Storm Season

by Edited By Robert Asprin

  “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 resemblance 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; Tempus 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. Walegrin 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, Walegrin 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 scene 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.

  “Do you recognize it?” he asked.

  “No—”

  Cythen took the boss from Thrusher’s hands. “Stepson—” she said with both fear and anger. “See here, the lightning emerging from the clouds? Only they wear such designs.”

  “You have a plan?” Dubro demanded.

  It wasn’t only Dubro waiting for a plan. With the mention of the Stepsons, Cubert had re-entered
the room, and Cythen was warm for blood; the hawkmasks all had reasons for vengeance. Even Thrusher, still rubbing his sore head, acted as if this were a challenge that must be answered. Walegrin tucked the boss in his belt-pouch.

  “We know it was a Stepson, but we don’t know who,” Walegrin said, though he suspected the one who had overturned Illyra’s table earlier. “We don’t have time to run them all to ground, and I don’t think Tempus would let us. Still, if we had a Stepson hostage or two ourselves, it would be easier—”

  “I’ll go with Thrusher. I know where they’re at at this hour,” Cubert asserted. Cythen nodded agreement.

  “Remember, a dead Stepson won’t do us any good. So if you must kill one, hide the body well—dammit.”

  “It’ll be a pleasure,” Cubert grinned.

  “See that they get their swords,” Walegrin said as Thrusher led the ex-hawkmasks from the room. He was alone with Dubro. “Now, you and I will search the back streets—and hope we find nothing.”

  Dubro agreed. For one generally reckoned no smarter than the hammer he used, Dubro moved well through the darkness, leading Walegrin rather than being led. The latter had expected him to be a massive hinderence and had kept him apart from the rest, but Dubro knew blind alleys and exposed basements that no-one else suspected.

  At length they emerged from the Maze to the stinking structures of the chamel houses. Butchers worked there, gravediggers and undertakers as well. Slippery mounds of rotting flesh and bones stretched, undisturbed, down to the river. The gulls and the dogs avoided this place, though the shadows of huge rats could be seen scurrying over the filth. They had found Rezzel here that morning—and left her here. For a moment Walegrin thought he saw Illyra lying out there—but no, it was just another jumble of bones, glowing with decay.

  “She’d come here every so often,” Dubro said softly. “You’d know why, wouldn’t you?”

  “Dubro—you don’t think I—”

  “No, she trusted you and she’s not wrong in such things. It’s just, if she were frightened, if she thought she had no place else to go—she might come here.”

  “Let’s go back to the bazaar. Maybe her people have found something. If not, well—I’ll gather my men and whatever they’ve found in the morning. We’ll deal with Tempus from there.” Dubro nodded and led the way, carefully, around the eerily glowing things lying on the mud.

  Moonflower, who was as large among women as Dubro was among men, sat awkwardly at Illyra’s table when they entered the little rooms behind the awning. “She is alive,” the immense woman said, rearranging Illyra’s cards.

  “Walegrin has a plan to get her back from the Stepsons,” Dubro said. Between them they almost filled the room.

  Moonflower got off the creaking stool and approached Walegrin, a predatory curiosity in her eyes. “Walegrin—you’ve grown up!”

  She wasn’t tall; no taller than Cythen, but she was built like a mountain. She wore layers of colorful clothes, more layers and colors than the eye cared to record. Yet she could move quickly to trap Walegrin before he reached the door.

  “You will rescue her?”

  “I didn’t think you S’danzo cared about her,” Walegrin snarled.

  “She breaks little rules and pays a little price—but not like this. You think of the mother. She broke the big rules and paid the big price. But wouldn’t we all like to break the big rules? She paid with her life—but we remember her here,” Moonflower pressed a beefy hand over her heart. “You go and bring her back, now. I’ll stay with this one.” She stepped aside and pushed Walegrin back into the night. She probably wasn’t very strong, but at her weight she didn’t need to be.

  Alone in the bazaar, Walegrin remembered what Illyra had said about the S’danzo. They were two societies, men and women, and their purposes were not the same. It had been the S’danzo men who had dismembered his father—and S’danzo men who had cursed him. But it was the S’danzo women who had the power, the sight—

  Walegrin made his way slowly up the hills behind Sanctuary to Balustrus’ villa. His energy went into finding the ground with each foot. He’d need food and sleep before he could face Illyra’s problems again. It occured to him that he wouldn’t be able to leave until she was found, one way or the other.

  A woman’s weeping caught his attention. His half-asleep thoughts converged around Illyra as a shape rose out of the darkness and threw itself around him. By the smell it wasn’t Illyra. He pushed Cythen aside and studied her in dawnlight.

  The jagged cut along the girl’s face had been re-opened sometime in the night. Fresh clots of blood had twisted her expression into something worthy of Balustrus. Tears and sweat made vertical lines across her dirty skin. Walegrin’s first impulse was to toss her headfirst into the brush. Instead he took her hand and led her to a rock. He unfastened his cloak and handed it to her, telling himself he’d do the same for any of his men, and not entirely believing it.

  “They’ve got Thrusher and Cubert’s dead!” she sobbed.

  He took her hands, trying to distract her from the hysteria that made her all but incoherent. “What about Thrush?”

  Cythen buried her face in her hands, sniffed loudly then faced Walegrin without the tears. “We were Downwind, past Momma Becho’s. We were trailing a Stepson pair we’d been told passed that way after sundown carrying a body. Thrush was leading, I was in the rear. I heard a noise. I gave a warning and turned to face it, but it was a trap and we were outnumbered from the start. I never got my knife out—they had me from behind. It was a carry-off; they weren’t trying to kill us. I went down before they hit me hard—but Thrush and Cubert kept fighting.

  “I got my chance once we were back in the City, near the palace. I didn’t linger, but they only had Thrusher with us—so Cubert’s dead.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “I came straight here, and I haven’t been here long.”

  “And you’re sure it was the Prince’s palace—not Jubal’s?”

  She became indignant. “I’d know Jubal’s if I saw it. I’d have stayed and gotten Thrush out if it had been Jubal’s. The Stepsons and Tempus haven’t had enough time to learn what any hawkmask knows about the mansion. But we were attacked by Stepsons, anyway.”

  “You knew that?”

  “By the smell.”

  Walegrin was too tired to continue sparring. He’d lost Thrusher who’d been with him longer than anyone, who was more friend and family than lieutenant. Moreover, he didn’t have a hostage to strengthen his position. It was impossible to believe this scrawny, starving woman could escape where Thrush hadn’t—

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “Thrush trusted me at his back. He must’ve fought until they hit him hard, where’s I gave up sooner. That’s the difference, Walegrin, you say women have no honor because they’ll lose first and win later. You men have to win all the time or die trying. If I was in on it, would I have come back like this?”

  “To lead me in,” Walegrin challenged, but without conviction.

  The sun was up when he slid the bolt of the villa-gate and led Cythen into the courtyard. Balustrus was waiting for them. The metal-master already knew some of the night’s events.

  “Seems you won’t be jumping early after all?” he accused.

  “Yes, I’d planned to leave,” Walegrin agreed. “The longer I stay; the tighter the noose. I’m getting out. I leave you the ore, the necklace and the formula you don’t need anything else.”

  “It won’t be that easy unless you’ve replaced Thrusher with that bone-bag behind you. Word’s come from the palace.” Balustrus handed him a scroll with its seal broken.

  The writing confirmed Cythen’s story that they’d been taken to the palace by Stepsons. The Prince commanded Walegrin’s presence in the Hall of Justice. Walegrin crumpled the paper and threw it into the dirt. He could have abandoned Thrusher; he could have abandoned Illyra—but he could not abandon them both.

  “Cythen,” he whispered to her
as they entered the room he shared with Thrusher. He looked about for a cleaner tunic. “No matter what, don’t stop looking for Illyra, hear me? If you find her you take her back to the bazaar. The S’danzo will help, and Dubro. They won’t ask about your past. Do you understand?”

  She nodded and watched without interest as he cast his filthy tunic aside and pulled another one over his head.

  “You should wash first,” she told him. “You shouldn’t stink before the Prince. You won’t win any bargains.”

  Walegrin glared at her, dropping the second tunic to the floor as he stormed toward the stream where they washed.

  “I wasn’t always like this,” she shouted after him… “I know better ways.”

  Dripping, but clean, Walegrin returned to the room to find his tunic lying neatly on the mattress. Somehow the girl had gotten the extra wrinkles out. His bronze circlet had been given a quick polish and some of the mud was gone from his sandals. But Cythen herself was gone from the shed, the courtyard and the villa. Coming on top of the loss of Illyra and Thrusher it was almost more than he could endure. Had he found her right then he would have cheerfully beaten her.

  But the girl had been right, damn her. He felt better clean. His few men straightened up as he assembled them in the courtyard. He told them what he’d told Cythen. They grumbled and he doubted they’d wait more than a day before going their separate ways if he did not return. He looked for Balustrus too, and found only his share of the swords. The ore, the necklace and the metal-master had vanished. He was getting used to that.

  Knots of people ducked out of his path once he was on the streets. He was recognized, but no one stopped him. With eyes fixed forward, he walked past the gallows, not chancing a glance at the corpses. The gatekeeper took his name without ceremony and a lad appeared to conduct him to the Hall of Justice.

  He was left alone there in the echoing chamber. Kadakithus himself was the first to enter, accompanied by two slaves. The young prince dismissed the slaves and took his place on the throne.

  “So, you’re Walegrin,” he began simply. “I thought I might recognize you. You have been no small amount of trouble.”