With Farlorn's help Zaranda picked herself up. She nodded again, patted the half-elven bard's hand to signify that he could let her go. He hesitated, then did so and stepped back.
Stillhawk had an arrow nocked and drawn back to his ear, holding down on the surviving captives, who had all gone the color of new papyrus or old paper behind their sundry whiskers and coatings of grime. They were staring at the smoking corpse of the morningstar man, their eyes like holes in sheets.
"That's right," she croaked. "He was right. I am a witch. A wizard, in any event. But unlike him, I'm one who keeps my faith. Now go."
The marauders cast a final look at Stillhawk, then lit out running over the gently rolling hills.
Zaranda turned back to Father Pelletyr.
"Randi," Goldie said, "he doesn't look too good."
"Father, are you all right?" Zaranda asked.
"I'm fine." He waved a hand at her. "It's just-these pains in my chest and left arm. They soon shall pass, martyred Ilmater willing."
"If you say so." Zaranda walked over to her mare. What she intended as a hug turned into a grab for support as her knees momentarily buckled.
Goldie held her head up, shying from Zaranda's attempt to stroke her cheek. "You take some crazy risks, Zaranda," she said with exaggerated primness.
Zaranda realized the mare was humiliated by her earlier panicky lapse into horse. She laughed and scratched Goldie's neck until she found the itchy spot horses always have, and the mare arched her neck and bobbed her head in pleasure. Zaranda hugged her again and let her go.
The erstwhile lord high commander of the Barony of Pundaria lay in an unmoving mound, Crackletongue protruding from his broad back. The curved blade no longer crackled and sparked with magic. Dead meat knows no alignment.
"All right, then," Zaranda said. "Who'll help me turn this carrion over and reclaim my blade?"
5
"Have you heard?" the peasant asked. He had a large and colorful wart on the side of his nose and a leather bonnet pulled down over his ears. His garments had been patched until they were more quilt than clothing and still more hole than fabric. "There's a strong man rising in Zazesspur town. And high time, too. He'll bring order back to the land."
"Aye," said another, equally ragged, who was chewing a tufted stalk of timothy grass. He pawed through the assortment of brass implements and cooking vessels Zaranda had spread upon a horse blanket beneath an oak tree that shaded one patch of the tiny village green. He wore a tattered and shapeless felt hat against the noonday sun. "We need strong government, an' that's a fact."
The rest of the throng of prospective shoppers nodded and murmured assent. Like the two who had spoken, and like the village and farmhouses themselves, the villagers had a dusty, threadbare, ground-down look.
The caravan's mules grazed on the grass of the common-for which the local mayor had exacted an advance fee-while their drovers and riders watered themselves in the village's lone tavern-for which the local mayor also exacted tariff, inasmuch as he was the tavernkeeper.
Zaranda had left the bulk of the train encamped in a laager and made a detour through the city of Ithmong with a few muleloads of nonmagical luxury items- spices, dyes, vials of scent, incense-cones. They found an increase in prosperity and decrease in paranoia since the ouster of Gallowglass, with his tyrant's dreams and schemes. Zaranda had parlayed the wares into a dozen new mules loaded with more conventional goods such as tinware, pins, nails, and bolts of colored cloth to trade to the peasants and village folk along the route to Zazesspur.
It was penny-ante commerce, and Zaranda would be doing well to break even. She didn't care. It was a cheap way to garner intelligence and goodwill, and be-sides she felt for the people of the Tethyr countryside. Between bandits and big-city ambitions, only a rare armed caravan such as hers ever reached them. Other-wise the countryfolk had no access to goods beyond what they made themselves, which was why every mo-bile soul for miles had come pouring into town as news of the caravan's arrival spread.
Goldie stood to one side watching the proceedings with interest. Now she cocked an eye at the grass-chewing peasant who had proclaimed the need for strong government.
"Why do you say that?" she asked. The man only goggled at her slightly; word that the caravan leader rode a talking mare had spread quickly through the village.
"That's like saying you need more locusts."
"Now, Golden Dawn," Father Pelletyr said, munching a cold chicken leg, "you shouldn't talk that way."
"You don't think I should talk at all, Father."
"Now, child, you know that's not true-"
"Begging your leave," the peasant said pointedly around his grass stalk, "but our neighbors have more wealth than we."
"Truer words never saw daylight," agreed his friend in the cap. "A good, strong government would take it from them and give it to us."
"Why should they do that?" Goldie asked.
The locals looked at her in consternation. "Because we are hardworking and worthy sons and daughters of Tethyr."
"Aren't they the same?"
The crowd began to give the mare hard looks. "Do not trouble yourself overmuch with her babblings, good folk," Farlorn said suavely. "She's merely a dumb animal."
The peasants looked at each other, then nodded and went back to their shopping.
"I'll show you a dumb animal, you ringleted gigolo," Goldie grumbled.
"Goldie!" Zaranda said sharply.
The bard laughed. "Would you rather be thought a dumb animal or someone whose opinions are so seditious she should be chopped up into food for hounds?"
For once Goldie had no answer. Father Pelletyr beamed indulgently as he bit into a raw onion he'd bought from a farmer-more early yield from the long Southern growing season. "They're right, anyway," he said. "A good, strong government is a benefit to all."
"Isn't envy a sin in Ilmater's eyes?" Zaranda asked quietly. The cleric looked blank. She decided not to press it; the crowd might decide she was better off as dog food, and while she was intrepid, by her reckoning she'd faced enough angry mobs in her lifetime.
The inn door opened. Three men emerged into the brilliant midday sun, managing at once to saunter and swagger. They were typical Tethyrian bravos in garish costume, with puffed blouses and extravagantly padded codpieces, which tended to turn any sort of walk into a swagger. They arranged their broad-brimmed hats and floridly dyed plumes and walked across the road to the green.
Stillhawk watched them closely with his brooding dark eyes. He had sealed his bow in a waterproof case of some soft and supple hide that Zaranda suspected to be kobold skin-the elves had some folkways that seemed pretty abrupt by human standards. A man of the Dalelands, and an obvious ranger at that, was a substantial novelty in the sparsely forested Tethyrian plains. Zaranda feared he might excite the villagers unduly if he wandered around with an elven longbow strung and ready for action. He wore his long sword, also of elvish make, scabbarded at his hip.
He dropped a hand as dark and hard as weathered wood to the hilt and looked a query at Zaranda. Stand easy, she signed to him.
The newcomers carried swords with elaborate hilts and blades so broad they each had two deep, wide fuller grooves-which lightened weight and increased structural integrity and hadn't a blessed thing to do with letting blood flow, as the ignorant would have you believe. These swords weighed about five pounds each, which was in the upper range for anybody of human strength to wield one-handed and expect to live. Daggers they had as well, daggers in profusion: broad-bladed daggers, slim poniards, misericords, dirks, toadstickers, and hunting knives with grips of kobold bone. These blades hung all about their harness as if, come combat, they anticipated sprouting extra arms and fighting in the manner of the intelligent octopi rumored to haunt the rocks off the coast of Lantan in the Trackless Sea. But enough of blades.