And in anger and disappointment the Shadow of Shadows…vanished.
“Tell my father,” Hanse said very quietly, “that I have known misery not knowing the identity of my father, and now in knowing it. Tell Him that…that his son is strong.”
“True,” Ils said, “and I’d never have thought it. Done!”
When Hanse awoke he was in the ruins of Eaglenest above Sanctuary, and wondered what in all the Hells he was doing there. He did not know that he had Chosen. He remembered nothing of his birth, of his deeds for the gods, or of his desires and wishes. He had no idea that he was to be unusually proficient with weapons; he must learn that for himself, in the doing.”
He was only Hanse again — or still: orphaned bastard and superb thief.
And still crammed full of needs and self-doubts which he masked with all his might.
And yet; and yet he had changed; and he was changing. Perhaps fighting it and certainly not finding the path easy, the cocky youth was becoming a man.
“Ah ho!” the farmer said once he had accosted the trepidatious Hanse and Mignureal.
“And what have we here? Sinajhal, isn’t it?”
“So he said his name was,” Hanse said, for he had decided against saying merely that they had found Sinajhal dead.
*
“Ah ho! So he’s come to the end he deserved at last, at last! And you did it, lad?”
Hanse’s face cleared a bit, and he swallowed. Yet he painted on a grim expression and used his best shadow-voice when he said, “Aye. He attacked the wrong people, this time. And it is no great happiness for me, being called lad.”
The extremely lean man made a gesture of apology and respect. “Ah, ah! It means nothing, believe me. Yet it is delight on us all that no old seasoned man of weapons brought down that vampire, but a very young man indeed. And a stranger by your accent — just the sort he loved to prey upon, he did.”
“Didn’t he just!” So spake the elated Hanse. And I was worried that we might be accused of murder!
Meanwhile Mignureal nervously repeated “Vampire?” and the smiling farmer happily assured her that it was only a figure of speech, figure of speech.
“And who might this other be?” The farmer of Firaqa’s outskirts drew closer to the other body lying limply over a horse, and crouched to peer up at the face. “Uh! Poor devil — and with Sinajhal’s bolt in his face, poor man! Ah, by the Flame — not your father, I’m hoping, young sir?”
“M-mer-m-my uncle,” Mignue stammered.
Even as Hanse looked around at her with round eyes, she squeezed forth a tear. Ah, he thought in new elation, what promise my dear girl shows!
“Oh my dear, my poor dear, I am so sorry, so sorry I am! And so glad, so very glad that your strong protector here was able to do death on Sinaj — was you who did it, young sir from afar?”
Head up, Hanse said, “Was I.”
This time he glanced over at Notable, who sat the onager where he had somehow persuaded Rainbow to join him. The cat’s full-furred red tail traced out designs in the air while he blinked long, as cats would. Hanse winked.
“Ha ha and ho ho!” The farmer clapped both hands to the hem of his tunic — beneath which he wore no leggings and no footgear of any kind — and good honest dirt rose as dust. “Some will celebrate this night, they will, for what a bad name that villain gave us all, preying on innocent travellers!” He half turned to point. “Yonder’s my home; see the cookfire smoke? And yonder dwells my neighbour Gleenis (owns his own farm, Gleenis does!) and over there is my sister’s farm with her husband. Any and all of us would be happy to feed and house you this night, Sinajhal-slayer, happy to! Aye, and your animals too! What say you? Will you stop? What say you?”
“My woman,” Hanse said in what he hoped was a desolate voice, “is understandably not minded to celebrate, with her uncle victim of this villain whom I bested at swords even as he attacked. We would see them both buried, and then — ”
“We’ll do that, we’ll do that,” the man said, nodding the while and looking unseemly happy in the face of the death of a pretty young woman’s uncle.
“How far is Firaqa?” Hanse asked, with another glance at Mignureal, who was still concentrating on putting on bereavement’s cloudy face.
“About a half day. Wouldn’t want to arrive there after dark, though, would you, now would you? And you will, now, ’nless you gallop all the way starting this instant, right this instant.”
While Hanse hesitated over that, Mignureal spoke in a resigned voice:
“Let us tarry here and join them for the burial of our honourable dead and their dishonourable,” she said with a little choking sound over “dead,”
“and then join their celebration. You know Uncle Kadakithis would have wanted it.”
“Uncle…Kadakithis,” Hanse said, looking as if he had swallowed a pin.
“You know how he loved celebrations,” Mignureal said. “And how proud he was of you, darling.”
And so they stopped, and were well fed and lauded, and celebrated while others laboured to bury Sinajhal and the nameless brigand who had been his accomplice but was known to these folk only as Uncle Kadakithis, a foreigner, and both were much flirted with, and in the morning they rode on amid much leave-taking and laden with gifts of food and milk and home-pressed wine and even ale, and they marvelled that in killing they had become beloved heroes. They bore crossbows and Hanse wore the late, unlamented Sinajhal’s sword while sitting his saddle. And they rejoiced.
That was before Mignureal checked the saddlebag and found that it contained not eleven, but only ten coins. They quieted then, and rode on toward Firaqa under the grey mantle that was the shadow of sorcery.
THE CITY
They had to urge their horses, keeping an eye on them the while, through a clamorous, free-form encampment and market of the sort that grew up outside the main gates of most cities. The area was cluttered with tents and people and lots of colours, along with various odours. The cats soon joined the humans above that noisy and often noisome press. Notable tucked himself up against Hanse’s crotch and Rainbow against Mignue’s, each with a human hand on its body.
Countless people wanted them to buy seemingly countless things, while several others had nothing to sell but wanted largesse just the same. Hanse was tempted to toss one a coin out of the saddlebag just to see what would happen. The thought made him realize instantly that if he passed out a piece of silver here, either as alms or for one of those fat striped melons he’d love to have, the noise level and the press around their horses would increase intensely as well as intolerably. In that case he and Mignue might be hours more in reaching that long wall of yellowish stone. They might well be prevented from reaching it at all. Bad enough having to remain so fixedly on the alert, lest someone decide to slice loose the rearmost horse and have a try at making off with it. Or lest the nervous Notable decide to pounce on someone.
Accordingly he continued pretending to ignore the importuning of pedlars and mendicants alike.
Had that smudge-faced boy really said what Hanse thought — offering his sister for sale or more likely temporary rent?
Had that old woman been eyeing the cats fondly or was that the gleam of hunger in her eye?
The tall iron-bound gates of Firaqa were marked with a carved-and-mounted flame emblem. Both were latched all the way open, leaving an entryway that could have accommodated five riders abreast. Hanse could see the guard in the tower on one side, and the crossbow up there, as well. A yellow pennon bore a white circle containing the red flame insigne.
Other guards, probably members of the city Watch or police detailed to this duty, stood about here below. They were hardly erect and didn’t look particularly military or menacing.
Somewhere inside him Shadowspawn growled apprehensively, but Hanse reminded himself that he was a newcomer of some means. He had no past here, and no one knew him. At Mignureal’s intelligent suggestion he had removed his sheathed knives, leaving visible only
dagger and sword. The Ilbarsi knife they had attached to Mignue’s saddle. In Sanctuary Hanse had been at pains to look dangerous. He might wish to do so here, too. But not today, not on entering.
The guards wore shiny helmets like inverted bronze pots divided by wedge shapes of brown lacquer, each topped with a metal crest resembling the fin of a fish. Their hot-looking leather cuirasses were snug over tunics whose colour was close to the fulvous hue of the wall’s stones. Only one of the three held his lance; the others leaned against the gates’ inner edges. Each wore sword and dagger and all were bare-legged to just past the knees, where they wore nice brown boots with laces and short fold-over tops. Boots, pendent crotch-armour and weapon-belts gleamed with a number of smallish square plates of dull metal that looked more like iron than steel or anything else.
A child was clamouring on one side of Hanse and a scrawny, ragged man was pawing his leg on the other side as Sinajhal’s black horse bore him up to the open gateway. A sentry watched from where he leaned against the leftward gate. He bumped himself forward with his butt and started forward. Immediately Hanse’s stomach tautened and he felt a prickling in his armpits.
“All right, all right, get away from this man now, you two! This is a traveller come to our fair city doubtless to sell some horses, and needn’t be bothered by the likes of you!”
The clamorous ones fell back while Hanse tried to look relaxed. The guard smiled at him and at Mignureal, and they continued pacing their horses to and through the gateway, Just inside and to the right, a man in the same uniform with the addition of a darkish blue cloak sat behind a table beside an older man, obviously a clerk. The first man’s helmet also rested on the table. Hanse saw an emblem on the front: a stylized flame.
“A greeting and welcome to Firaqa. My job’s to ask where you’re from.”
The truth seemed wisest this time, however much telling it went against Hanse’s grain.
“We’re both from Sanctuary, here to — ”
“That far! And without a caravan, and those good hor — hmm. With saddles and riding bridles as well, eh? Brought those all the way from Sanctuary, young fellow?”
“Only three of them. We were ignorant enough to cross the desert, and got attacked by Tejana. They — you know about Tejana?”
The man, who was apparently chief of guards here, nodded and waved a hand. “Oh yes. I’m afraid we know about the Tejana. Killed others in your party and you two managed to flee?”
Almost Hanse wisely let that pass, but his pride would not allow it. “Not quite. They stole our horses and a few coins we had, four of them with crossbows so that we hadn’t a chance. They left us stranded on the desert with only the ass — the onager.”
The man and a couple of other guards were giving him their full attention, now. So was the clerk, an oldish man who was not writing, but staring with his mouth drooping as much as his left eye.
“My man followed them,” Mignue said proudly. “Just couldn’t bear to let them get away with it. I think he was as outraged that men who knew the desert would leave us that way, as he was angry that they had robbed us.” She gestured at their menagerie. “These were our horses, and theirs.”
“Theirs?” The seated sentry let a more attentive stance replace his easy lounging attitude.
Hanse was nervous about this, and not because he thought these people might think kindly of the Tejana. He was not anxious to announce himself as a fighter, or as a thief — even if it was his own horses he had stolen.
“I sure recognize Tejana horses when I see ‘em, Sergeant,” the burly older sentry said, nodding.
“I tracked them to a camp at the edge of the forest,” Hanse said. “They were celebrating with strong drink. Drunk or asleep, with the horses penned a little way from the clearing.” He shrugged. “It was late at night and dark in those woods.” He made another of the shyly boyish shrugs he knew how to use. “I got our horses back. And took a little interest, while I was at it. Their horses.”
The fact that the sergeant and another of the guards were grinning openly emboldened him to add, “They got to keep the coins.”
“Quite an accomplishment,” the sergeant said. “Tejana actually left their horses saddled and bridled?”
Damn it, Hanse thought, and shook his head. “They were haltered. They make the halters so that the reins attach. Since the raiders were drunk and sleeping or nearly, I took the time to add the reins and saddle all the horses but one.” He smiled the boyish smile and made the boyish shrug. “No more saddles.”
The old clerk-scribe grinned broadly, showing unexpectedly good teeth, and two guards laughed. The sergeant chuckled.
“No trouble?”
“The trouble was in getting the first horse to go!” Hanse told him ruefully. “Those Tejana use voice commands, in their own language. When I said the right one, all they’d do was gallop. All I did was hang on. See, I’d ridden that dumb donkey to within a little distance of their camp, and left him in the woods. And this part you won’t believe.”
“It’s a good enough story,” the sergeant said, leaning back in his chair, “and my name is Gaise, sergeant of the City Watch, Gate Division. Try me.”
“We were galloping by when I looked over and saw that one of the Tejana had come out of the camp with a crossbow and was kneeling, aiming at me. I’ll admit it; I couldn’t get the horse to turn that way or any other way. Then the onager heard the horses rushing by. He came hehawing and galumphing out of the woods. He ran right over the man who was going to shoot me.”
When the general’s loud laughter died down, Hanse added, “That’s why he’s not wearing the heavier packs anymore. He earned a light load.”
“I’d say he did. And so did you. No other trouble?”
Hanse shrugged and spread his hands. “I told you, Sergeant Gaze.”
“Mind if I ask your name?”
“Hanse. This is Mignureal.”
“Honz. And Minyourall.”
Hanse had already noted that these people tended toward broader a’s than he was accustomed to. “Hants,” he said, pronouncing exaggeratedly.
“Min-you-ree-al,” she corrected.
The sergeant laughed. “Gay-sse,” he re-pronounced, and his men laughed.
“Business aside, Hanse,” Gaise said, rising languidly and stretching a little, “I’d love to ask why you came here. That’s personal curiosity now, not official inquiry.”
“Wish I could tell you later, Gaise. What we want to do now is find a place to stable these horses until we sell a few, and more importantly a place to stretch our legs and sit on something besides saddles.”
“And get a nice meal for a change,” Mignureal said, since it wasn’t necessary to mention that they had enjoyed nice meals each of the last two nights.
“Anyhow,” Hanse decided to say, “have you heard news from down Sanctuary way lately? Anyone come here from there?”
Gaise shook his head.
Good, Hanse thought. He said, “The town’s never been much, and we never liked the Rankans or the governor their emperor sent out. Awhile back we were invaded by people-things called Beysibs.” He described the unblinking invaders from the sea. “They — took over. Lording it over everybody. Their leader’s a woman, or a female anyhow. Moved herself right into the palace where the governor had always been. They are arrogant. Just acted as if we were the unhumans, ‘stead of them. Law died, in Sanctuary. A Beysib killed Mignureal’s mother, right on the street, over nothing. That decided us to do what we should have done already, and we did.” No need to mention that he had slain the slayer not while talking to police who could decide to tell him to move on!
“We left Sanctuary with two horses and an onager and a few coins,” Hanse went on, “along with the few possessions in those packs. Oh, and my cat here, Notable. We arrive here with the onager, another cat, and six horses. The Tejana actually helped us out! We’re here to stay, we hope.” He showed Gaise a sweet youthful smile. “If I’m not too stiff to get off thi
s horse.”
Gaise smiled and opened his mouth, but it was the clerk with the stringy grey-white hair and bangs who spoke.
“What do you know about Ranke?”
“Never been there.” Hanse made his answer deliberately short. He was tired of hanging about here answering questions. It was past mid-afternoon and besides another traveller had already ridden in and right past them, unquestioned.
“No,” the scribe said. “I mean the Rankan Empire. We’ve heard a rumour or two.”
“So have I,” Hanse told him. “All I know for sure is that they didn’t do anything about the Stare-eyes’ invasion of Sanctuary, which the Rankans called theirs. Still, for all I know a whole army arrived a day after we left, and wiped out the Beysibs. Look, uh, I’d be happy to come back and talk some more tomorrow, but we really do need to find a place to stay, and some other things.”
Then he remembered. “Oh — Sergeant. Do you and your men know an inn called the Green Goose?”
Gaise started to answer, but broke off as a troop of five more guardsmen stamped up. Their leader was cloaked as Gaise was. He spoke:
“Sergeant Gaise, I relieve you and your men.”
With a nod, Gaise looked up at the tower. “Ock! See anything terrible?”
“No Sergeant!”
“Come on down, then. Sergeant Rimizin, we stand relieved.” That ended the formal changing of the guard, and Gaise pretended to yawn. “Another nice dull day, Rim. Hope you have the same sort of evening. I’m just going to walk this nice couple around to the Green Goose. Came up here all the way from Sanctuary, and had a little Tejana trouble along the way.”
“Looks like they came out ahead,” Rim said. “Tejana horses, ain’t they?”
“Aye. We’ve also kept them here too long. They’re anxious to get out of the saddle and I don’t blame them. You can get the story another time.”
Shadowspawn (Thieves' World Book 4) Page 13