Cort wasn’t sure which he needed most: the whore, the brandy, or the brawl. Then he decided there was no need to choose, and strode on down a street that rapidly narrowed to an alley and left the broad ways, and the lights, behind.
By sunset, the merchant caravan had come out of the woods and was plodding across a wide, flat land with low grass and, here and there, cattle grazing. Too little water for good farming, Gar thought. A hill bulged up in the middle of the flatness, seeming very much out of place, its sides sweeping up in a slope gentle enough for cattle to graze on, its top a perfect dome. Gar had a notion a gas bubble had been trapped in molten rock there, in the early days of the planet when everything was in flux.
Master Ralke looked about him anxiously. “I don’t like this, don’t like it at all. We’re too much of a danger to those mercenaries—they don’t dare have us bear word to their captain.”
“Wouldn’t they be more afraid to attack you again?” Gar asked. “After all, if their captain would flog them for stealing, what will he do to them for murder?”
Ralke cast him a peculiar look. “What womb did you just crawl out of? If we hadn’t fought them off, they’d have killed us all!”
Gar stared. “Killed us? Just for a few mule-loads of goods?”
“They’re mercenaries,” Ralke said. “Killing means nothing to them. They do it for money every time they go into battle. Why not do it for loot?”
Gar felt a chill down his back. “Then we’d better find ourselves a campsite we can defend easily, where they won’t have much chance of sneaking up on us.”
“Where, on a flat and featureless plain?” Ralke demanded.
“The plain is our friend,” Gar told him. “There’s nowhere to hide, no cover to help them sneak up on us. But atop that hill would be even better.” He pointed.
“On top of a Hollow Hill? Are you mad?” Ralke cried. “But I forget—you’re a foreigner. Don’t you have them at home?”
“Not like that one, no.” Gar said, bemused. “How do you know it’s hollow?”
“Because it’s a dome! Those are the hills the Fair Folk choose for their palaces!”
“Fair Folk? What are they?”
“Bad luck just to talk about! Not even a boss dares bring their displeasure down upon him! Armies never fight in the shadow of their hills, for fear the Fair Folk will be angry and come out to slay them all with their magic!”
It did sound something like the Wee Folk of Gar’s home planet—but it also sounded useful. “Then let’s camp on its slopes, if the mercenaries are afraid to attack us there.”
“Oh, wise indeed,” Ralke said, with withering scorn. “We’ll be safe from the bandits, sure enough—but the Fair Folk will come out and kidnap us all! I think perhaps I had better choose our campsite, soldier!”
“If you will,” Gar sighed. “I’d suggest right out in the middle of the plain, though, and as close to the hill as is safe. After all, if we’re afraid of the Fair Folk, maybe the soldiers will be even, more so.” Superstition, he reflected, had its uses.
Cort was almost to the tavern alley when he heard the call for help—the scream, rather; a young woman’s scream, high, piercing, and terrified. His anger instantly transmuted into savage joy—action was the tonic his wounded heart needed. Cort ran toward the cry, kicking garbage out of the way as he went. He skidded around a corner and saw three of his own soldiers laughing and dancing about a young civilian and his lady. She clung to his arm, effectively barring him from drawing his sword, but he flourished his torch valiantly, thrusting it at any soldier who came too close. The troopers laughed and jeered at him.
“Come, pretty boy! Draw your tin sword, so we can chop it off!”
“Chop off the hand with it,” a second soldier said, and guffawed.
“No need to get hurt,” the third soldier advised. “Just walk on home and leave her to us. We’ll be her escort.” He leaped in, hand reaching for the girl.
“Get away from her!” the young man shouted, thrusting with. the torch. The soldier laughed, stepped aside, and plucked the torch from his fingers. His mates howled with glee and stepped in, fists pumping. The young man fought valiantly with his single arm for about fifteen seconds before a haymaker caught him on the side of the head. He slumped to the ground.
“Tenn-hut!” Cort barked, and the three troopers came to attention out of sheer reflex. One had the good sense to hold the torch up anyway.
“You mangy scum!” Cort prowled about them, though all his instincts screamed to join them in their sport, not stop them. After all, it was a civilian man who had stolen his sweetheart, and a civilian woman who had hurt him. But he was an officer, and had his duties to his captain. “What in blazes do you think you’re doing? What’s the captain’s one rule about civilians?”
“Leave ‘em alone, sir,” one of the soldiers said through stiff lips.
“Too right, leave them alone!”
“Unless they swings first, lieutenant,” one of the other men objected.
“First, and often, and show no sign of stopping! Don’t even try to tell me this lad was attacking you, trooper! Or were you afraid his lady might beat you to a pulp?”
The trooper reddened, but held his brace.
“You lousy excuses for human beings!” Cort raged. He couldn’t yell at Violet, after all, but he could damn well yell at his own men—especially since they deserved it. “You scrapings from the trash barrel! You slime off the bottom of a boat! Fifty women willing to go with you for a coin, and you have to pick on a maiden!”
“There was a long line, lieutenant,” one of the men offered.
“What, were you afraid you’d be too drunk by the time your turn came? Well, it’s going to be a hell of a lot longer wait now, trooper—a month or more!”
One of them, a newbie, opened his mouth to protest, but Cort bellowed, “And if you don’t, look sharp, you’ll spend that month in the guardhouse! Now apologize to this lady! And her escort! Of course, I don’t expect you know how to be polite, so I’ll show you!” He turned to the young woman, who was kneeling with her escort’s head in her lap, sobbing.
The tears left Cort at a loss, so he did the only thing he could. Doffing his cap, he said, “My deepest apologies, young lady. My troopers are a bunch of ruffians who ought to be kept in a cage. I humbly ask your pardon for their misbehavior.”
The young man blinked, gave his head a shake, then stared up at Cort in alarm.
“They won’t trouble you again, sir,” Cort assured him. “My most humble apologies. I can only say that they were drunk and didn’t really know what they were doing.”
“But we do!”
Cort spun about and saw six hard faces lit by another torch. Three of them carried quarterstaves, three carried naked swords. They wore no uniforms, and with a sinking heart, Cort realized what they were—an amateur citizens’ patrol, cobbled together as soon as they’d heard the soldiers had come to town.
“Our fellow townsman down with his lady cowering by him, four soldiers standing over them—oh, we know what they were doing, all right! Beat their heads in, men!”
The citizens shouted and started forward. The woman screamed.
“Guard!” Cort shouted, and his three troopers spun about, pulling out the only weapons they had: their daggers. Cort’s sword and dagger hissed out of their sheaths, and the citizens hesitated; even outnumbered and underarmed, the professional soldiers were frightening.
Then the citizen leader snarled and started forward.
“Protect yourselves!” Cort shouted.