"Ho, Thrush! Do we sleep in town tonight?" one of the other men called.
"With full trenchers and a wench on each knee," Thrusher laughed.
"By the gods, I thought we're bound for Sanctuary, not paradise."
"Paradise enough-if a man's not choosy," Thrusher told them all as he dismounted and made his way to Walegrin.
"You seem satisfied. Is the town that much changed since we left it?" Walegrin asked.
"Yes, that much. You'd think the Nisibisi rode this way. There are more mercenaries in Sanctuary than in Ranke. We'll never be noticed. The usual scum fears to leave the shadows-and if a man knows how to use his sword there's any number who'll hire him. Kittycat's gold hasn't been the best for many a month now. He's got to rely on a citizen's militia to take up the slack from the Hell Hounds. Wrigglies-every last one of them: pompous and-"
"What manner of mercenaries?" Walegrin interrupted.
"Sacred Banders," Thrusher admitted with noticible reluctance.
"Vashanka's bastards. How many? And who leads them-if they're led by a man?"
"Couldn't say how many; they camp Downwind. Banders're worse than Hounds; a handful of 'em's worse than a plague. Some say they belong to the Prince now that their priest's dead. Most say it's Tempus at the root of it. They train for the Nisibisi, but Tempus is building a new fortress Downwind."
Walegrin looked away. He had no quarrel with Tempus Thales. True, he was inclined to arrogance, sadism and he was treachery incarnate, but he moved in the elite circles of power and, as such, Walegrin could only admire him. Like everyone else he had heard the Tempus-tales of self-healing and psuedo-divinity; he professed to doubt them-but had Tempus gone in search of Enlibar steel, no one would have dared stand in his way.
"They call themselves Stepson-or something like that," Thrusher continued. "They're all in Jubal's turf; and neither hide nor hair of Jubal seen these last months. No hawkmasks on the streets either, 'cept the ones found nailed to posts here and there."
"Sacred Banders; Stepsons; Whoresons." Walegrin shared the prejudices of most in the Imperial army towards any elite, separate group. Sanctuary had been the dead-end of the world as long as anyone could remember. No right-thinking Rankan citizen passed time there. It boded ill if Sanctuary had become home to not only Tempus but a contingent of Sacred Banders as well. The Empire was in worse shape than anyone thought.
What was bad for Sanctuary and all of Ranke, though, was not necessarily bad for the re-discoverer of Enlibar steel. With luck Walegrin would find good men in town, or good gold, or simply enough activity to hide behind. But whenever Walegrin thought of luck he thought of the S'danzo. They had marked him for ill fortune: if he had good luck it could have been better and when his luck turned sour, the less said about it the better.
"What about that house I asked you about?" Walegrin asked after the conversation had lulled a moment.
The scout was relieved to speak of something else. "No trouble-it wasn't hidden, though no-one knew much about it. Right off the Street of Armorers, like you said it'd be. This metal-master, Balustrus, he must be a pretty strange fellow. Everyone thought he'd died until the Torch-" Thrusher stopped abruptly, slapping himself on the forehead.
"-Gods takes take me for an idiot! Nothing is the same in Sanctuary; the gods have discovered it! Vashanka's name was blasted from the pantheon over the palace gate. Vashanka! Sacred Band's Storm God burned clean. The stone steamed for a day and a night. The god himself appeared in the sky-and Azyuna, too."
"Wrigglies? Magicians? Were the Whoresons involved?" Walegrin asked, but without interrupting the flow of Thrusher's theological gossip.
"The Torch himself was nearly killed. Some say a new god's been born to the First Consort and the War of Cataclysm's begun. Officially the priests are blaming everything on the Nisibisi- and not saying why the Nisibisi would wage magical war in Sanctuary. The Wrigglies say it's the awakening of Ils Thousand Eyes. And the mages don't say much of anything because half of them're dead and the rest hiding. The local doomsayers're making fortunes.
"But our Prince Kittycat, bless his empty, little head, had an idea. He marches out on his balcony and proclaims that Vashanka is angry because Sanctuary does not show proper respect to his consort and her child and that he has blasted his own name off the pantheon rather than be associated with the town. Then Kittycat proclaims a tax on every tavern-a copper a tot-and says he's going to make an offering to Vashanka. Sanctuary will apologize by ringing a new bell!"
Walegrin empathized with Sanctuary's naive, blundering young governor. Actually his idea wasn't bad; much better than involving the mageguild or setting the Wrigglies against the outnumbered Rankans. That was Kittycat's problem; his ideas weren't half bad, but he wasn't even half the man it would take to have people listen to them without laughing.
A new idea grew in Walegrin's thoughts. The Prince had turned to Balustrus, metal-master, to cast the bell for Vashanka. Now he, Walegrin, would approach Balustrus to make Enlibar steel-for the Prince, perhaps, but not Vashanka. A pattern of fortune might emerge-might be stronger than the S'danzo curse. He imagined himself with the Prince; the two of them together might make one irresistable force.
"Did you see this bell of the metal-master's? Is it worthy?" he asked Thrusher.
"Worthy of what?" Thrusher replied, not following Walegrin's thoughts at all.
3
Dawn's first light pierced the shadows and sent the denizens of the night scurrying. The streets of Sanctuary were almost quiet. Flocks of seabirds wheeled silently over the town, swooping suddenly as, one after another, the houses opened their doors to jettison nightslops into the street. A cowled, burdened monk slipped out the upper window of a tavern and disappeared down a still-dark alley. The brief moment of calm magic faded; the day had begun.
The establishment ofBalustrus, metal-master, was among the first in the armorer's quarter to come to life. A young woman opened the upper half of the front door and struggled to raise the huge, dingy slops-ewer to her shoulder. She froze, nearly dropping the noisome thing, when a man stepped out of the shadows. He wore a monk's garb, but the cowl had fallen back to his shoulders. A warrior's tore held his straw-blond hair over his brow.
Walegrin had had three days' rest and washed the desert from his face, but he was still an ominous figure. The woman gave a small yelp when he took the ewer from her and carried it some distance before upending it. When he returned to the doorway, the metal-master himself stood there.
"Walegrin, isn't it?"
If the young soldier was ominous, then Balus-trus was positively demonic. His skin was the color of mottled bronze-not brown, nor gold, nor green-nor human at all. It was wrinkled like dried fruit, but shone like metal itself. He was hairless, with features that blended into the convolutions of his skin. When he smiled, as he smiled at Walegrin, the dark eyes all but vanished.
Walegrin swallowed hard. "I've come with business for you."
"So early?" the bronze man chided. "Well, come right in. A soldier in monk's cloth is always welcome for breakfast." He hobbled back from the door.
Walegrin retrieved his sack and followed him into the shop. A single oil lamp set over a counting-table cast flickering shadows on the metal-master's face. He rested a pair of iron crutches against the wall behind the table and seemed to hover there, unsupported. Walegrin's eyes adjusted to the dimmer light. He saw the price sheets nailed to the wall and the samples of bronze, iron, tin and steel; he saw the saddle-like perch in which the metal-master sat. But his first impression of the eerie place did not change and he would have left if he could.