The barbarian woman appeared, a far smaller figure hovering behind her. “Delver’s here,” she announced laconically She stood aside to reveal a dwarf of a sort Nistur had never encountered before. His hair and flowing beard were pure white, although he did not appear to be especially old by dwarven standards. His skin was as pink as that of a maid caught in midblush, except where dark blue veins showed on the backs of his hands. He squinted as if even the light of the lamps and fire were too bright for his eyes.
“What is it, my friend?” Stunbog asked.
“There’s a new colic among the young ones, Stunbog,” said the dwarf in a voice like millstones grinding. “We think some may die. Will you come?”
Stunbog signed. “If you think it that serious, then I had better. Myrsa, will you fetch my bag?”
The woman left and returned moments later with a large satchel of sealskin. “Bad night to be out,” she announced. “Dangerous, too.”
“I’ll wait for you outside, Stunbog,” said the dwarf. He seemed anxious to get away from the light.
“You can accompany me if you feel concerned,” said Stunbog, amusement in his voice.
“And leave them here alone?” She jerked her thumb toward Nistur and Shellring.
The healer smiled. “Shellring never steals from us, and I assure you that our new friend Nistur is too honorable a personage for such things. He is a poet.”
The barbarian woman grunted, as if she put little faith in this line of reasoning.
“Where did the dwarf come from?” Nistur inquired. “I saw none in the city. Is his band passing through?”
“No,” Stunbog replied, “his people have lived here almost from the founding of the city. They are the descendants of folk hired to dig the foundations. Many of the oldest buildings extend several stories underground. That is where the Tarsis dwarves live. There are not many of them now. With no infusion of new blood for centuries, they now suffer from a number of hereditary conditions. I fear they will be extinct within a few more generations. Of course, that can be a long time for dwarves.”
“Astonishing! I had thought Tarsis a wholly human city.”
“Few places are as simple as they seem to us on first impression. Tarsis is no exception. There are many cities here. The Old City, the New City, the underground, the harbor, these are just the major divisions. There are others. Well, I must go now. There are cabins here where you may sleep. I will look in on your friend early in the morning.”
“You have my profoundest gratitude,” Nistur said.
“Don’t thank me until the man recovers,” Stunbog said. He donned a cloak and drew its hood over his head. Carrying his bag, the barbarian woman followed him. At the doorway, she glared back at Nistur, as if promising dire consequences should all not be in order when she returned. Then the two were gone.
“Your city is a much more interesting place than I had thought,” Nistur observed. “What an unlikely pair. And that dwarf. Are the rest like him?”
Shellring nodded. “More or less. They live underground, can’t take bright light. They never harm anyone, but people are afraid of ’em, think they’re ghosts or something.”
“I fear that my friend’s treatment may be dear. I am troubled as to how I am going to pay for it.”
Her eyes widened. “That purse I took off you was heavy. Old Stunbog never asks much.”
“Oh, I must return that purse. It was my fee, and I failed in my mission.” He sighed at this reversal.
Now her eyes grew even wider. “Return it? Are you crazy?”
“No, but I am a man of principle. There is such a thing as professional ethics, you know.”
“I don’t understand you! First you try to kill a man, and then you don’t when it looks like the gods have given him to you as a gift. Then you take him to a healer, and now you want to give money back to some vicious coward who hired you to murder the poor fool!”
“Please,” said Nistur, offended. “I am not a murderer. I am an assassin.”
“Big difference.”
“I would not expect you to understand. You are an odd sort of person yourself. Shellring is a lovely name for a somewhat less than lovely person. How did you come by it?”
She grinned lopsidedly. “It’s from my trade.” In the growing warmth of the cabin she had doffed first her cloak, then her jacket. Now her upper body was clad only in a vest of soft leather, and Nistur saw that she was not emaciated as he had first judged, but rather lean and sinewy, like an acrobat. Her hand dipped into a pouch at her waist and emerged with a broad ring of shell covering the first joint of the thumb. In her nested fingers glimmered a tiny knife, its blade less than two inches long.
“It’s how cutpurses work in this city. See, you distract your mark, or a friend does it for you. You get the purse strings between the blade and the ring and snip them. The mark never feels a thing.”
“I am familiar with the technique. In my homeland the cutpurses use a thimble of horn to cover the thumb tip. For this reason they are called ‘hornthumbs.’ Shellring makes a much prettier name.”
“Where is your homeland?”
“Far from here,” he said. “What were you called before you earned your professional title?”
“Anything people wanted to call me. Mostly it wasn’t very nice. You want a lot of information without giving much out.”
“I am naturally curious. I am not naturally informative. I am most free with my poetry, though. Would you care to hear some?”
“Maybe another time,” she said, yawning. “What I think I’ll do is turn in. I haven’t had a full belly in days. Come on, I’ll show you where the cabins are.”
He rose to follow her. “Do you stay here often?”
“Just once before, maybe a year ago. I got in a little scuffle and took a dagger through my leg. I had a place in a cellar in the Old Town then. I holed up and waited to heal, but it just got worse. An old beggar-woman came by to trade and saw how bad I was. She told me about this healer who lived in a hulk out in the harbor. I managed to limp out here, and he took me in. Saved my life and my leg, let me stay here the better part of a month and never asked for pay. That’s why I haven’t been back since.”
He followed her down a stair into a narrow hall lined with doors. “I don’t understand.”
“The way I figure it, when somebody treats you like that, you don’t abuse them, you see what I mean? If I kept coming back, he might think I was taking advantage, treating him like a regular mark.”
“Ah, I see.” She led him into a tiny room equipped with a narrow bed and a candlestick. There was a space beneath the bunk large enough to accommodate a sea chest. Once, the cabin had probably been a mate’s quarters. “I apologize for speaking condescendingly to you this evening. I perceive now that you are a person who values honor and ethical behavior.”
“Plus,” she added, “Myrsa might think I’m taking advantage of him, and there’s no way I want to fall afoul of that woman. She’s as protective of him as a mother hen.”
“They are an odd pair,” Nistur said, now yawning himself. It had been a long, eventful day. “I wonder how the two of them ended up together?”
“I’ve never heard the story,” she admitted. “But I bet it’s a good one.”
* * * * *
He was running through a devastated village. On all sides buildings were toppled, thatch roofs aflame, walls pulverized. It was not the wreck of battle. It was something else, something infinitely more dreadful. He had never run from battle, but he was running from the awful thing that pursued him. His gasping breath tore at his lungs, for the air was full of afoul, choking gas, like that released when acid dissolves minerals. Everywhere lay the corpses of villagers, all of them burned or asphyxiated, all wearing expressions of utmost horror, all of those faces accusing him.
Before him he saw a spreading shadow, so vast it darkened the whole landscape. It was the thing behind him, the thing he dared not turn to behold. Somehow, he knew that if he could ge
t out of his suit of scales, he might escape. His hand tore at the armor, and to his horror he found he could not remove it. The skin had become his own. In his ears thundered the beating of a huge heart as the shadow of wings spread before him, descending on him.
Ironwood jerked awake, covered with a cold sweat, eyes rolling in terror. Where was he? The heart pounding was his own, but nothing else about him had any strength. He could barely gasp and move his head from one side to the other. His limbs were weak and inert, but no longer paralyzed. The memory of the dream faded, leaving behind little save a sense of long-ago horror.
He knew that he was recovering from another attack. This had been a bad one, the worst so far. He saw timbers overhead, and smelled the burnt-pitch scent of tar. Was this a ship? How had he come here? Where was the assassin? The fight was the last thing he remembered. He was so weak and exhausted that he knew he could do nothing about his condition, not even call out. He felt sleep draw over him once more, and he slipped into unconsciousness muttering incantations he had learned years before, invocations to protect him from evil dreams.
Chapter Three
The Lord of Tarsis sat in discussion with his Inner Council. By ancient custom all were fully masked so that, in taking a vote, each was supposedly anonymous, although in actuality, each man present knew the identities of the others. The lord alone wore no mask. He was a tall man with a long, saturnine face. He was not born to his office, for the lord was elected by the Great Council of two hundred aristocrats, who chose the lord from among the Inner Council of ten. Great rivalry, conniving, and backstabbing went into obtaining a seat on the Inner Council. The greatest degree of these things went into being elected Lord of Tarsis. Thus each lord was the most capable, as well as the most ruthless, aristocrat of the land.
The common people of Tarsis knew nothing whatever of these matters. Certain persons were born aristocrats, and the leader of these was the Lord of Tarsis. Commoners were seldom aware of his name and were never told when one died or was deposed or otherwise replaced. As far as they were concerned, there could have been but a single lord in office since the founding of the city.
The aristocrats of Tarsis, unlike those of most nations, did not owe their position to broad lands with farms and herds and tenants. They were the descendants of the great merchant families of the city. Many of them had fallen on hard times, but they strove with all their might to maintain the pomp and estate of aristocrats. When a family fell truly destitute, its members usually left the city rather than endure the humiliation of being reduced to commoners.
Truly, the lands around Tarsis were poor, unsuited to productive farming. The small peasant farms near the city could produce no more than was required to feed the inhabitants of the city itself. Rather, the plains were home to herds that could endure the harsh winters and live on the short, tough grass that grew there with scant abundance. As in most lands, these herds were owned by nomads who would as soon raid Tarsis as trade with the place. The nomads were warlike and unpredictable, and sometimes broke treaties of years’ standing out of sheer boredom. They might well have destroyed the city many years ago had they not waged incessant warfare on each other.
It was these nomads that troubled the thoughts of the Lord of Tarsis on this night.
“My lords,” he began, “the time has come to reach certain decisions concerning the embassy sent here by Kyaga Strongbow, the new chieftain of the nomad tribes.”
“Is embassy not too lofty a word for a pack of unwashed savages?” said one, whom the lord knew to be Councilor Rukh, his chief rival in the last election and a man who would still very much like to be Lord of Tarsis.
“It is diplomatic custom to treat all envoys the same, whether they represent great civilized nations or primitive tribes. It is a fiction, but it has worked well for many centuries. This warrior-herdsman is Ambassador Yalmuk Bloodarrow, and his entourage shall be tolerated as long as they keep the peace.”
“That will not be long,” said another, whose yellow mask the lord knew to cover the visage of Councilor Blasim, a fat, lazy man whose great wealth had won him his place on the Inner Council. “These ignorant savages have no sense of self-restraint. They will get drunk and start fights before long.”
“If so, they will be expelled. Come now,” the lord said impatiently. “These are petty matters. Our dislike of the barbarians is of little importance. We must deal with them, and only a united front, and an agreed-upon policy, will do. These creatures may be primitive, but they will quickly discern any disunity in our ranks and take swift advantage of it. Am I understood?”
“You are, my lord,” they all said, nodding.
He had to be satisfied with that. He knew he could not trust a single one of them. He wished momentarily that Tarsis had a true kingship, with each great lord owing unswerving loyalty to his sovereign. But such was not to be. The city had been founded by merchant families, each almost insanely jealous of all the others. They had arranged matters so that the lord had the highest authority, but no family had sole claim to the title. The result was that he was surrounded by envious rivals rather than liegemen.
“Councilor Melkar, you undertook to make a reconnaissance of this Strongbow’s domain. What real threat does he pose?”
Melkar wore a white robe and a red mask. “The threat is very real indeed,” he said bluntly. “He is the first chieftain in many generations to set himself up as overlord of the Plains of Dust and actually forge a certain amount of unity out of the nomadic tribes. For a long time they have been content to fight each other and come here only to barter their meat and milk, their hides and their wool for the products they need. Kyaga Strongbow thinks the time has come to demand these things as tribute, and he now has an army that can make that demand stick.”
This set the others abuzz. “You have seen this army with your own eyes?” demanded a blue-masked man.
“I have. Five thousand seasoned riders, each an expert archer, each with four or five first-rate mounts. And they are loyal to Strongbow. They think he has great magic.”
“Archers,” said Councilor Rukh with contempt in his voice. “All men know that it is unwise to be caught out on the plains by such warriors, exposed to their arrows. But mounted archers can do little against the walls of a great city.”
“This is true,” said the lord, “but it would be better to eliminate the threat before the city is besieged.” His confident words masked a greater worry: the walls of Tarsis had been erected when the city had ten times the population it now possessed, when the countryside round about had been fertile and peopled with many villages that added to the strength of the land. Now many parts of the wall were ruinous, and he doubted he had the manpower to defend a third part of what still stood strong.
“You mean to sow dissension among the tribes?” asked Councilor Blasim.
“It has always been our policy,” said the lord. “Take aside some of the higher-ranking members of the embassy and sound them out. Some may be more than willing to take a bribe to sell out their chieftain. Simple warriors may think their leader is a god, but the chiefs will know he is just an unusually successful specimen of their own type. What is more, many of them will be jealous. I have encountered few such men who were not willing to betray their lord for the right price, something they would as lief do for nothing.”
“Sagacious as always, my lord,” said Blasim. “Distasteful as it will be, I will befriend some of these men and acquaint them with the wisdom, as well as the benefits, of cooperating with us.”
“Do so. The rest of you follow suit. There is an encampment of these mounted bandits setting up outside the walls. I want you to call on them. Pretend great interest and friendliness. Sound them out. Discover which among them have a taste for gold and fine weapons and other valuable things. Councilor Rukh.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“As officer in charge of city security, you are to make a survey of the walls, but be discreet about it. I want no panic among the citizenry. In
the meantime, hire up the mercenaries who frequent the harbor-front taverns. This is ostensibly for a punitive expedition against the bandits who have been plaguing the caravans coming here from Ice Mountain Bay, but put the soldiers in the old barracks of the harbor fort, well away from the nomad camp. If there is to be fighting, it is better to sacrifice foreigners than citizens.”
“As you command, my lord,” said Rukh, in a tone that stopped just short of open insolence.
“Who shall pay for this, my lord?” asked Councilor Mede, a banker whose mask was embroidered with gold thread.
The Lord of Tarsis gritted his teeth. They were merchants and feared for their money more than for their safety. But he had to keep them satisfied or his own position would become precarious.
“We shall levy an extra duty on goods moving through Tarsis. Should it come to fighting, tactics can be arranged such that most of the mercenaries will be killed in combat, saving us most of their pay. Are there any more questions before we proceed?” There were none. “Good. All know our policy and how to behave toward these savages.” He took a hammer from the armrest of his throne and with it struck a gong that hung beside the great chair. As the brassy reverberations faded from the room the councilors took their seats in the lower chairs that flanked the throne.
At the far end of the chamber a massive door opened and the majordomo entered, striking his staff once on the floor of polished marble. “What is my lord’s pleasure?”
“Admit the envoys of Kyaga Strongbow,” the Lord of Tarsis commanded.
The palace official bowed his way out and a bizarre little assemblage bustled through the door. In the lead was a man dressed in verminous goatskins, who strode on short, bowed legs as arrogantly as any prince. His greasy hair hung to his shoulders in a score of plaits. His face was heavily scarred, tattooed with serpentine figures and decorated with a long mustache that drooped over a nearly lipless mouth. His narrow eyes were bright blue, and they dismissed the councilors with easy contempt. He wore a wide, flat hat trimmed with fur, and from its brim dangled hanks of hair that bore a distressing resemblance to human scalps.
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