Storm Season

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  “Sure,” the man said, and scowled. “You’ve got the stink of hire about you already. What coin? The prince’s?”

  Mradhon forced a laugh and leaned back again. “Not likely. Not likely the Hell Hounds or any of that ilk. My last hire turned sour, and a post in the guard—no. Not with your complexion—or mine. Your man, now—So he and you are lying low a while, and maybe I’ve got reasons for doing the same. There are people I don’t want to meet. No better service I can think of—than a man who might be building back from a little difficulty. Don’t give me that. Jubal’s gone to cover. Word’s around. But one of those hawkmasks might suit me … keeping my face out of the sight of two or three.”

  “I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

  “No,” the woman said, “I think we ought to talk about it.”

  Mradhon frowned, trusting her less, liking it not at all that it was the woman that took that twist, that looked at him from the cot and tried to demand his attention away from her brother? cousin? with a quiet, incisive voice.

  Then the curtain moved, and a darkskinned man in a hawkmask stood there with a sword aimed floorward in his hand. “We talk,” the man said, and Mradhon’s heart, which had leapt several beats while his fingers, obeying previous decision, stayed still… began to beat again.

  “So,” Mradhon said cockily enough, “I was wondering when the rest of us would get into it. Look—I’m short of funds … a little bit for earnest, so I can reckon I’m hired. I’m particular about that.”

  “Mercenary,” the young man said.

  “Once,” Mradhon said. “The guard and I came to a parting of the ways. It’s this skin of mine.”

  “You’re not Ilsigi,” said the mask.

  “Half.” It was a lie. It served, when it was convenient.

  “You mean,” the youth said, “your mother really knew.”

  Heat flamed up in Mradhon’s face. He gripped the knife and let it go again. “When you know me better,” Mradhon said softly, “I’ll explain it all … how women know.”

  “Cut it,” the woman said. She tucked her feet up within her arms.

  “What would it take,” the hawkmask said, “for you to consider yourself hired?”

  Mradhon looked at the man, his heart pounding again. He sat down on the edge of the firepit, making himself easy when his instincts were all otherwise. He thought of something exorbitant, remembered the hawkmasks’ fallen fortunes. “Maybe a silver bit—Maybe some names, too.”

  “Maybe you don’t need them,” the hawkmask said.

  “I want to know who I’m dealing with. What the deal is for.”

  “No. Mor-am; Moria; they’ll deal with you. You’ll have to take your orders there—Does that gall you?”

  “Not particularly,” Mradhon said, and that too was a lie. “As long as the money’s regular.”

  “So you knew Mor-am’s face.”

  “From across the river. From days before the trouble. I dealt with a man named Stecho.”

  “Stecho’s dead.”

  The tone put a wind down his nape. He shrugged. “So, well, I suspect a lot were lost.”

  “Stabbed. On the street. Tempus’ games. Or someone’s. These are hard times, Vis. Yes, we’ve lost a few of us. Possibly someone talked. Or someone knew a face. We don’t wear the masks outside, Vis. Not now. You don’t talk in your sleep, do you, Vis?”

  “No.”

  “Where lodging?”

  “Becho’s.”

  “If,” the voice grew softer still, difficult, for its timbre, “if there were a slip, we would know. You see, it’s your first job to keep Mor-am and Moria safe. If anything should happen to the two names you knew—well, we’d suspect, I’m afraid, that you’d made some kind of mistake. And the end of that would be very bad. I can’t describe enough—how bad. But that won’t happen; I know you’ll take good care. Go back to your lodgings. For now, go there. We’ll see about later.”

  “How long?” Mradhon asked tautly, not favoring this threatening and believing every word of it. “Maybe I should move in here—to keep an eye on them.”

  “Out,” said Mor-am.

  “Money,” Mradhon said.

  “Moria,” the hawkmask said.

  The woman uncurled from the cot, fished a bit from the purse she wore and offered it to him.

  He took it, snatched it from her fingers without a look, and strode for the door. Mor-am got out of his way and he opened it, stepped out into the foul wind and the dark and the reek of the alley, and walked, out onto the main way again.

  Doubtless one of them would follow him. His mind seethed with possibilities, and murder was one—For less than the silver, any one of them would kill. He sensed that. But there was the chance too that the hire was real: their casualties were real, and they could not get too many offers now.

  He padded as quickly as he could toward his own territory down the main road, down which the last few stragglers moved, homeless and searching, muddle-minded, some, which kleetel left of one when its use had been too long; or moving with purpose it was unwise to stare at. He strode along in a world of faceless shapes and lightless buildings, everything anonymous as himself. Hooves sounded in the dark, moving in haste, and in a moment the streets were clear, himself among the lurkers that hid along the alleys: a quartet of riders passed toward the bridge, Stepsons, Tempus’ men. They were gone in a moment and life poured back onto the street.

  So the business out by Jubal’s estate continued, and Tempus settled in. A shiver ran down Mradhon’s spine, for the inconvenience of the neighborhood. He wanted out—desperately he thought of Caronne—if he had had the funds. But they hunted spies. War with Nisibis was on them. Any foreigner was suspect, and one who really happened to be Nisibisi—

  Most especially he avoided the main ways after that, grateful for the anonymity of Mama Becho’s, which lay off the main track the carts and the riders took. Something in him shivered, remembering the hire he had just accepted, pay which had set him against the new occupants of the estate. Tempus’ men hunted hawkmasks as they hunted spies and foreigners; and gods knew it was no prettier way to go.

  The alleyways unwound, almost home territory now. A beggar or two always huddled near Mama Becho’s, one wakeful enough tonight to put out a claw and want a coin a true cripple, perhaps, or too sick to make the bridge to richer streets. A dry spitting attended his lack of charity.

  Then for one heart-stopped moment he heard a sound behind, and turned, but there was nothing but the moon on a muddy alley and the tilt-walled buildings leaning together like some fever dream of hell in the dark.

  Followed, he thought. He quickened his pace, on the verge of home, and came to the alleyway by Mama’s, where the drinking continued, and the hangers-about-the door still loitered, but fewer of them. He walked into that alley and Tygoth was there, to his relief, a hulking stick-carrying shadow making his rounds.

  “It’s Vis,” Mradhon said.

  “Huh,” was Tygoth’s comment. Tygoth rapped against the wall with his stick. “Walk with you?”

  Tygoth did, taking his duty seriously, rapping the wall as he went, rapping at the door of his lodgings, opening the door for him like the servant of some palatial home, across from the lighted parchment window that was Mama Becho’s own.

  “Coin,” Tygoth said, and held out his hand. Mradhon laid the nightly fee in the huge palm, and the sturdy fingers closed. Tygoth went into the room and fetched the little light from its niche by the door, stumped away with it to Mama Becho’s back door and opened that to light it from that inside, then came back again, shielding the flame with his monstrous hand. With greatest care he went inside and set it in its place.

  “Safe,” Tygoth declared then, a murmurous rumble, and walked off tapping his stick against the walls.

  Mradhon looked after that shambling shadow, then went in and barred the door.

  Safe.

  So he had a bit of silver to bolster his dwindling coppers, and a bar on the door for the
night, but it was in his mind that this Mor-am and Moria would change their lodgings tonight and not show up again.

  He hoped. It was more surety than he had had the day before.

  In the safety of his room he pinched out all but the nightwick and lay down to his sleep, hoping for sleep, but knowing that there would be dreams.

  There always were.

  ****

  ISCHADE, THE WIND whispered coming from the river and riffling through the debris outside. He dreamed her walking the streets of Downwind this time, her black robes unsullied, and the stench became the musk that surrounded her, like the smell of blood, like the smell of dead flowers or old, dusty halls.

  He waked in sweat, more than once. He lay awake and stared into the dark: the draft had put the wick out. It always did. He reminded himself that there was the silver; he felt it in the dark, like a talisman, proving that that meeting had been real.

  He needed anonymity and gold. He needed power that could put locks on doors. He put fanatic hope in this Jubal, who had once had both.

  Whenever he shut his eyes he dreamed.

  Chapter 3

  THERE WAS SILENCE in the small company, a prolonged silence inside the cramped quarters that had been one of their safe shelters, with Mor-am sulking in a crouch against the wall and Moria folded in the other corner, her arms about her knees. Eichan occupied the cot, crosslegged, arms wrapped about his huge chest, his dark head lowered, uncommunicative. What could be done had been done. They waited.

  And finally the scurrying came in the alley outside, which brought heads up and got Moram and Moria to their feet: no attack, not likely. Two of their own were on the street now, watching.

  “Get it,” Eichan said, and Moria unlatched the door.

  It was Dzis, who stepped owlishly into the faint light they afforded inside—no mask, not on the streets these days: all Dzis managed was dirt, and the stink that armored all Downwind’s unwashed. “He went where he said,” Dzis said. “He’s snugged in at Becho’s alley.”

  “Good,” Eichan said, and got up from the cot, taking his cloak across his arm. “You stay here,” he said to Mor-am and Moria. “Use the drop up the way. Keep on it.”

  “You didn’t have to give our names,” Moria said. She trembled with rage, whether at Eichan or at her brother. “Any objection if we settle that bastard outright?”

  “And leave questions unanswered?” Eichan flung on the cloak. He towered, difficult to conceal if one suspected it was Eichan. “No. We can’t afford that now. You’ve cost us a safe hole. You live in it. And watch yourselves.”

  “There’ll be watchers,” Moria said, hoping that there would.

  “Maybe,” said Eichan. “And maybe not.” He followed Dzis back out the door and pulled it after him. The latch dropped. The lampflame waved shadows round the walls.

  Moria turned round and looked at her brother, a burning stare.

  Mor-am shrugged.

  “Hang you,” Moria said.

  “Oh, that’s not what they do to hawkmasks lately. Not the ones on our trail.”

  “You had to go to Becho’s, had to have it, didn’t you? You let someone follow you, stinking stewed—get off it, hear me? Get off that stuff. It’ll kill you. It almost did. When the Man gets back—”

  “There’s no guarantee he’s coming back.”

  “Shut up.” She darted a frantic glance at the door, where one of the others could still be listening. “You know better than that.”

  “So—they got him good this time, and Tempus wins. And Eichan goes on pushing and shoving as if the Man was still—”

  “Shut up!”

  “Jubal’s not in shape to do anything, is he? They go on hunting hawkmasks in the street and none of us know when we’ll be next. We live in holes and hope the Man gets back….”

  “He’ll settle with them when he does. If we keep it all together. If—”

  “If. If and if. Have you seen that lot that’s moved in on the estate? Jubal’ll never go back there. He won’t face them down. Can’t. Did you hear the riders in the street? That’s permanent.”

  “Shut up. You’re stiffed.”

  Mor-am walked over to the wall and pulled his cloak off the peg.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Out. Where there’s less noise.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  He slung it on and headed for the door.

  “Come back here.” She grabbed at his arm, futile: he had long ago outweighed her. “Eichan will have your head.”

  “Eichan doesn’t care. He feeds us pennies and gives silver out with our names for the asking.”

  “You won’t go after him. Eichan said—”

  “Eichan said. Stay out of my business. No, I won’t cut the bastard’s throat. Not tonight. I’ve got a headache. Just let me alone.”

  “All right, all right, I won’t talk to you, just stay inside.”

  He pulled the door open and went out it.

  “Mor-am!” she hissed.

  He turned and held up a coin. “Enough to get me really drunk. But only enough for one. Sorry.”

  He whirled and left, a flurry of a ragged cloak. Moria closed the door, crossed the room, flung herself down to sit on the cot with her head in her hands and the blood pounding in her temples. She was scared. She wanted to hit something. Anything. Since the raid had scattered them with half their number dead, it was all downhill. Eichan tried to hold it together. They had no idea whether he had what he claimed to have, whether Jubal was even still alive. She doubted it sometimes, but not out loud. Mor-am’s doubts were wider. She did not fully blame him: tonight she hated Eichan—and remembered it was Mor-am himself who had led the outsider to them. Drunk. Stoned on krrf, using far too much.

  And Becho’s—any place was dangerous if they frequented it, if they set up a pattern, and her brother had a pattern. His habits led him here and led him there. There was the smell of death about him, that terrified her. All the enemies the slaver Jubal had ever accumulated (and they were many) had come to pick bones now that his power was broken; from the days that hawk-masks used to swagger in gaudy dress through the streets, now they wore ragged cloaks and slunk into any hole that would keep them. And that was, for all of them, a bitter change.

  Mor-am could not bear it. She gave him money, doled it out, hers and his; but he had lied to her—she knew he had; and gotten that little more that it needed for Becho’s. Or he had cut a purse or a throat, defying Eichan’s plain orders. He was committing slow suicide. She knew. They had come up together out of this reek, this filth, to Jubal’s service, and learned to live like lords; and now that it was back to the gutter again, Mor-am refused to live on those terms. She held onto him with all her wit and talents, covered for him, lied for him. Eichan might kill him himself if he had seen him go; or beat him senseless: she wished she had the strength to pound the idiocy out of him, flatten him against a wall and talk sense to him. But there was no one to do that for him. Not for years.

  ****

  MOR-AM FLUNG OFF down the street, striding along with purpose none of the sleepers in doorways challenged, getting off the main road as quickly as he might.

  But something stirred another way. A beggar dislodged himself from his doorway near an alley and shuffled along until he reached shadows, then moved quite differently, hunkering down when he thought it might serve and running spryly enough when there was need.

  Then other beggars began to move, some truly lame, but not all.

  And one of them had already gone, scuttling along alleys as far as a shack near Mama Becho’s, at the back of which the White Foal river flowed its sluggish, black-glistening way beneath the bridge.

  Guards dozed there, about the walls, unlikely as guards as he was unlikely as a messenger, in rags, one a little urchin-girl sleeping in the alley, who looked up and went back to her interrupted nap, a huddle of bony limbs; and one a one legged man who did the same; but that hulk nearest the door got up and faced the
messenger.

  “Got something,” the messenger said, “himself’d want to hear.”

  The guard rapped at the door. In a little time it opened on the dark inside, and a shutter opened, affording light enough to someone who had been inside all along.

  The messenger went in and squatted down in a crouch natural to his bones and delivered what he had heard.

  So Moruth listened, sitting on his bed, and when the messenger was done, said: “Put Squith on it, and Ister.”

  Luthim left, bowing in haste.

  Mama’s latest boarder. Moruth pondered the idea, hands clasped on his knees, smiling and frowning at once because any link between his home territory and the hawkmasks he hunted made him uneasy. There was, in the dark, on the back side of the door, a mask pinned with an iron nail, and there was blood on it that had dried like rust in the daylight; but only those that came to this shack and had the door closed on them could see it. It was a joke of sorts. Moruth had a sense of humor, like his half-brother Tygoth shambling along the alleys by Mama’s, rapping his stick and mumbling slackwitted nonsense. He had one now, and ordered Luthim himself followed: the urchin was summoned to the door and given a message to take.

  So Tygoth would know.

  “Good night,” Moruth told his lieutenant, and the man closed the shutters and the door, leaving him his darkness and his sleep.

  But he kept rocking and thinking, pondering this and that, shifting pieces on his mental map of Downwind alleys, remembering this and that favor owed, and how to collect.

  Hawkmasks died, and either they were loyal (which seemed unlikely) or ignorant where Jubal lay, even in extremity. He had had three so far. The one nailed to the door had told him most, where these two lodged; but so far he had not pounced. He knew the homes and haunts of others.

  And suddenly the trail doubled back again, to Mama’s, to his own territory. He was not amused.

  ****

  AND JUST THE other side of the bridge, in a curious gardened house with well lighted windows casting a glow on the same black water. …

  Ischade received quite another messenger, a slave and young, and handsome after a foreign fashion, who appeared at her gate disturbing certain wards, who came up the path only after hesitating some long time, and stood inside her dwelling as if he were dazed.