Storm Season

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  The door still spilled light into the dark, where a few patrons sprawled, drunk and unheeding of the storm. Moria strode into it in a gust of wind, but the bodies sprawled inside in sleep were amorphous, heaped, drunken. There was no sign of Mor-am. A further, darker panic welled up in her, her last hope gone.

  He still might be hiding, she tried to tell herself; might have gone to earth and determined to stay there; or it was bad and he was still running. Or even sleeping off a drunk.

  Or dead. Like the murdered hawkmasks. Like one who had been nailed to a pole by the bridge.

  She turned and strode for the door, almost colliding with the human mountain that suddenly filled it.

  “Drink,” Tygoth suggested.

  “No.”

  He lifted his stick. “You come here to steal—”

  “Looking for someone.” Her mind leapt this way and that. “Vis. Boarder of yours.”

  “Asleep.”

  She dodged past and ran, down the alley, the only lighted alley in the Downwind, that got the light of the ever-lit lantern at Mama Becho’s door.

  “Vis,” she called softly, rapping at the door. Her hands clenched against the wood. “Vis, wake up, get out here. Now.” She heard Tygoth coming, shambling along after her, rapping the wall with his stick. “Vis, for the gods’ sake, wake up.” There was movement from inside. “It’s Moria,” she said. The rapping was closer. “Let me in.”

  The door opened, a rattling of the latch. She faced a daggerpoint, a half dressed man wild-eyed and suspecting murder. She showed her empty hands.

  “Trouble?” Tygoth said behind her. “No trouble,” Vis said, and reached out and caught her by the wrist in a crushing grip, pulling her inside, into the dark. He closed the door.

  ****

  THEY BROUGHT MOR-AM through the dark muffled in a foul-smelling, greasy cloak; gagged and with a bandage over his eyes and his hands so long tied behind his back that they had gone beyond acute pain to a general numb hurt that involved his chest and arms as well. He would have run but they had had his knees and ankles tied too, and now he was doing well to walk at all, with his knees and ankles beyond any sensation of balance, just stabbing pain. They jerked him along in the open air, and he remembered the hawkmask they had nailed to the pole near the bridge; but they had not yet hurt him, not really, and he was paralysed with hope, that this was all some irritation of the men he worked for; or fear, that they were his own brothers and sisters, who had found out about his treason; or, or, or—His mind was in tatters. They were near the bridge now. He heard the moving of the water far away at his left, heard the mutter of thunder, that confounded itself with the sounds about him. The image flashed to him of a sodden body crucified against a pole, in the early morning rain.

  ****

  “JUST PUT MORE men on it,” the Stepson said, never stirring from where he sat, in the too great warmth of the room. The naiveté of the operation appalled him. But there were necessities and places too little apt for his kind. “If you can do it without sounding the alarm through every alley in the Downwind.” Something had gone wrong. The abruptness of the vanishing, uncharacteristic of the informer, smelted of interventions. “This had better not go amiss,” his companion said meaningfully to the man who sat and sweated across the table. “It was far too productive. And you’ve botched the other avenue tonight, haven’t you? That contact more than failed. It went totally sour. We don’t like incompetence.”

  ****

  “I HAVEN’T SEEN him,” Mradhon Vis said, in the dark, in the narrow room. The woman—Moria—had a knife; he was sure of that, sure where she was too, by her breathing. He kept where he was, having all the territory measured, thinking, in one discrete side of his mind, that he dealt with a fool or they thought he was one, a solitary woman coming at him like this.

  But a vision of dark robes flashed through the dark of his vision, with cold, with the scent of musk; she was solitary, female, and he held in his hand the knife he slept with, safer than women.

  “Why didn’t you go to your own?” he sneered at her. “Or is this the testing? I don’t like games, bitch.”

  “They’ve cut us off.” The voice quavered and steadied. He heard her move at him and brought the knife up. It met her body and she stopped, dead still, hard breathing. “You took our pay.” It was a hiss through clenched teeth. “Do something to earn it. Help me find him.”

  “Smells, woman. It smells all the way.”

  “He’s into something. He’s dealing in something. Krrf. Gods know what.” The voice cracked. “Vis. Come with me. Now. After this—I’ll swear to you you’ll get money. You’ll be in. I’ve got contacts I’ll swear for you. Get my brother. He’s dropped through a crack somewhere. Just come with me. Riverside. We’ve got to find him.”

  “How much.”

  “Name it. I’ll get it.”

  A woman who was faithful. To something. He stared at the dark, doubting all of it, standing in the den Mama Becho owned and listening to the promise of gold to get him out of it.

  “Back off,” he said, shoving her away, not wanting her knife in him, and he reckoned it was drawn. “I’ll get my shirt. Don’t make any moves. Just tell me where you reckon to look for this lost lamb.”

  “Riverside.” She caught her breath, a moving of cloth in the dark. “That’s where they turn up—the hawkmasks they murder.”

  He stopped, his shirt half on. He cursed himself, thought of the gold and made his mind up to it. “You’ll pay for this one.”

  ****

  MOR-AM KICKED. THEY jerked him off his feet and carried him, battering him against some narrow passage as he struggled, with the reek of wet stone and human filth and suddenly warm and windless air. They set him on his feet again and jerked the blindfold off. The room came clear in a haze of lamplight, a cot, a ragged small man sitting on it crosslegged amid a horde of others, the human refuse of the Downwind standing and squatting about the room. Beggars. He felt hard fingers working at the knot at the back of his skull, freeing him of the gag: he choked and tried to spit out the dirty wad and the same hard fingers pried it from his mouth, but his hands they had no intention to release. They only let him stand on his own, and his knees wanted to give under him.

  “Hawkmask,” the man said from the bed, “my name is Moruth. Have you heard it?”

  No, he said, but his tongue stuck to his mouth and muffled it. He shook his head.

  “Right now,” Moruth said quietly, an unpleasant voice with the accent of Sanctuary’s Maze and not the Downwind, “right now you’d be thinking that you shouldn’t know that name, that taking that blindfold off means you’re already a dead man and we don’t care.what you see. Might be. That might be. Turn around.”

  He stood still. His mind refused to work.

  “Turn ‘round.”

  Hands jerked him about, facing the closed door. A mask was pinned there with a heavy iron nail. Terror came over him, blank terror, image of Brannas nailed to the pole. They spun him about again facing Moruth.

  “You want to live,” Moruth said. “You’re thinking now you’d really like to live, and that this is an awful place to die.” Moruth chuckled, a dry and ugly sound. “It is. Sit down—sit down, hawkmask.”

  He looked, reflexively. There was nowhere. A crutch hooked his ankle and jerked. He hit the dirt floor on his side and rolled, fighting to get his knees under him.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Moruth said softly, “hawkmask. Let me tell you what this Jubal did. Remember? Kill a few beggars, he said, and put the informer-sign on them, so’s the riffraff knows what it is to cross Jubal the slaver, ain’t it so?” The accent drifted to Downwind’s nasal twang. “Ain’t that what he did? And he killed us, killed boys and girls that never done no hurt to him—to impress them as might want to squeal on his business. It weren’t enough he offs his own, no, no, he cut the throats of mine, hawkmask. You know something about that.”

  He knew. He shivered. “I don’t. I don’t know anything about i
t.—Listen, listen, you want names—I can give you names; I can find out for you, only you let me out of here—”

  Moruth leaned forward, arms on ragged knees, grinned and looked appallingly lean and hungry—

  “I think we’ve got one what’ll talk, doesn’t we?”

  ****

  HAUGHT FLINCHED IN his concealment beneath the bridge. Screams reached him, not fright, but a crescendo of them, that was pain; and they kept on for a time. Then silence. He hugged himself and shivered. They began again, different this time, lacking distinction.

  He bolted, having had enough, finding no more assurance even in the dark; and the thunder cracked and the wind skirled, blowing debris along the shore.

  Of a sudden something rose up in his way, a human form in the ubiquitous rags of Downwind, but with an incongruous long blade shining pure as silver in the murk. Haught shied and dodged, ex-dancer, leapt an unexpected bit of debris and darted into the alley that offered itself, alley after alley, desperate, hearing someone whistle behind him, a signal of some kind; and then someone blocked the alley ahead.

  He zigged and dodged, feinted and lost: the cloak caught, and the fastening held; he hit the wall and the ground, and a hand closed at his throat.

  ****

  “ESCAPED SLAVE,” MORIA said, crouching by the man they had knocked down. She had her knife out, aimed for the ribs; but the throat was easier and quieter, and Mradhon was in the way. “Kill him. We can’t afford the noise.”

  “Something started him,” Mradhon said. The slave babbled a language not Rankan, not Ilsigi, nothing she knew, sobbing for air. “Shut up,” Mradhon said, shaking him and letting his hand from the man’s throat. Mradhon said something then, the same way, and the slave stopped struggling and edged up against the wall. He talked, an urgent hiss in the gloom, and Mradhon kept the knife at his throat.

  “What’s that?” Moria asked, clenching her own hilt in a sweating fist. “What’s that babble?”

  “Keep still,” Mradhon said, reached with his fist and the hilt of his knife and touched the slave gently on the side of the cheek. “Come show us, seh! Come show us the place. Fast.”

  “What place?” Moria demanded, shoving Mradhon’s arm.

  Mradhon ignored her, hauling the slave to his feet. She got up too, knife aimed, but not meaning to use it. The slave had straightened up like a human being, if a frightened one, and moved free of Mradhon’s grip, travelling with lithe speed. Mradhon followed and she did, as far as the opening of the alley.

  “River,” the slave said, delaying there. “By the bridge.”

  “Move,” Mradhon said.

  The slave rolled his head aside, staring back at them, muttered something.

  “Seh,” Mradhon repeated. “Move it, man.” Mradhon set an empty hand on his shoulder. The slave gave a gasp for air like a diver going under and headed down the next alley, stopping again when they reached a turning.

  “Lost,” the slave said, seeming to panic. “I can’t remember; and there were men men with swords—and the screams—It was the house by the bridge, that one—”

  “Get moving,” Moria hissed frantically and jabbed him with the blade. The slave flinched, but Mradhon stayed her hand with a grip that almost broke her wrist.

  “He’s likely still alive,” Mradhon said. “You want my help, woman, you keep that knife out of my way; and his.”

  She nodded, wild with rage and the delay. “Then quit stopping.”

  “Haught,” Mradhon said. “Stay with us.”

  They went, running now, with no pauses, down the twisting ways even she did not know; but it was Mradhon’s territory: they passed through a shanty alleyway so close they had to turn their shoulders and came out upon sight of the bridge.

  It was quiet, excepting the wind, the dry, muttering thunder. A lightning flash threw the pilings of the bridge and the house by the pier into an unnatural blink of day, exposed a bridge vacant of traffic.

  “There,” said the slave, “there, that was the place—”

  “Better stay back here,” Mradhon said.

  “It’s quiet,” Moria said. Her voice shook despite herself. “Man, hurry up.” She pushed at him and got shoved in turn. He caught a fistful of her shirt and jerked at her.

  “Don’t shove. Get your mind working, woman, cool down, or I’m off this.”

  “I’ll get round by the windows,” she said, shivering. “I’ll find out. But if you run out on me—”

  “I’ll be working up the other side. Haught and I. If it’s even odds we take them. If it isn’t we pull off, hear, and refigure.”

  She nodded and caught her breath, trotted off with a looseness of her knees she had not felt since her first job; felt as vulnerable as then, everything gone wrong. She sorted her mind into order, pretending it was not Mor-am in there, in that long quiet, where screams had been before.

  She took a back alley, disturbing only an urchin-girl from her rest, going round the long way, where boards might gape and afford sight or sound, but none did. She kept going, focussed now, lost in the moment-by-moment calculations, and found the windows she hoped for, shuttered, but there was a crack.

  She listened, and something went twisted inside. It was a quiet voice, that described streets with deadly accuracy, a strained voice that told no lies.

  … Mor-am’s. Giving away all they had.

  And more than three of them in there.

  “There’s another house,” her brother volunteered all too eagerly, “by the west side. There’s a way from there out into a burned house… We used that in the old days…”

  Shut up, she wished him, having difficulty holding her breath.

  Something moved behind her. She whirled, knife thrusting, and got the man in the belly, leapt, and saw others.

  “Ai!” she yelled, slashing wild, a howl that was the last shred of honor: It’s all up, it’s done—She tried to run.

  There were still more, arrived from out of nowhere, a sweep of men and knives in the dark, rushing the house and alley from the riverside. She stabbed and killed; the urchin-girl shrieked and ran into shadows as beggars scattered and guardsmen shouted orders.

  Fire streaked Moria’s side. She slashed and stumbled back; and back as wood cracked and the house erupted with shouting and with knives, and the back way opened, pouring out bodies.

  She fell. Someone stepped on her back as she lay there, and she braced and rolled against the shanty wall as the battle tended the other way. She crawled for the alley, scrambling to her feet as she reached the corner of the shanty.

  Someone grabbed her from the back and dragged her aside; the slave Haught pinned her knifehand under his arm and a hand muffled her as they hit the dark leanto together, a knot of three.

  “Keep low,” Mradhon hissed in her ear as tumult passed their hiding-hole. A man died not far from them in the first pattering of rain. She lay still, feeling the pain in her side when she breathed, feeling for the rest as if she had been clubbed.

  Mor-am!

  Fire glared, a quick flaring up of orange light in the direction of the shanty.

  She struggled then. The two of them held her.

  “You can’t help him,” Mradhon said, his arms locked round her.

  “She’s hurt,” said Haught. “She’s bleeding.”

  They tended her, the two of them. She hardly cared.

  ****

  “IT’S HIM,” THE Stepson said, looking disdainfully at the human wreck they deposited on the road across the bridge. Rain washed the wounds, dark threads of blood trailing in a wash of water over the skin. The guard toed the informer in the side, elicited a little independent movement of the arm, lit in lightning flashes. “Oh, treat him tenderly,” the Stepson said. “Very tenderly. He’s valuable. Get a blanket round him.”

  “We lost the rest,” his companion said tautly. There was rage beneath his tone.

  The Stepson looked up. A shadow stood there in the lightnings, in the rain, an unlikely cloaked shape, a darkness
by the bridge.

  When the lightning next flashed it was gone. Fire danced on the water, full of tricks and shadows on this side of the bank. The blaze might have taken all of Downwind, but for the rain. It was dying even now.

  Six horsemen thundered across the bridge from Sanctuary to Downwind, securing the road.

  “You’d better send more,” the garrison officer said. “They’re like rats over there, small but a lot of them. You—saw that.”

  The Stepson fixed the man with a chill, calm eye. “I saw catastrophe. Two of us could have turned the town upside down if that were the object. Perhaps you misunderstood. But I rather doubt it. Six could raze the town. But that wasn’t what we wanted, was it?” He looked down at the moaning informer, then collected his companion and walked away.

  ****

  “DRINK,” MRADHON SAID. Moria drank, holding the cup herself this time, and stared blearily at the two men, Mradhon leaning over her, Haught over against the wall. It was decent food they gave her. She wondered where they got the money, dimly, in that vague way she wondered about anything. She was curious why these two kept treating her as they did, when it cost them, or why two men she had never met had proved dependable when those she had known best had not. It confounded her. They never used that language they both spoke, not since that night. Haught had put on freeman’s clothing, if only that of Downwind. He had scars. She had seen them, when he dressed. So did Mradhon Vis, but different ones, made with knives.

  So did she, inside and out. Maybe that was what they had in common, the three of them. Or that they wanted what she knew, names and places. Or that they were just different, thinking differently, the way people did who had not grown up in the Downwind, and that kind of maze of foreignness she never tried to figure.

  She just took it that they wanted something; and so did she, which was to fill a nebulous and empty spot and to keep fed and warm and breathing.

  Mor-am was dead. She hoped so. Or things were worse than she had figured.

  A Fugitive Art

  By Diana L. Paxson

  THE FLEEING KING ran towards the Gate, the strained lines of his back and arms, and the bunched muscles of his thighs, eloquent of desperation. His face was shadowed and his crown rolled in the dust; behind him lay a confusion of arms and weapons, and the bloodied sword of his conqueror raised against a sunset sky.