CHAPTER 9.

"The Warrior Lives"

Fundamentally, every bar is the same as every other one, if it's the kind you're drinking in, to end a sentence with a preposition, which I haven't.

a"Walter Slovotsky.

On the road ahead, a soldier at the guard station began working the wooden arms of a pair of signal flags. A tall, lanky man, he moved easily, as though the weight of his steel helmet and rusty chainmail didn't matter, or couldn't be allowed to matter. The red and white cloths fluttered madly as the long wooden arms clicked and clacked in the warm noon air, then halted for a few moments, only to start up again.

Jason, sitting astride a big brown gelding, caught Daherrin eyeing the motion intently. "Can you read that?"

Daherrin nodded briefly. "A bit, Taren." He shrugged. "'Nough to know that's not one of their danger signals. Alarms tend to be short. We shouldn't have much trouble; Enkiar's an open city, remember?"

"We don't usually have any trouble in Enkiar, Taren," Mikyn said. Like the others, he was giving Jason's a.s.sumed name a thorough workout. Jason hoped that would all wear off before they ran into anybody; folks might wonder why it was Taren-this and Taren-that all the time.

"You still in touch with the dragon?" Daherrin asked.

Jason shrugged. It was hard to say. He thought he could feel Ellegon's distant presence, but he wasn't sure. Besides, it didn't matter if he could now; the issue was whether he could if and when things went sour in Enkiar.

A better question was whether that would do any good at all. It would take Ellegon at least a few minutes to arrive in response to even the most plainly heard call for help; it took only a moment to turn a live person into a corpse.

They rode in slowly, hands away from weapons, although none of them was heavily armed: each of the four humans carried only a beltknife and sword, while Daherrin sported a b.a.s.t.a.r.d combination of a short staff and a mace. There were five rifles in the flatbed wagon that Falherten drove, but those were props, not intended for use; real rifles weren't brought into Enkiar.

The outer guard station consisted of a pair of low stone buildings that might have concealed as many as twenty men each, no more. No more than a bowshot beyond that was the curtain wall surrounding the town, the only visible access an open gate.

Daherrin was known in Enkiar, certainly by one of the guards, possibly by the half dozen manning the station; it took only a few moments, a palmed coin and a handshake to get them inside, after the most cursory of examinations. They did have to surrender the guns, but since the only ones they were carrying were the five slaver blunderbusses that required the magically compounded slaver powder, leaving them behind presented no problem. Slaver powder wasn't particularly a secret, not for years; it was just horribly expensive.

"Besides," Daherrin said, tucking their whittled-bone claim tokens into his pouch as they rode through the gate and into Enkiar proper, "it gives 'em something to think about." His ugly face split in a grin. "Let 'em wonder if we're really using Home powder, or if that secret died with you-know-who's father."

That didn't make any sense, none at all. The making of gunpowder was an Engineering secret, known only to the Engineer and his most senior and trusted subordinate master engineers. All the other Other Siders probably knew something about it, but none of them except the Engineer knew the details of what everybody knew was an incredibly detailed and difficult chemical process.

He thought he was keeping his own counsel, but something must have shown on his face. Mikyn snorted. "I don't think so either, but there's lots of folks who think he could do anything."

"Maybe he could, Mikyn." Arrikol said. He was a tall blond Salke, his hair twisted into a single thick braid, seaman style. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he reached across his waist, nervously pulling his sword a fraction of an inch out of its scabbard, then slipping it back, pumping the steel a few times like a piston before he caught himself and stopped.

Falherten, sitting on the narrow bench of the flatbed wagon, clucked at the horses and twitched the reins gently. "The market's the other direction, Daherrin; you're going the wrong way."

The dwarf smiled. "Gotta be sure that they know we're here, Fal. If we don't let them see how confident we are, they might get the idea that we're worried or something. Not that we are, eh?"

Falherten didn't return his smile.

Jason swallowed, hard.

The main streets of Enkiar, easily wide enough for two carts to travel in each direction, were paved with ancient cobblestones, their tops worn smooth, the s.p.a.ces between them packed with the dirt of years. It was more like riding down a good dirt road than a cobblestone street: there weren't any ruts.

It was midday, and a pretty day, and the streets were filled with life. Seemingly endless crowds of ragged children played tag, weaving in and out of the streets and onto the sidewalks in a restless dance. A thickset woman in the ragged gray dress of a peasant walked down the road, a plump, nut-brown chicken struggling under either arm; her stringy hair was bound back with a kerchief of dissonant scarlet.

Over in the smithy, a fat man worked over his anvil, his face greasy, his bare chest and ma.s.sive belly sweaty from the heat of his forge, the coa.r.s.e black mat of hair covering his torso broken in perhaps half a dozen s.p.a.ces where white scars peeked through, announcing that he had been clumsy or careless with hot metal perhaps half a dozen times.

At a nearby stall, a willowy woman crouched over her iron brazier, dipping a brush into a bowl of sauce. She basted the skewers of meat and vegetables on the grill, then exchanged the brush for a paper fan, gently fanning the coals. The scent of broiling lamb and onion and garlic spread across the air.

Two compact men in flat, broad hats leaned toward each other over an empty barrel of grain, one repeatedly shaking a small leather purse, the other shaking his head and repeatedly shouting, "Not for that, not for that," spraying the first with spittle.

Just a normal market day.

"Farmers' Market's down this way, Taren," Daherrin said.

Beyond the last of the low stone buildings began a series of low pens for animals; it stank of cattle. Jason hated the smell of cattle; he'd ridden far too long downwind of it on a cattle drive from Metreyll to Pandathaway.

There was a leisurely sale in progress; a trio of brawny men Jason took to be innkeepers were spending as much time consulting with each other as they did bidding on the half dozen animals in the pen, little to the delight of the auctioneer.

Beyond the cattle pen were pigs; beyond pigs were the chicken cages. Beyond the chicken cages were three steel cages, each big enough to hold perhaps two dozen humans.

There were three guards at the door of the cage, none of them in the red and brown livery of Enkiar's Prince Gyren. Slavers.

They didn't look evil; they just looked like three swordsmen in iron and bra.s.s and leather. Nothing unusual, unless you looked closely at the way one of them narrowed his eyes.

You couldn't always tell evil by looking at it. Maybe that was part of why Gyren of Enkiar kept Enkiar non-partisan in the war between Home and the Slavers' Guild. Gyren the Neutral, he called himselfa"proudly, as if there were something to be proud of in being neutral in a fight between Good and Evil.

Well, maybe Good wasn't good all the time. Jason wasn't good, n.o.ble, right and proper all the d.a.m.n time. He'd been a coward once, and been afraid a lot. But at least he didn't own people.

The middle cage was empty, the other two nowhere near capacity. One held perhaps ten glum men, ranging in age from early teens to middle fifties; the other contained five women, all plain and unadorned.

But could any of them be from Kernat village? Jason kicked in his heels and rode over toward the cages, calling out, "Are any of you from Kernat village? Any Biemish among you?"

One of the slavers reached toward the signalling horn at his waist, desisting only when another shook his head. "Ta havath," he said, holding up a palm toward Jason. "You're an Imperial?"

Jason nodded. "By origin, if not profession, at the moment," he said.

Behind him, Daherrin's horse pranced impatiently, snorting. "Ta havath, Taren," the dwarf said. "You're a Home raider these days, not an Imperial." The dwarf eyed the slavers carefully, his broad smile more than vaguely insulting. "My name's Daherrin, slaver. You heard of me?"

The slaver nodded. "I recognized you from descriptions."

The dwarf nodded back. "Then why aren't you sweating like that one is?" he asked, indicating another of the slavers with a jerk of his head. "Or s.h.i.tting yourself the way your other friend's about to?"

"Because there's nothing to worry about." The slaver smiled back. "Never heard you were stupid, never heard you were stupid enough to start trouble in Enkiar and end up with the city being closed to you." He turned to Jason. "We don't have a problem, young Taren. These aren't Imperials; they're all from the Shattered Islands. I haven't seen any fresh merchandise from Holtun or Bieme for years." His words had the ring of conviction, and none of the sullen slaves seemed to be stifling an objection; possibly he was telling the truth.

Daherrin had been trying to catch Jason's eye, but Jason had been deliberately ignoring him. "Taren," Daherrin said, snapping out the word like a lash. "That's enough."

Jason turned his horse away, the others falling in beside him. "Sorry, Daherrin," he said as soon as he was sure they turned a corner and left the slave markets behind. "But I had to know."

"We can talk about it later," the dwarf said. "Later." He shrugged. "No, d.a.m.n it, we can talk about it now. You don't ever," he said, "ever go independent on me again. You're not in charge here; I am. If I'm out of it, command goes to Falherten, then to Mikyn, then to Arrikol. You're only in charge if you're all alone 'cause the three of us are dead."

Jason's ears burned.

"What you just pulled, boy," the dwarf went on, "is the sort of s.h.i.t that your father always used to. But he could get away with it. You're not him. He could have taken all three of them all by himself; you couldn't."

"So?" Jason couldn't resist protesting. "It was my risk."

"Bulls.h.i.t," the dwarf said. "Not when you're part of a team. Part of my team. When you do something, you're counting on the rest of us, just like we're counting on you. There's plenty of room for independent thought, but you don't act like you're on your own, 'cause you're not."

They rode in silence for a minute.

"They're mostly ugly," Mikyn said. "Like usual."

"Eh?"

"I've always heard Walter Slovotsky talk about all the beautiful women he'd freed."

"There is something to that. Aeia's awful pretty, for a human," Daherrin put in.

"But most of them look like that," Mikyn said, jerking his thumb toward the cage. There wasn't a beautiful slave girl among them; they all looked like overworked domestics.

"Way I understand it," Daherrin said as they rode on, "ugly humans hurt just as badly as pretty ones." The dwarf clucked his tongue, once, twice, three times, urging his pony into a faster walk. "Not that there's s.h.i.t we can do about it here. Let's go buy some supplies."

It didn't take long to get the oats that they wanteda"although Daherrin spent five times as long haggling over prices as Jason would havea"and it took much less time to load the sacks of grain onto the bed of the wagon. That would have gone even more quickly if Daherrin had partic.i.p.ated, but the raiding team leader didn't always make a practice of dirtying his hands.

The ritual was repeated at each of the stalls. Negotiate, pay and load. First the grains for the animals, and then a few sacks of dried beef and, finally, apples, carrots and turnips for both people and animals.

But, finally, the last copper was exchanged between Daherrin and an apple seller, the last sack opened and examined, the last sample apple removed (via a slit in the bag, from the middle of the bag, while the dealer's back was turned), then peeled, quartered and offered to the dealer, Daherrin seemingly by accident failing to put away the beltknife he'd used for paring the apple, the apple seller biting into the fruit without so much as a surprised glance, perhaps having dealt with a suspicious dwarf before . . . and then, with the apple seller's bite, munch and swallow, they were done.

"So. I guess we head back to camp," Jason said.

"You guess wrong, again. He used to call it 'showing the flag,' " Daherrin said, "even though he didn't like to do it. Scared him as bad as it scares me. Which don't mean s.h.i.t." He looked Jason over carefully. "You're thinking that I'm about to take a risk, just like you did. The difference between what we're doing now and what you did a while ago is that I'm deciding this. Understood? Calculated risk, not an empty-headed impulse."

"Do what?" Jason asked, as Daherrin levered himself into his saddle and kicked his horse into a canter.

"What we're gonna do now, Taren," the dwarf said. "What I'm gonna do now. Can't let the traditions die."

. . . With him. The unspoken words hung in the air between them. "There's a tavern, over this way," the dwarf said.

Falherten had a bit of trouble getting the flatbed turned around.

The tavern was a one-story wattle-and-daub building, differing from any of the dozen others on the street in, first, the huge pewter tankard, easily a quarter of Jason's height, that hung over the door like a boast, and, secondly, in the persons of the thirty or so soldiers in the livery of Lord Gyren, crowding the street in front of the tavern.

Their leader, a jowly man with a long, oily mustache that curled down the sides of his face and under his chin, held up a restraining hand as Daherrin dismounted, signaling for the others to wait.

Daherrin put an easy grin on his face. "Greetings, Captain . . . ?"

"Asklans. Greetings, Daherrin."

"Oh? We met before?"

The captain nodded. "A few years back. Some of my men and I applied to join the Home raiders. It is perhaps as well you didn't take us; this is working out acceptably. The pay isn't good, but there's less blood. We would like to keep it that way."

"Hey, Fal," the dwarf said, gesturing at Mikyn and Arriken to dismount. "You and Taren watch the wagon. We're gonna buy the captain an ale or three."

Jason looked at Daherrin. Relay, please: I'm not going to let you keep me out of things, he started reflexively, then remembered that Ellegon wasn't close enough.

But the dwarf relented anyway.

"Belay that," Daherrin said. "Taren, you look too thirsty to be standing on the street."

Jason tried to feel at the corners of his mind. Yes, the dragon was there, if need be, and perhaps was wondering somethinga"perhaps how things were going?

He tried to broadcast a feeling of cautious rea.s.surance, but wasn't sure that he was even capable of feeling that, much less transmitting it. Shrugging, he followed Daherrin into the tavern, Asklans and a half dozen of his soldiers following behind.

There was probably an exception to the rule about taverns looking the samea"near as Jason could figure, there were exceptions to all of Slovotsky's Lawsa"but this one wasn't it: it was a dark and smoky room, too few lanterns sending too much smoke and too little light into the stale air.

It was crowded, too: there were easily forty men sitting on stools around the rough-hewn tables, most of them looking at Daherrin and his three companions, and at the soldiers following them in. Most of them were locals, some in the clean broadcloths of merchants, others in the rough gray tunics, breechclouts, and leggings of peasants, their tunics belted with rope, not sword beltsa"but a dozen of the men were armed, some with their swords belted on, some with them propped against the walls.

"I smell slavers," the dwarf said, sniffing loudly. "The Slavers' Guild doesn't need to make its members wear uniforms, not when slavers stink up a room."

The room got very quiet, very quickly. At one of the low tables, four peasants looked from one to another, then rose, leaving their ale and bread unfinished as they headed out the door.

One of the slavers reached slowly, carefully toward his sword belt, not pausing when Asklans held up a restraining hand, desisting only when another slaver shook his head twice, quickly, his face expressionless.

Daherrin seated himself at the nearest of the tables, his eyes never leaving the slavers.

The innkeepera"a thickset man with the customary beer belly and big handsa"scurried over, wiping his hands on a rag. "Drinks? Or drinks and food?"

"Just ale," the dwarf said. "Four tankards. Go help him pour, Arriken."

"That won't be necessary," Asklans said, taking up a position behind the dwarf. No apparent signal pa.s.sed from him to his troops, but the six men spread out, two of them taking up parade rest positions in a far corner, two others near the door to the kitchen, the final two walking to stand behind the slavers in the far corner of the room.

Daherrin didn't turn as he answered, "Maybe it isn't." But he didn't say anything to Arriken, who followed the innkeeper into the kitchen, returning with four pewter tankards, each br.i.m.m.i.n.g with foam. Arriken sipped each one in turn, setting the first in front of the dwarf, the second in front of Mikyn, the third in front of Jason, and taking the last for himself.

"Drink up, Taren," he said. "If things go to s.h.i.t, you may as well have a last brew in your belly." He sat down next to the dwarf and gulped his own ale, the foam staining his full lips and beard.

n.o.body in the room spoke for a long time, until one of the slavers stood. Daherrin shook his head fractionally, and Mikyn, who had looked as if he were about to launch himself across the table, relaxed to the same degree that Jason did: not much.

Jason didn't like it. Slavers were supposed to look evila"Ahrmin had looked like cruelty incarnatea"but this one didn't. He just looked like a normal, twentyish man in the tunic, breechclout and leggings combination that was the common dress in the Eren regions. His sword was at the left side of his waist, the scabbard rigged to keep the hilt canted forward at a comfortable angle for a cross-body draw.

His face wasn't pinched; his eyes weren't sunken hollows. Just a normal-looking brown-haired man, with perhaps a too-easy grin on his broad face. But it wasn't much of a grin.

"Greetings," he said, seating himself opposite Daherrin, Jason and Arriken, both hands on his tankard. "Willem, senior journeyman of the Slavers' Guild. You are?"