He was not sure how he had come there. He had a vague memory of the city gate. It had been open and he had passed through it, he thought, behind a party of hunters bringing home their kill. After that he could not remember. But now he was standing on his own feet and someone was pouring sour wine into his mouth. He drank it, greedily. There were people around him, jostling, chattering, demanding answers to questions he had not heard. A girl’s voice said sharply, “Let him be! Can’t you see he’s hurt?”
Stark looked down. His exalted mood, with its dreams of godlike vengeance, had left him. Reality came crowding back upon him, and reality was a slim and ragged girl with black hair and large eyes as yellow as a cat’s. She held a leather bottle in her hand. She smiled and said, “I’m Thanis. Will you drink more wine?”
He did, and then managed to say, “Thank you, Thanis.” He put his hand on her shoulder to steady himself. It was surprisingly strong. He felt light-headed and strange, but the wine was fusing a spurious sense of well-being into him and he was content to let that last as long as it would.
The crowd was still churning around him, growing larger, and now he heard the tramp of military feet. A small detachment of men in light armor pushed their way through.
A very young officer whose breastplate hurt the eye with brightness demanded to be told at once who Stark was and why he had come here.
“No one crosses the moors in winter,” he said, as though that in itself were proof of evil intent.
“The clans of Mekh are crossing them,” Stark answered. “An army, to take Kushat, a day, two days behind me.”
The crowd picked that up. Excited voices tossed it back and forth and clamored for more news. Stark spoke to the officer.
“I will see your captain, and at once.”
“You’ll see the inside of a prison, more likely!” snapped the young man. “What’s this nonsense about the clans of Mekh?”
Stark regarded him. He looked so long and so curiously that the crowd began to snicker and the officer’s beardless face flushed pink to the ears.
“I have fought in many wars,” said Stark gently. “And long ago I learned that it was wise to listen when someone came to warn me of attack.”
“Better take him to the captain, Lugh,” cried Thanis. “It’s our skins too, you know, if there’s war.”
The crowd began to shout. They were all poor folk, wrapped in threadbare cloaks or tattered leather. They had no love for the guards. And whether there was war or not, their winter had been long and dull and they were going to make the most of this excitement.
“Take him, Lugh! Take him! Let him warn Old Sowbelly!”
The young officer winced. And then from someone made anonymous by the crowd there rose a louder cry.
“Let him warn the nobles! Let them think how they’ll defend Kushat now that the talisman is gone!”
There was a roar from the crowd. Lugh turned, his face suddenly grim, and motioned to his soldiers. Rather reluctantly, Stark thought, they leveled their spears and moved toward the crowd, which shrank back away from them and became quickly silent. Lugh’s voice rang out, harsh and strident.
“The talisman is there for all to see! And you know the penalty for repeating that lie.”
Stark’s small start of surprise must have communicated itself through his tightened fingers to the girl, for he saw her look at him sharply, with something close to alarm. Then Lugh had swung around and was gesturing angrily at him. “See if he’s armed.”
One of the soldiers stepped forward, but Stark was quicker. He slipped the thongs and let the cloak fall, baring his upper body.
“The clansmen have already taken everything I owned,” he said. “But they gave me something in return.”
The crowd stared at the half healed stripes that scarred him, and there was a drawing in of breath, and a muttering.
The soldier picked up the cloak and laid it over Stark’s shoulders. And Lugh said sullenly, “Come, then. I’ll take you to the captain.”
The girl turned to help him with the cloak, leaning her head close to his while she fastened the thongs. Her voice reached him in a quick, fierce whisper.
“Don’t mention the talisman. It could mean your life!”
The soldiers were reforming. The girl stood back, casual, finished with her small task. But Stark did not let her go.
“Thank you, Thanis,” he said. “And now will you come with me? Otherwise, I must crawl.”
She smiled at him and came, bearing Stark’s unsteady weight with amazing strength. And Stark wondered. Camar, certainly, had not lied. Otar and Ciaran, certainly, had well known that it was gone. Yet here was this young popinjay bellowing that the talisman was there for all to see and threatening the suddenly-cowed mob with the penalty for denying it.
He remembered that Ciaran had said something about the nobles of Kushat being afraid to let their people know the truth. They would be, Stark thought, and a substitution would be the surest way of covering up the loss. In any case, he decided to heed the girl’s warning, and began forcing his weary brain to the task of eliminating from his story not only all mention of Camar but also of Otar and of Ciaran’s references to the naked state of Kushat. A wrong word to the wrong person… He was too numb with exhaustion to think out all the possibilities, but he was suddenly and ironically aware that the talisman might prove to be more dangerous to him here in Kushat than it had been in Ciaran’s camp.
The captain of the guards was a fleshy man with a smell of wine about him and a face already crumbling apart though his hair was not yet gray. He sat in a squat tower above the square, and he observed Stark with no particular interest.
“You had something to tell,” said Lugh. “Tell it.”
Stark told them, watching every word with care. The captain listened to all he had to say about the gathering of the clans of Mekh and then sat studying him with a bleary shrewdness.
“Of course you have proof of all this?”
“These stripes. Their leader Ciaran himself ordered them laid on.”
The captain sighed and leaned back.
“Any wandering band of hunters could have scourged you,” he said. “A nameless vagabond from the gods know where, and a lawless one at that if I’m any judge of men—you probably deserved it.”
He reached for the wine and smiled. “Look you, stranger. In the Norlands, no one makes war in the winter. And no one ever heard of Ciaran. If you hoped for a reward from the city, you overshot badly.”
“The Lord Ciaran,” said Stark, grimly controlling his anger, “will be battering at your gates within two days. You will hear of him then.”
“Perhaps. You can wait for him—in a cell. And you can leave Kushat with the first caravan after the thaw. We have enough rabble here without taking in more.”
Thanis caught Stark by the cloak and held him back.
“Sir,” she said, as though it were an unclean word, “I will vouch for the stranger.”
The captain glanced at her. “You?”
“Sir, I am a free citizen of Kushat. According to the law, I may vouch for him.”
“If you scum of the Thieves’ Quarter would practice the law half as well as you prate it, we would have less trouble,” grumbled the captain. “Very well, take the creature, if you want him. I don’t suppose you’ve anything to lose.”
Thanis’ eyes blazed but she made no answer. Lugh laughed.
“Name and dwelling place,” said the captain, and wrote them down. “Remember, he is not to leave the Quarter.”
Thanis nodded. “Come,” she said to Stark. He did not move, and she looked up at him. He was staring at the captain. His beard had grown in these last days, and his face was still scarred by Thord’s blows and made wolfish with pain and fever. And now, out of this evil mask, his eyes were peering with a chill and terrible intensity at the soft-bellied man who sat and mocked him.