"It is not your responsibility," I said, somewhat ungraciously, I fear, considering the generosity of his offer.
"Look," said he. "I am now well practiced in smiting walls with my back, but I have had very little experience in dodging swords, leaping about unarmed, you understand, in the darkness, in the middle of a sword fight."
"Fight?" asked the burly fellow, interested.
"So I shall be pleased to return her to the keeper's desk," he said. I think the burly fellow reached for the hilt of his sword, but I missed it. My own blade left the sheath. I stood up.
The fellow between us moaned, and prepared to crawl rapidly to safety. "Oh!" said Lady Temione, lifted now, backwards, to the shoulder of the keeper's man who, unnoticed, had approached. "Slut rent period is up," he said. "Take her away," said the burly fellow, with a wave of his hand.
"That is my intention," said the keeper's man. He turned his back on us, and I saw, again, the face of the Lady Temione, facing backwards, held upon his shoulder in slave position.
"Put her in a tarsk cage," laughed the fellow. "That is where she belongs." Lady Temione briefly struggled in frustration on the shoulder of the keeper's man, squirming there doubtlessly more deliciously than she knew, and pulling helplessly at her bound wrists. She would be carried about and done with, of course, precisely as men wished. She looked back now in anger, but also in fear, at the burly fellow. Doubtless she thought she was attractive now. She did not understand, of course, how attractive, truly, she might be, subject to certain alterations in her condition. Our eyes met.
"Who wants a fight?" asked the burly fellow, unsteadily. He now had his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"No one," said the fellow between us, hastily, earnestly.
I did not think the burly fellow could well attack with the other fellow between us, not, at least, without cutting him out of the way. That would indeed be a poor way for that fellow to end his day, which had not been a very good one anyway. I sheathed my sword. I was not even sure that the burly fellow, in the darkness, realized I had drawn it. He himself had not proceeded further than to get his hand on his sword. I do not think he realized he was in any danger. "Are you the one who wants to fight?" he asked.
"Not me," I said.
"Then it is you!" cried the burly fellow, turning on the fellow between us. "No!" cried the fellow.
His response was surely prompt, I thought. It was assured and definite. It left little doubt about the matter.
"I am tired," announced the burly fellow.
"It is time then to go to sleep," said the other man. The burly fellow stood there for a moment considering this possibility. "Perhaps," he said.
I was sure, now, that it would not prove necessary to run the fellow through, at least at this time. in such a thrust, of course, he in his present condition, there would have been little of honor. Too, it is difficult to use a sword in a professional manner in the darkness, and I tend to be vain about such things. The sword is less akin to darkness than stealth and the dagger. A recruit, under the circumstance, could have felled him.
"It is time to go to sleep," announced the burly fellow.
"Yes, you are right," agreed the other man.
This was the second time the burly fellow, this night, had been in considerable danger. He would probably not realize this, even in the morning.
"Sit down," said the burly fellow to me.
"Very well," I said, sitting down. The other man sat down, too, in his space. The burly fellow then stood there and looked about him. He was the only one standing in the room.
He had taken the first tub in the baths. He had created a disturbance in the paga room. He had had an excellent slave sent to him, perhaps even gratis. I suspected he had had a greater variety of food to choose from than I had been offered. He had traversed the sleeping room like a hurricane. I doubted he would be too popular with the other guests. Indeed, more than one fellow he had struck about, making his way to his space. He had even come directly to his space, in a diagonal, rather than making use, like other folks, of more neighborly, if lengthier, orthogonals. Too, it seemed he had shown me insufficient respect, not to mention the fellow next to me, whose paid-for space he had appropriated, nor those he had trampled upon, and struck about, in his passage to our area. I also did not appreciate his criticizing me, mostly implicitly, for my choice of rent sluts. I frankly thought I might have seem more in the Lady Temione than he had. If nothing else, considering the prices in the inn, she came cheap. He then sat down in the corner space, 99, the safest, most private space on the floor. "Do you snore?" he asked the fellow next to me.
"Never," the fellow assured him. "If you do," said the burly fellow, "sit up tonight."
"I was planning on that anyway," the fellow assured him.
I had little doubt the fellow between us planned on taking his leave as soon as the burly fellow slept. Could one really count, one wondered, on the burly fellow being in a pleasant mood when he awakened? Too, what if he should have some savage dream, and start thrashing about, knife in hand, in the middle of the night?
The fellow between us sat back against the wall. The burly fellow looked across at me, contemptuously. "User of she-tarsks," he laughed.
I noted he wrapped the strap of the pouch he carried about his left arm, three or four times. I supposed, like many such pouches, diplomatic pouches, so to speak, the strap would be cored with wire, and, inside, within the pouch itself, between the leather and a presumed lining, there would be a pattern of interlinked rings. These precautions make the pouch immune to the customary approaches of the cutpurse.
In a few moments the burly fellow was breathing heavily.
I put out my hand and detained the fellow in space 98 who, it seemed, was preparing to depart.
He moaned. "Why is it," he asked, "that I am never abused by small men?" "What is your trade?" I asked.
"I am a sutler," he said.
"Excellent," I said.
"I used to think so," he said.
That had seemed not improbably to me. There were mostly wagoners, of one sort of another, here, or refugees. He did not seem to be a refugee. For example, he did not have a companion, or children, with him. Similarly, most refugees could not have afforded an inn. Too, he did not seem to have the refinement of a high merchant nor the roughness of the drover. Drovers, flush with coins, would be here, of course, returning from Ar's Station. On the journey there they would be with their animals, probably verr or tarsk. "You are on your way to the Cosians' siege camp at Ar's Station," I hazarded.
"Yes," he said.
I had thought that, too, was probable, as he was at the inn. He would want its protection, probably, for his goods. Coins, or letters of credit, might be concealed about a wagon, but it is not easy to conceal quantities of flour, salt, jerky, paga and such, not to mention the miscellany of diverse items for the field supply of which one can usually count on the sutlers, such things as combs, brushes, candles, lamp oil, small knives, common tools, pans, eating utensils, sharpening stones, flints, steel, thumb cuffs, shackles, nose rings, binding fiber, slave collars and whips."
"I have a commission for you," I said.
"You want me to kill our friend in 99?" he asked.
"No," I said.
"It is perhaps just as well," he said. "If I failed to do the job neatly, and he awakened, and I was kneeling there with a bloody knife in my hand, one could not at all count on his seeing the matter from our point of view."
"You are right," I said.
"He has a terrible temper," he said, "and, under such circumstances, it would be hard to blame anyone for being cranky."
"I thoroughly agree," I said.
"What then?" he asked.
"Listen carefully," I said.
7 The Attendant
"Attendant!" cried the burly fellow, from one of the second tubs, that immediately behind one of the first tubs, that most convenient to the entrance to the baths. "Stir up the fire!" It was early, but most of the fellows who had been sleeping on the floor of the baths during the night had now taken their leave.