"Your master? You mention him much. But you do not name him." I pointed this out most gentry.

"It is true." She moved hair from her face.

"You do not wish to name him?"

"At this time? No."

"He sent you here?" I savoured the wine.

"Yes," she said.

"Because he fears for your safety?" I suggested.

"No." Sadness and desperate amus.e.m.e.nt showed for a second in the set of her lips.

"Then you have an errand here?" I asked. Again 1 moved closer.

"Yes." She took a couple of paces back from me. I guessed that she was as affected by me as I was by her, but it could have been merely that my questions cut too close to the bone and that I was unnerving her.

I paused.

"Could I ask you what that errand can be?"

She became gay, but plainly her mood was not altogether natural. "To entertain you"a flirt of the hand"captain."

"But you were not aware that I stayed here."

She dropped her gaze.

"Were you?" I continued. "Unless some unseen servant of your master reported me to you."

She raised her eyes. She ignored my last remark and said: "I have been looking for a brave man. A brave man and an intelligent one."

"On your master's instructions? Is that the implication?"

She offered me a challenging look now. "If you like."

The instinct which had helped me keep my life and health through all my exploits warned me now that this unusual woman could be bait for a trap, for once, however, I ignored the warning. She was willing, she suggested, to give herself to me. In return, I guessed, I would be called upon to pay a high price. At that moment I did not care what the price was. I was, anyway, I reminded myself, a resourceful man and could always, with reasonable odds, escape later. One can act too much in the cause of self-preservation and experience nothing fresh as a result.

"He gives you liberty to do what?" I asked her.

"To do almost anything I like." She shrugged.

"He is not jealous?"

"Not conventionally so, Captain von Bek." She drained her cup. I followed her example. She took both cups and filled them again. She sat herself beside me, now, upon a couch under the window. My flesh, my skin, every vein and sinew, sang. I, who had practised self-control for years, was barely able to hold onto a coherent thought as I took her hand and kissed it, murmuring: "He is an unusual master, your lord."

"That is also true."

I withdrew my lips and fell back a little, looking carefully at her wonderful face. "He indulges you? Is it because he loves you very much?"

Her breathing matched mine. Her eyes were bright.

pa.s.sionate gems. She said: "I am not sure that my master understands the nature of love. Not as you and I would understand it."

I laughed and let myself relax a little more. "You become cryptic again, Lady Sabrina, when you swore that you would not be."

"Forgive me." She rose for fresh cups.

I watched her form. I had never seen such beauty and such wit combined in any human individual before. "You will not tell me your history?"

"Not yet."

I interpreted this remark as a promise, yet I pressed her just a little further: "You were born in these parts?"

"In Germany, yes."

"And not very long ago." This was partly to flatter her. It was unnecessary, that flattery, I knew, but I had learned pothouse habits as a soldier-of-fortune and could not in an instant lose them all.

Her answer was unexpected. She turned to me, with a wine-cup in each hand. "It depends on your definition of Time," she said. She gave me my filled cup. "Now you probe and I mystify. Shall we talk of less personal matters? Or do you wish to speak of yourself?"

"You seem to have determined who and what I am already, my lady."

"Not in fine, captain."

"I've few secrets. Most of my recent life has been spent in soldiering. Before that it was spent in receiving an education. Life is not very brisk in Bek."

"But you have seen and done much, as a soldier?"

"The usual things." I frowned. I did not desire too much recollection. Magdeburg memories still lingered and were resisted with a certain amount of effort.

"You have killed frequently?"

"Of course." I displayed reluctance to expand upon this theme.

"And taken part in looting? In torture?"

"When necessary, aye." I grew close to anger again. ! believed that she deliberately discomfited me.

"And rape?"

1 peered directly at her. Had I misjudged her? Was she 37.perhaps one of those bored, lascivious ladies of the kind I had once met at Court? They had delighted in such talk. It had excited them. They were eager for sensation, having forgotten or never experienced the subtle forms of human sensuality and emotion. In my cynicism I had given them all that they desired. It had been like bestowing lead on gold-greedy merchants who, in their anxiety to possess as much as possible, could not any longer recognise one metal from another. If the Lady Sabrina was of this caste, I should give her what she desired.

But her eyes remained candid and questioning, so I answered briefly: "Aye. Soldiers, as I said, become impatient. Weary - -"

She was not interested in my explanation. She continued: "And have you punished heretics?"

"I have seen them destroyed."

"But have taken no part in their destruction?"

"By luck and my own distaste, 1 have not."

"Could you punish a heretic?"

"Madam, I do not really know what a heretic is. The word is made much of, these days. It seems to describe anyone you wish dead."

"Or witches? Have you executed witches?"

"I am a soldier, not a priest."

"Many soldiers take on the responsibilities of priests, do they not? And many priests become soldiers."

"I am not of that ilk. I have seen poor lunatics and old women named for witches and dealt with accordingly, madam. But I have witnessed no magic performances, no incantations, no summonings of demons or ghouls." I smiled. "Some of those crones were so familiar with Mephistopheles that they could almost p.r.o.nounce the name when it was repeated to them . . ."

"Then witchcraft does not frighten you?"

"It does not. Or, I should say, what I have seen of witchcraft does not frighten me."

"You are a sane man, sir."

I supposed that she complimented me.

"Sane by the standards of our world, madam. But not, I think, by my own."

She seemed pleased by this. "An excellent answer. You are self-demanding, then?"

38 The War Hound and the World** Pain "I demand little of myself, save that I survive. I take what I need from the world."

"You are a thief, then?"

"1 am a thief, if you like. I hope that I am not a hypocrite."

"Self-deceiving, all the same."

"How so?"

"You hide the largest part of yourself away in order to be the soldier you describe. And then you deny that that part exists."

"I do not follow you. I am what I am."

"And that is?"

"What the world has made me."

"Not what G.o.d created? G.o.d created the world, did He not?" she said.

"I have heard some theorise otherwise."

"Heretics?"

"Ah, well, madam. Desperate souls like the rest of us."

"You have an unusually open mind."

"For a soldier?"

"for anyone living at this time."

"I am not quite sure that my mind is open. It is probably careless, however. I do not give a fig for metaphysical debate, as I believe I have already indicated."

"You have no conscience, then?"

"Too expensive to maintain nowadays, madam."

"So it is unkempt, but it exists?"

"Is that what you would say I hide from myself? Have you a mind to convert me to whatever Faith it is you hold, my lady?"

"My Faith is not too dissimilar to yours."

"So I thought."

"Soul? Conscience? These words mean little, I'm sure you'd agree, without specification."

"I do most readily agree."

We continued to debate this subject only for a short while and then the discussion broadened.

She proved to be an educated woman with a fine range of experience and anecdote. The longer we were together, however, the more I desired her.

The noon meal was forgotten as we continued to talk and to drink. She quoted the Greeks and the Romans, she quoted 39.poetry in several tongues. She was far more fluent in the languages of modern Europe and the Orient than was I.

It became obvious to me that Sabrina must be highly valued by her master and that she was probably something more than his mistress. A woman could travel the world with a little more danger but a little less suspicion than a male envoy. I formed the impression that she was familiar with a good many powerful Courts. Yet I wondered how her servants must be received if they accompanied her to such places.

Evening came. She and I retired to the kitchen where, from the same ingredients, she prepared a far better meal than anything I had been able to make for myself. We drank more wine and then, without thought, took ourselves up to one of the main bedrooms and disrobed.

Sheets, quilts, bed-curtains, were all creamy white in the late sunshine. Naked, Sabrina was perfect. Her pale body was flawless, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s small and firm. I had seen no woman like her, save in statues and certain paintings.

I had not believed in perfection before that night, and although I retained a healthy suspicion of Sabrina's motives I was determined to offer no resistance to her charms.

We went quickly to bed. She became by turns tender, savage, pa.s.sive and aggressive. I turned with her, whatever her mood, as she turned with mine. My senses, which had become almost as dead as those of Sabrina's servants, had come to life again.

I felt my imagination coming back to me, and with it a certain amount of hope, of the old optimism I had known as a youth in Bek.

Our union, it seemed to me, was preordained, for there was no doubt that she relished me as thoroughly as I relished her. I absorbed her scents, the touch of her skin.

Our pa.s.sion seemed as endless as the tides; our l.u.s.t conquered all weariness. If it had not been for that nagging memory that she was in some way pledged to another, I should have given myself up to her entirely. As it was, some small part of me held back. But it was a minuscule fraction. It need hardly have existed.