He brightened and stood straighter. "I bet you're right," he said, and set off at speed for home.
At the village outskirts, Zaranda came upon Shield of Innocence sitting in the dust. He had a village tod-dler on his knee and a pack of others crawling all over his mighty frame. He made a series of ferocious faces at the child he held, rolling his small eyes and opening his tusked mouth alarmingly. The children laughed and laughed in delight.
Zaranda shook her head. "Now I've seen everything," she said to herself. The orog had a talent for more than teaching warcraft, it seemed.
The people of Tweyar had taken Zaranda's party into their homes, while the mercenaries, with some help from the locals, built themselves temporary living quar-ters. It was the kind of manual labor hired fighters tra-ditionally disdained, but Shield and Stillhawk pitched in. Farlorn lightened the labor by his songs and badi-nage, though he himself did no work, bards being even more averse to that than warriors. Besides, the soldiers were happy enough for something to do. It was no ardu-ous labor; given that Tethyr's long and temperate sum-mer lay ahead, the quarters consisted of little more than a couple of plank sheds with roofs to spill rain when the two-week wet season arrived. For their part, the vil-lagers were happy enough to help; the structures could be used for storage when the outsiders had moved on.
Zaranda, however, was quartered in a hut whose lone occupant, a widow, had died not long before the com-pany's arrival. She started to head there and almost ran into Chenowyn, standing in the path looking wan.
"Excuse me, child," Zaranda said, feeling a flash of irritation and starting to push past. She had a great many things on her mind, not least of which was the fact that her rapidly dwindling resources, little offset by the meager amounts the villagers were able to pay, could keep her mercenary contingent satisfied for only so long. And, of course, her creditors would scarcely settle for a share of the grain and livestock that were the villagers' main mode of payment. She had to ex-pand her operations soon, yet to succeed she must make a solid start here in Tweyar... .
She felt a hand on her arm, turned to see Shield smiling at her in the twilight, tusked and benign. "A moment, Mistress Zaranda," the orog said. "Perhaps you're forgetting the education of someone?"
Zaranda frowned and opened her mouth to lash out. Then she shut her mouth and nodded. "Chenowyn," she said, "I'm sorry. I've been neglecting you."
The girl only looked at her, eyes huge and amber in the gloom. Zaranda smiled and took her shoulder.
"Come along, then. Let's review what you've learned of magic so far in your life. And then I'll start you on some simple spells."
18
Eight days after Zaranda's party came to Tweyar, a bandit gang made good on the prediction uttered by Os-bard's wife.
They struck in the early afternoon. Their intent was to catch the villagers logy with lunch, the traditional Tethyrian noontime siesta, and work beneath the warm sun, then to ride down as many as they could and burn the village, with such other merriment as presented it-self. They wanted to provide a striking object lesson for any other village brash enough to try hiring outside pro-tection or organizing a self-defense force.
A score of ragged riders, strung out in crescent for-mation, found a bare handful of farmers in the fields, and these not far out. The villagers began running as soon as the bandits began cutting like a scythe across the just-planted fields. The riders had no chance of reaching them before they scuttled within the shelter of stout walls of sun-cured mud brick.
"Don't worry!" the chief bandit, a lean, sunburned desperado who wore his blond hair in a scalplock, called to his men. "They'll be eager enough to come out when we pile brush against the walls of their hovels and com-mence to roast them!"
For good measure several short-bow-armed bandits sent arrows after the scurrying villagers. But the raiders were not true horse archers, skilled in the ex-traordinarily difficult feat of aiming and hitting a tar-get from the back of a moving mount; that took even more training than learning to draw and accurately shoot a longbow, and any adventure-minded boy or girl of the Dales could tell you that took five years' hard work. They were just horsemen who happened to have bows. They didn't hit anything.
Hooting and brandishing their weapons, the ma-rauders rode through the streets of Tweyar. The field-workers had made good their escape; the bandits had the narrow dirt lanes to themselves.
Unmolested, laughing and catcalling, they followed their leader to the well-trodden dirt of the little common before the vil-lage hetman's house.
"Ho, Osbard," the bandit chieftain called, "why so coy? Have you some reason to hide your face from old friends?"
Vander Stillhawk rose up from concealment behind the parapet of Osbard's roof and shot the bandit leader through the throat.
As he fell to lie kicking in the khaki dust, Balmeric's crossbowmen, likewise hidden on the village's flat roofs, peppered the raiders with quarrels. Farlorn and Zaranda plied longbows from the houses next to Osbard's.
The bandits wheeled their mounts and fled, leaving seven more of their number unhorsed behind. Two of these lay unmoving where they dropped. The others scrambled up and, clutching at the missiles sticking in them, tried to scramble after their fellows.
The village doors burst open and the village volun-teers rushed forth, waving clubs and hoes and shovels and makeshift spears. Screeching with anger pent-up over years of helplessness, they fell upon the injured bandits, bludgeoning, hacking, stabbing.
Zaranda stood up, letting her longbow hang by her side. She was an indifferent archer at best, and had only taken up a bow to add weight to the initial ambush volley. Stillhawk and the half-elven bard kept up their fire, emptying three more saddles before the bandits es-caped into dust and distance. The mercenary crossbow-men set their weapons aside to simply watch.
Out on the common, blood flowed.
Fire leapt in the cleared common before Osbard's house. Hand in hand, villagers and several mercenaries danced around it to the merry tune of Farlorn's yarting, considerably the worse for drink.
Balmeric reeled over to where Zaranda leaned against the front of the hetman's house, a clay mug of the tasty local beer in hand. "Dogs," he said without heat. "D'you know, Zaranda, they actually think they won today?"
"They'd better," Zaranda said. "It's why I let them finish off the bandits you and your men unhorsed."
The mercenary leader's long flexible face warped it-self into a scowl. "Why would you want to encourage these rabble to pump themselves up and rob us of glory?"
"So they'll quit being rabble as soon as possible," Zaranda said. "They needed to taste victory, or they'd never have faith in what we're teaching them—and more to the point, in themselves."
"But it was our bows that won the day!" Balmeric protested.
"They don't know that," Zaranda said, nodding at the celebrating villagers. "Nor do I want them to.
Please don't remind them—and encourage your men not to, either."
The mercenary grumbled and looked toward the ground. Zaranda stared hard at him until, as if com-pelled by her will, he raised his head to meet her gaze.
"Are you so hard-pressed for glory that you insist on claiming credit for winning a back-country skirmish? Bear with me, Balmeric; do as I ask, and I will guarantee you all the glory you could hope for.
Or—" she took a swallow of her beer "—at least an interesting death."
For a moment he goggled at her. Then he laughed and slapped her on the arm. "That's the most any com-mander can truly promise, though few are so candid, I'm bound. Very well, Zaranda Star, you shall have it your way!"