"The men in Ranke will not reach me and Balustrus will not sell me?"
The S'danzo woman laughed as she gathered her cards. "Raise your eyes, Walegrin. It doesn't matter. Ranke is to the north and you're not going north. The steel, the fleet and the ori-flamme are right here."
"I do not understand."
The incense had burned down. Sunlight came in through the roped-off door. Illyra emerged from the aura of mystery to be herself again. "You are the only one who can understand, Walegrin," she told him. "I'm too tired, now. It doesn't really matter; I don't feel your doom- and I've felt doom often enough since the mercenaries started coming. Who knows. Maybe you aren't the one who understands. Things happen to you, around you, and you just muddle through. Tell Dubro I'll see no-one else today when you leave."
She stood up and went behind a curtain. He heard her lie down; he left quietly. Thrusherwas helping Dubro with a wheelrim, but both men stopped when they saw him.
"She wishes to be left alone the rest of the day," he said.
"Then you best begone from here."
Walegrin headed out from the awning without argument. Thrusher joined him.
"Well, what did you leam?"
"She told me that we will not go north and that a great fleet is headed for Sanctuary."
Thrusher stopped short. "She's mad," he exclaimed.
"I don't think so, but I don't understand either. In the meantime we'll follow our original plans. We'll come back to the city tonight and speak to the men you've found. There should be twenty-five swords finished by now-if there aren't, we'll cut our losses and leave with what we've got. I want to be out of here by sunrise."
6
The light in the tiny, upper room was provided by two foul-smelling candles. A man stood uncomfortably in the center of the room, the only place where he could stand without striking his head on the rough-hewn beams. Walegrin, deep within the comer shadows, fired questions at him.
"You say you can use a sword-do you fight in skirmish or battle?"
"Both. Before I came to Sanctuary, two years back, I lived a time at Valtostin. We fought the citizens by night and the Tostin tribes by day. I've killed twenty men in a single day, and I've got the scars to prove it."
Walegrin didn't doubt him. The man had the look of a seasoned fighter, not a brawler. Thrusher had seen him single-handedly subdue a pair of rowdies without undue injury or commotion. "But you left Valtostin?"
The man shifted his weight nervously. "Women-a woman." "And you came to Sanctuary to forget?" Walegrin suggested.
"There's always work for such as me; especially in a city like this."
"So you found work here, but not with the garrison. What did you do?"
"I guarded the property of a merchant..."
Walegrin did not need to hear the rest of the explanation; he'd heard it often enough. It was as if the surviving hawkmasks had settled on a single excuse for their past involvement with Jubal. In a way there was truth in it; Jubal's trade wasn't fundamentally different from the activities of a legitimate merchant especially here in Sanctuary.
"You know what I'm offering?" Walegrin asked flatly when the man had fallen silent. "Why come to me when Tempus needs Stepsons?" __
"I'd die before I served hint."
That too was the expected response. Walegrin emerged from the shadows to embrace his new man. "Well, die you might, Cubert. We quarter in a villa to the north of town. A sign says 'Sighing Trees,' if you read Wriggle. Otherwise you'll know it by the smell. We're with Balustrus, metal-master, for one more night."
Cubert knew the name and did not flinch at the sound of it. Perhaps he did not have the abhor-ence of magic and near-magic that most mercenaries had. Or he was simply a good soldier and accepted his lot with resignation. Thrusher emerged to open the door.
"Was that the last?" Walegrin asked when they were alone again.
"The best, anyway. There's one more, another hawkmask, and-" Thrusher paused, " a woman."
Walegrin's sigh made the candles flicker. "Very well-send her in."
It was not the custom of the army, even here in the hinterlands, to consider a woman fit for anything but cooking and fornicating. Jubal's rejection of this time-honored attitude was, to Walegrin, far more outrageous than any of his other activities. Unfortunately, with the Stepsons changing the face of the Downwind side of town, Walegrin was forced to consider these distaff aberations if he was to leave town with a dozen men-soldiers-swords, whatever, in his command.
The last candidate entered the room. Thrusher slid back under the eaves as soon as he had shut the door.
There were two types to these women Jubal had hired. The first was small-built, all teeth and eyes and utterly devoid of the traditional virtues almost every soldier brought into battle. The second type was a man save for accident of birth-big and broad, strong as any man of equal size, but as lacking in military honor as her scrawny sister.
This one was of the first type; her head barely reached Walegrin's chest. In a way she reminded him of Illyra and the resemblence was almost enough for him to order her out on the spot.
She was shaking out her short kilt; repairing a knot at the shoulder of her tunic which tried to conceal a small breast as grimy as the rest of her. Walegrin judged she hadn't eaten for two or three days. A half-healed slash stiffened her face; another wound ran down her hard, bare arm. Someone had tried to kill this woman and failed. She tugged wide-spread fingers through her matted, dark hair, doing nothing to improve it.
"Name," he demanded when she stood still again.
"Cythen." Her voice was remarkably pleasant for one so callused.
"You use a sword?"
"Well enough."
"A lad's sword, not a man's, I suppose."
Cythen's eyes flashed from the insult. "I learned the sword from my father and my brothers, my uncles and cousins. They gave me theirs when the time came."
"And Jubal?"
"And you," she stated defiantly.
Walegrin was impressed by her spirit-and wished he could hire her relatives instead. "How have you survived since Jubal's death-or don't you think he's dead?"
"There's not enough of us left for it to make a difference. We always had more enemies than friends. The hawkmask days are over. Jubal was our leader and no one could take his place, even for a few weeks. Myself, I went to the Street of Red Lanterns-but it's not to my taste. I was not always like this.
"I saw your man face down a Stepson-so I've come to see you and what you're worth."
A man shouldn't look at his prospective officer that way-not that she was flirting. Walegrin felt she was trying to reverse their roles.
"Jubal was smart and strong-maybe not as smart and strong as he thought he was; Temp us got him in the end. I put a high price on my loyalty and who I give it to. What are your plans? It's rumored you have hard steel. Who do you use it for?"
Walegrin did not reveal his surprise; he just stared back at her. He had far less experience than the slaver, fewer men and far less gold. Ranke, in the form of Tempus, had brought Jubal down-what chance, truly, did he have? "I have the steel of Enlibar forged into swords. The Nisibisi do not fight in neat ranks and files; they ambush and we will ambush them in turn until we've made our names. Then with more swords-"
She sighed loudly. For one raging moment Walegrin thought she would turn on her heels and leave. Had she honestly expected him to scrabble for Jubal's lost domain? Or did she sense the hollowness of his confidence?
"I doubt it-but at least I'll be out of Sanctuary," she offered him her hand as she spoke.
A mercenary captain welcomed his men with a hand-shake and a comrade's embrace. Wale-grin did not embrace women as comrades. When he needed to he found some ordinary slut, laid her on her back and, with her skirts up to hide her face, took what he needed. He had seen women, ladies, that he would not treat in such a manner-but they had never seen him.