lover
perhaps—maybe one with the right to those mage-
robes she wore, but surely of no account in the
decision-making.
That would have been the assessment of most
men. But as he'd spoken, Grumio had now and
then caught a disquieting glimmer in those calm
green eyes. She had been listening quite carefully,
and analyzing what she heard. He had not missed
the fact that she, too, bore a sword. And not for the
show of it, either—that blade had a well-worn scab-
bard that spoke of frequent use. More than that,
what he could see of the blade showed that it was
well-cared-for.
The presence of that blade in itself was an anom-
aly; most sorcerers never wore more than an eating
knife. They simply hadn't the time—or the incli-
nation—to attempt studying the arts of the swords-
man. To Grumio's eyes the sword looked very odd
and quite out-of-place, slung over the plain, buff-
colored, calf-length robe of a wandering sorceress.
A puzzlement; altogether a puzzlement.
"I presume," Kethry said when he turned to face
her, "that the road patrols have been unable to
find your bandits."
She had in turn been studying the merchant; he
interested her. In his own way he was as much of
an anomaly as she and Tarma were. There was
muscle beneath the fat of good living, and old sword-
calluses on his hands. This was no born-and-bred
merchant, not when he looked to be as much re-
tired mercenary as trader. And unless she was wildly
mistaken, there was also a sharp mind beneath that
balding skull. He knew they didn't come cheaply;
since the demon-god affair their reputation had
spread, and their fees had become quite respectable.
They were even able—like Ikan and Justin—to pick
and choose to some extent. On the surface this busi-
ness appeared far too simple a task—one would simply
gather a short-term army and clean these brigands
out. On the surface, this was no job for a specialized
team like theirs—and Grumio surely knew that. It
followed then that there was something more to
this tale of banditry than he was telling.
Kethry studied him further. Certain signs seemed
to confirm this surmise; he looked as though he had
not slept well of late, and there seemed to be a
shadow of deeper sorrow upon him than the loss of
mere goods would account for.
She wondered how much he really knew of them,
and she paid close attention to what his answer to
her question would be.
Grumio snorted his contempt for the road pa-
trols. "They rode up and down for a few days,
never venturing off the Trade Road, and naturally
found nothing. Over-dressed, over-paid, under-
worked arrogant idiots!"
Kethry toyed with a fruit left from their supper,
and glanced up at the hound-faced merchant through
long lashes that veiled her eyes and her thoughts.
The next move would be Tarma's.
Tarma heard her cue, and made her move. "Then
guard your packtrains, merchant, if guards keep
these vermin hidden."
He started; her voice was as harsh as a raven's,
and startled those not used to hearing it. One cor-
ner of Tarma's mouth twitched slightly at his reac-
tion. She took a perverse pleasure in using that
harshness as a kind of weapon. A Shin'a'in learned
to fight with many weapons, words among them.
Kal'enedral learned the finer use of those weapons.
Grumio saw at once the negotiating ploy these
two had evidently planned to use with him. The
swordswoman was to be the antagonizer, the sor-
ceress the sympathizer. His respect for them rose
another notch. Most freelance mercenaries hadn't
the brains to count their pay, much less use subtle
bargaining tricks. Their reputation was plainly well-
founded. He just wished he knew more of them
than their reputation; he was woefully short a full
hand in this game. Why, he didn't even know where
the sorceress hailed from, or what her School was!
Be that as it may, once he saw the trick, he had
no intention of falling for it.
"Swordlady," he said patiently, as though to a
child, "to hire sufficient force requires we raise
the price of goods above what people are willing to
pay."
As he studied them further, he noticed some-
thing else about them that was distinctly odd. There
was a current of communication and understanding
running between these two that had him thoroughly
puzzled. He dismissed without a second thought
the notion that they might be lovers, the signals
between them were all wrong for that. No, it was
something else, something more complicated than
that. Something that you wouldn't expect between
a Shin'a'in swordswoman and an outClansman—
something perhaps, that only someone like he was,
with experience in dealing with Shin'a'in, would
notice in the first place.
Tarma shook her head impatiently at his reply.
"Then cease your inter-house rivalries, kadessa, and
send all your trains together under a single large
force."
A new ploy—now she was trying to anger him a
little—to get him off-guard by insulting him. She
had called him a kadessa, a little grasslands beast
that only the Shin'a'in ever saw, a rodent so notori-
ously greedy that it would, given food enough, eat
itself to death; and one that was known for hoard-
ing anything and everything it came across in its
nest-tunnels.
Well it wasn't going to work. He refused to allow
the insult to distract him. There was too much at
stake here. "Respect, Swordlady," he replied with
a hint of reproachfulness, "but we tried that, too.
The beasts of the train were driven off in the night,
and the guards and traders were forced to return
afoot. This is desert country, most of it, and all
they dared burden themselves with was food and
drink."
"Leaving the goods behind to be scavenged. Huh.
Your bandits are clever, merchant," the swords-
woman replied thoughtfully. Grumio thought he
could sense her indifference lifting.
"You mentioned decoy trains?" Kethry interjected.
"Yes, lady." Grumio's mind was still worrying
away at the puzzle these two presented. "Only I
and the men in the train knew which were the
decoys and which were not, yet the bandits were
never deceived, not once. We had taken extra care
that all the men in the train were known to us,
too."
A glint of gold on the smallest finger of Kethry's
left hand finally gave him the clue he needed, and
the crescent scar on the palm of that hand con-
firmed his surmise. He knew without looking that
that swordswoman would have an identical scar
and ring. These two had sword Shin'a'in blood-
oath, the oath of she'enedran; the strongest bond
known to that notoriously kin-conscious race. The
blood-oath made them closer than sisters, closer
than lovers—so close they sometimes would think
as one. In fact, the word she'enedran was sometimes
translated as "two-made-one."
"So who was it that passed judgment on your
estimable guards?" Tarma's voice was heavy with
sarcasm.
"I did, or my fellow merchants, or our own per-
sonal guards. No one was allowed on the trains but
those who had served us in the past or were known
to those who had."
He waited in silence for them to make reply.
Tarma held her blade up to catch the firelight
and examined her work with a critical eye. Evi-
dently satisfied, she drove it home in the scabbard
slung across her back with a fluid, unthinking grace,
then swung one leg back over the bench to face him
as her partner did. Grumio found the unflinching
chill of her eyes disconcertingly hard to meet for
long.
In an effort to find something else to look at, he
found his gaze caught by the pendant she wore, a
thin silver crescent surrounding a tiny amber flame.
That gave him the last bit of information he needed
to make everything fall into place—although now
he realized that her plain brown clothing should
have tipped him off as well, since most Shin'a'in
favored wildly-colored garments heavy with bright
embroideries. Tarma was a Sworn One, Kal'enedral,
pledged to the service of the Shin'a'in Warrior, the
Goddess of the New Moon and the South Wind.
Only three things were of any import to her at
all—her Goddess, her people, and her
Clan (which,
of course, would include her "sister" by blood-oath).
The Sword Sworn were just as sexless and deadly
as the weapons they wore.
"So why come to us?" Tarma's expression indi-
cated she thought their time was being wasted.
"What makes you think that we can solve your
bandit problem?"
"You—have a certain reputation," he replied
guardedly.
A single bark of contemptuous laughter was
Tarma's only reply.
"If you know our reputation, then you also know
that we only take those assignments that—shall we
say—interest us," Kethry said, looking wide-eyed
and innocent. "What is there about your problem
that could possibly be of any interest to us?"
Good—they were intrigued, at least a little. Now,
for the sake of poor little Lena, was the time to
hook them and bring them in. His eyes stung a
little with tears he would not shed—not now—not
in front of them. Not until she was avenged.
"We have a custom, we small merchant houses.
Our sons must remain with their fathers to learn
the trade, and since there are seldom more than
two or three houses in any town, there is little in
the way of choice for them when it comes time for
marriage. For that reason, we are given to exchang-
ing daughters of the proper age with our trade
allies in other towns, so that our young people can
hopefully find mates to their liking." His voice
almost broke at the memory of watching Lena wav-
ing good-bye from the back of her little mare, but
he regained control quickly. It was a poor merchant
that could not school his emotions. "There were no
less than a dozen sheltered, gently-reared maidens
in the very first packtrain they took. One of them
was my niece. My only heir, and all that was left of
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