"I'd like to, thanks."

"Well, then," Vaseto said, and gave a clear, high whistle.

The man shouted something again. This time Vaseto shouted back.

"What was that all about?"

"I've offered them a chance to surrender."

"Good thing," Neil replied. "Try to keep low." He reached for his spear.

At that moment, furious motion erupted on the side of the road. Neil wheeled Hurricane and caught a glimpse of something very large and brown in the undergrowth. Leaves were flying, and someone shouted in anguish.

Confused, he turned back to the men on the road, just in time to see them go down beneath the paws of two huge mastiffs.

"Oro!" one of them screamed. one of them screamed. "Oro, pertument! Pacha Satos, Pacha sachero satos! Pacha misercarda!" "Oro, pertument! Pacha Satos, Pacha sachero satos! Pacha misercarda!"

Neil looked around. There were at least eight of the huge beasts.

Vaseto whistled again. The dogs backed up a pace or so from their victims, but kept their teeth bare.

Neil glanced at Vaseto, who was dismounting.

"Why don't you keep that big sword out," she said, "while I take the weapons from these fellows?"

"Have pity!" one of the men in the road said, in the king's tongue. "See how I speak your language? Perhaps a kinsman am I!"

"What sort of pity would you have from me?" Neil asked, keeping one eye on the dog that was guarding the fellow as he took his spear and two knives. "You meant to steal from me, yes? Perhaps even kill me?"

"No, no, of course not," the man said. "But it is so hard to live, these days. Work is scarce, food scarcer. I have a wife, ten little ones-please, spare me, master!"

"Hush," Vaseto said. "You said it yourself. Food is scarce. If my dogs eat a sheep or goat, I'll get in trouble. If they eat you, I'll only get thanks. So be quiet now, thank the lords and ladies you'll feed such noble creatures."

The man looked up. Tears were rolling from his eyes. "Lady Artuma! Spare me from your children!"

Vaseto squatted by him and tousled his hair. "That's disingenuous," she said. "First you molest a servant of Artuma, then you ask forgiveness of her?"

"Priestess, I did not know."

She kissed his forehead. "And how is that an excuse?" she asked.

"It's not, it's not, I understand that."

She searched at his belt, came up with a pouch. "Well," she said. "Perhaps a donation at the next shrine will help your cause."

"Yes," the man sniffled. "It might. I pray it might. Great lord, great lady-"

"I'm tired of your talking now," Vaseto said. "Another word, and your throat will be cut."

They disarmed the rest of the bandits and remounted.

"Shouldn't we take them somewhere?" Neil asked.

She shrugged. "Not unless you've got time to waste. You'd have to stay and wait for a judge. Without weapons, they'll be harmless for a while."

"Harmless as a lamb!" the man on the ground seconded; then he screamed when the dog lunged at him.

"No more talk, I told you," Vaseto said. "Lie there quietly. I leave my brothers and sisters to dispose of you as they see fit."

She trotted her mare down the road. After a moment, Neil followed.

"You might have told me about the dogs," Neil said after a few moments.

"I might have," she agreed. "It amused me not to. Are you angry?"

"No. But I'm learning not to be surprised."

"Oh? That would be a shame. It fits you so well."

"Will they kill them?"

"Hmm? No. They'll stay long enough to give them a good scare, then follow us."

"Who are you, Vaseto?" Neil asked.

"That's hardly a fair question," Vaseto said. "I don't know your your name." name."

"My name is Neil MeqVren," he said.

"That's not the name you gave the countess," she observed.

"No, it isn't. But it is my real name."

She smiled. "And Vaseto is mine. I'm a friend of the countess Orchaevia. That's all you need to know."

"Those men seemed to think you are some sort of priestess."

"What's the harm in that?"

"Are you?"

"Not by vocation."

Which was all she would say in the matter.

Midday the next day, Neil smelled the sea, and soon after heard the tolling of bells in z'Espino.

As they rode over the top of a hill, towers came into view, slender spires of red or dark yellow stone rising above domes and rooftops that seemed to crowd together for leagues. Nearer, fields of darker olive green contrasted sharply with golden wheatland and delicate copses of knife-shaped cedars. Beyond, the blue sliver of the sea gleamed beneath a pile of white clouds.

To the west of the city stood another jumble of buildings, this one more somber, with no towers and no wall. That would be z'Espino-of-Shadows, he reckoned.

"It's big," Neil said.

"Big enough," Vaseto replied. "And too big for my taste."

"How can we ever find two women in all that?"

"Well, I supposed we'd have to think," Vaseto replied. "If you were them, what would you do?"

Hard to say, with Anne, Neil reflected. She might do almost anything. Would she even know what had happened to her family?

But even if she didn't, she was lost in a foreign country, pursued by enemies. If she had any sense, she'd be trying to get home.

"She would try to reach Crotheny," he said.

Vaseto nodded. "Two ways to do that. By sea or by land. Does she have money, this girl?"

"Probably not."

"Then I should think it would be easier to go by land. You ought to know-you just came that way."

"Yes, but the roads are dangerous, especially if those men are still hunting her." He shifted in his saddle. "The countess said something about a man who had his head cut off, and was yet still alive."

"She told you about that, did she? And you've waited this long to ask me about it?"

"I want to know what I'm up against."

"I would tell you if I knew," Vaseto said. "Not the usual sort of knight, but that's obvious. As the countess said, the fellow was still alive, after a fashion, but not exactly in a condition to speak." She wrinkled her brow. "Don't you object to this at all? You seem all too eager to accept a most absurd notion."

"I have seen shinecraft and encrotacnia enough this past year," Neil said. "I've no reason to doubt the countess and every reason to believe her. If she told me they were the eschasl eschasl themselves come back from the grave, I would credit it." themselves come back from the grave, I would credit it."

"Eschasl?" Vaseto said. "You mean the Skasloi? You Lierish can certainly mangle up words, I'll give you that. In any event, the men we're talking about are human, or started that way. We did find the more ordinary sort of corpse, as well. If I had to guess, they're from your country, or some other northern place, for several had yellow hair like yours, and light-colored eyes. They were not Vitellian."

"Which leads me to wonder how they came so deep into your country on a mission of murder."

Vaseto grinned. "But you already know the answer to that, or at least you have some suspicion. Someone here is helping them."

"The Church?"

"Not the Church, but maybe someone in the Church. Or it might be the merchant guilds, given your Sir Quinte's attentions. Or it could be any random prince, who knows? But they have aid here, of that you can be sure."

"And have they aid in z'Espino?"

"That's likely enough. A copper minser could corrupt most any official in this wicked town."

Neil nodded, looking with fresh eyes at the landscape that lay between him and city.

"What's that down there?" he asked, pointing to where the road they were on joined a larger way. Along it, numerous tents and stalls had been set up. Just past the joining, the road crossed a stone bridge over a canal, and there was a gate on the city side.

"That's where the merchant guilds take their taxes," Vaseto replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Because if I were looking for someone entering or leaving z'Espino, that's where I might place myself."

Vaseto nodded. "Good. I'll make you a suspicious man yet."

"They might be looking for me, too," Neil said.

"Good boy."

He felt she might have been talking to one of her dogs. He glanced at her, but she was staring intently at the travelers who were cueing up to cross the bridge.

"I have an idea," she said.

Neil pressed his eye to the crack in the wagon wall. Through the narrow slit, he saw mostly color-silks and satin and brightly dyed cotton swirling like a thousand flower petals in the wind. Faces were nearly lost in it, but he caught them now and then.

The wain jounced to a stop. He tried to find the view he was after, by half crouching and gazing through a knothole.

A group of men in orange surcoats was talking to the drivers of wagons and those on foot or with pack animals. They examined cargo sometimes, sometimes let the travelers pass with little comment. A few arguments erupted, ending when coins changed hands. Beyond all that, at the gate, were more men, these armed, and he could see the archers in the towers above the gate.

He kept looking, cursing the knothole for affording such a small field of vision. The guildsmen were moving toward the wagon he sheltered in. Soon, he would have to- It wasn't his eyes that gave him the clue, but his ears. The cloud of unintelligible Vitellian surrounding him had become transparent. Now, through that clearness, he heard a language he recognized. A language he loathed.

Hanzish.

He couldn't make out what they were saying, but he knew the cadence of it, the long vowel glides and throat-catching gutturals. His hands clenched involuntarily into fists.

He moved to another crack, bumping his head in the process.

"Hiss, back there," a voice whispered furiously. "There's no bargain if you don't lie still, as you were told."

"A moment," Neil replied.

"No moment. Get in your place, now now."

A face pushed through the curtain, and light flooded in. Neil saw only the silhouette of a broad-brimmed hat and the faint glint of leaf-green eyes.

"Do you see anyone with light hair out there?"

"The two Hanzish with the guildsmen? Yes. Now lie down!"

"You see them?"

"Of course I see them. They're watching people, watching the guildsmen do their work. Looking for you, I'd guess, and they'll find you if you don't lie still!"

Another face pushed through, this one Vaseto's. "Do it, you great idiot. I'm your eyes here! I've marked them. Now play your part."

Neil hesitated for a moment, but realized he had no choice now. He couldn't fight all of the guildsmen and the Hanzish, too . . .