Storm Season tw-4

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  The problem was that he was not sure what that meant.

  Who was Hanse? What was Hanse?

  0 Cudget, if only they had not slain you! You'd have shown me and told me, wouldn't you?

  It had used to be so simple. Life was simple. There was the city called Sanctuary, and in it were empty bellies, and some that were full. That was simple: it described lions (or jackals, but never mind that) and prey. And there was Cudget Swearoath, and Hanse his apprentice in whom he was well pleased, and there were the marks-the human sheep. And the shadows, to facilitate their fleecing.

  It was all the world there was or needed be; a microcosm, a thieves' world.

  And now! Now there were the Rankans who swaggered and Prince Kadakithis who really did not but who ruled, governed; and Tempus-0 ye gods, there was Tempus! and his mercenary friends, who swaggered-and nothing was simple.

  Now a god had spoken to Hanse-Hanse!- and then another, and Hanse had rather they just kept to themselves. The business of soldiers was killing and the business of Prince-Governors was ruling and killing and the business of gods was godding and the business of one smallish dark thief of thieves' world was thieving.

  But now Shadowspawn was agent for gods.

  Sword clanged on sword and well-guided blade slid along brilliantly interposed blade with a screech as loud as the grinding of a personal ax. That shrill ugliness was punctuated by a grunt chorused from two throats.

  "Stopped me again, Stealth," one combatant grunted, stepping back and twitching his head sharply to the side. Sweat crept like persistent oil from his black mop under the blood-red sweat-band and into his eyebrows. He jerked his head to send it flying; the gesture carried all the constant impatience of youth.

  "Barely," the other man said. He was bigger though not much older and in a way his face was more boyish than that of his opponent, who had for years cultivated a mean, menacing look he knew made him look older, and dangerous. The bigger man was fair in contrast to the other. His hair was as if splashed or streaked with silver so that it was cinerous.

  "I own it, Shadowspawn: you are good and you are a natural. Now. Want to work a bit from the saddle?" His enthusiasm showed in his face and added bright color to his voice.

  "No."

  The one called Stealth waited a moment; the one called Shadowspawn did not embellish on that word which, when spoken flat and unadorned, was one of the four or five harshest and most unwelcome words in any language.

  The man called Stealth masked his disappointment. "All right. How about... your stones, then?"

  His last words emerged in a shout as the paler man moved, at speed. His sword was a silver-gray blur, up-whipping. It rushed on up, too, for the wiry fellow in the dust-colored tunic pounced up and aside, not quite blurring. He simply was not present to receive the upward cut at the source of progeny he might produce, like more bad virus upon the world. The other man arrested his movement to prepare alertly for a counter-stroke.

  No counter-stroke was attempted. It did not come. Shadowspawn had quit the game. They looked at each other, the expert teacher called Stealth and the superb student he called Shadowspawn.

  The latter spoke. "Enough, Niko. I'm weary of the sham."

  "Sham? Sham, you weed-sprout? Had you not moved you'd be a candidate for the temple choir of soprano boys, Hanse!"

  Hanse called Shadowspawn smiled little and when he did he smiled small, and often the smile was a sneer that fitted and mirrored his inner needs. It was a sneer now. Still, it was not of disdain or contempt for this member of the so called Sacred Band, the Stepsons, who had taught him so much. He had been a natural fighter and unusually swift. Now he was a trained one, with knowledge and ways of combative science that made him even swifter.

  "But I did move, Niko; I did move. Tell Tem-pus how I move, you he set to teach me to be a bladesman. And tell him that still I have no desire to be a soldier. No desire to do murder, 'nobly' or no."

  Niko stared at him.

  Damned... boy, he mused. Oh, but I'm weary of him and his sneers and his snot. I have known only war. He, who has never known it, dares sneer at it and its practitioners. Neither of us had a father-I because mine was slain-in war when I was a child; this posturing backstreet blade-bristling night-thief because his mother and his father were nodding acquaintances at best. Nor would I change places with this . . . this little gutter-rat, so happy in his provincial ignorance and his total inconsequence. I had rather be a man.

  And I have made him a fighter, a real fighter, so that now he swaggers even more!

  "And look you to keep your valuables 'neath your pillow, Niko. Stealth, for I am shadow-spawned stealth, and have seen even the bed of the Prince-Governor . . . and of Tempus."

  Niko of the Stepsons showed nothing and did not respond. Inside, he seethed only a little. Petty insults were cheap, cheap. As cheap as barely nubile yet experienced professional girls in the shadowy Maze that spawned this naive youth and served him as nest and den. Niko stepped back a pace, formally. Holding his blade up before squinting eyes, he turned it for his examination before putting it away in one swift smooth motion.

  The Sanctuarite was not so insolent as to keep his weapon naked in his hand. He too held it out and turned it for inspection at the squint, and took hold of his scabbard with his right hand, and turned his blade toward himself without ever moving the dark, dark eyes that now gazed at his teacher. And he housed the blade 'neath but not through the hand on its sheath. With pride.

  "Nicely done," Niko could not quite help saying.

  Not because he felt the need to compliment, or enjoyed it; but because there was both edge and gratification in reminding both of them who had taught this wearer of so many blades the maneuver he had just demonstrated.

  (A man might draw at an untoward sound or to dispatch an enemy, Niko had told Hanse. And having done, see to the housing of his blade at his side. At that moment, while he held scabbard and looked down to see to its filling, he was vulnerable. It was then the clever maker of the "innocent" noise or the hidden confederate of the new-slain man might pounce, and there was an end to sheathing and unsheathing, all at once. Thus a sensible man of weapons learned to bring his blade up and over and back, its point toward himself, and guide it into its sheath with a waiting off-hand. Meanwhile his eyes remained alert for the sudden charge.

  (Yes, Nikodemos called Stealth had taught even that to Hanse. For Tempus owed him debt, and yet he and Tempus were no longer quite frinds. And so Niko paid as Tempus's agent: he trained this wiry, cocky hawk-nose called Hanse.)

  "Your shield!" Hanse called.

  Niko glanced at it, leaning against a mud-brick wall with Hanse's buckler beside it. They had slipped them off and set them there a pint of sweat ago, to practice with blades alone. Now Hanse turned and drew and threw all in one motion fluid as a cat's pounce, arm going out long and down in fellow-through, andthunk one of his damned knives appeared in Niko's shield. It stood there, quivering like a breeze-blown cat-tail.

  Hanse pounced after it, all wiry and cat-lithe and dark.

  He retrieved the knife, giving his wrist the little twist that plucked forth an inch of flat blade from bossed wood capable of withstanding a good ax-blow. Almost distractedly he slipped it back into its sheath up his right arm.

  Hanse half-turned to flash teeth at his teacher-at-arms but not at knife throwing, and he saluted. Then he turned and faded around the building and was gone, although the sun was still orangey-yellow and the late-day shadows only thinking about gathering to provide him his natural habitat.

  "Shadowspawn," Niko muttered, and went to retrieve his shield and seek out Tempus. Deliver me from this insolent Ilsigi in his painful youth, Tempus? Take away this bitter cup you have had me lift, and lift to my lips, and Irft?

  Hanse moved away, wearing a tight little smile that really did not enhance his looks.

  He was proud. Pleased with himself. Too, he liked Niko. There was no way he could not, and not respect him too, just as there wa
s (almost, at least) no way he could admit or show it.

  He had let Tempus know he liked him while claiming to care about no one, and had gone and got him out of the dripping hands of that swine, Kurd. Kurd the vivisectionist. One who sectioned, who sliced, the vibrantly living. Tempus, for instance. Among others.

  After the horror of the house of Kurd, Hanse was an uncharacteristically pensive fellow; a different Hanse. The eeriness of a regenerated Tempus was almost more than he could bear. Immortal! 0 gods of us all-immortal, a human newt who survived all and healed all and regrew even vivisectioned parts-scarless!

  Nor had that enigmatic and ever-scornful immortal said aught concerning Hanse's expenses in freeing him, or his promise to retrieve a certain set of laden moneybags from a certain well up on Ea-a certain place.

  Oh, it had cost.

  For weeks Hanse had been idle. He did nothing. No; he did do something; he drank. His income stopped. He even sold some of his belongings to buy the unwatered wine he had always avoided.

  Even so he did not sell the gift of a dead Stepson; an entirely mortal one. It hung now on the wall of Hanse's lodgings: a fine, fine sword in a silvered sheath. He would not wear it. He would not touch it. Only he was sure that it was not the gift of that dead man but of a god. Tempus's god, Who had spoken to Hanse and rewarded him for his rescue of His servant Tempus-as that god, Vashanka, had promised.[i]

  That sword hung, minus its silver sheath, on Hanse's wall. The scabbard trailed down his right leg. It was wrapped all in dull black leather, knotted and pegged and knotted again. Nor was he one with the mercenaries cluttering the city, bullying the city, and he had no wish to be.

  Hanse had another need for becoming proficient with arms, and better than proficient. It was Hanse's secret, and it was bigger than Sanctuary itself.

  He collected from Tempus, though not in coin. That immortal had offered to make him a bladesman. (As for the horse . . . well, it was something of value and prestige, at least. Horses and Hanse were not friends and he hoped never never to fight from the back of one. But for a horse, he'd be rich!)[ii]

  Tempus did not know why Hanse had changed his mind and sent word that he was minded to learn swordsmanship. He was pleased, Hanse was sure of that. Just as he and his ego were sure that he must be the best student Niko had ever had. Already, he was sure, he was incredibly good. Hanse never needed the same instruction twice. He never repeated an error. He was good. Niko said so, and Niko spoke for Tem-pus.

  Leaving Niko now, the thief called Shadowspawn wore a tight little smile. It was the pleased smile of one on whom a god has smiled; a pleased but enigmatic smile. He says that I am good.

  I hope so, Vashanka's minion, he mused. Oh, I hope so. And I hope Vashanka finds me better than good!

  Hanse wended home, compact and lithe and darkly menacing, weighted with blades at leg and hips and arms. There were those who were in the act of departing this place or that but waited within doorways until he had passed; there were those who stepped aside for him though he made no hostile move. They did not like it, or like themselves for doing it, but they would do it again, for this menacing street-tough.

  Hanse went home. I'm ready, he thought, and tight-smiled.

  After that business with Kurd and with Tempus and the absolute ghastliness of Tempus's mutilations-and the ghastlier reality of his complete recovery even unto regrowing several parts-Hanse had taken to drink.

  He was not a drinker. Never had been. That was no deterrent to millions of others and it was not to Shadowspawn. So he drank. He drank to find an alternate state, an alternate reality, and he succeeded admirably in achieving the unad mirable.

  The problem was that he did not like that. Getting away from everything was getting away from Hanse, and Hanse was the poor wight he was trying to find.

  0 Cudget, if only they had not slain you-you'd have shown me and told me as always, wouldn't you?

  (Put another way, he had been shaken badly and dived for solace into a lake of alcohol. He stayed there, and he was drunk quite a lot of the time. He didn't like that either; he didn't even like the taste of the stuff. Most especially he didn't like the way he felt when sleep stopped his body and let it awake with a mouth like vinegar and the desert all at once, a mouth with the feel of a public restroom for horses and a tongue in need of a curry-comb and a stomach he'd willingly have traded for a plate of pigs' trotters and a head he'd have traded for nearly anything at all. Something had come loose in there and was rolling around, and it banged against the inside of his head when he moved it. Alcohol helped. More scales off the snake that had bit him. That merely started the whole process again. Besides, he preferred control, control or some feeling of it. Strong drink washed that away on a river of vomit and sank it with explosive belches and retching.

  (He had the need for control, back there in the barely lighted shadows of his mind. All dark, back in there, in the mind of the bastard son from the wrong side of everything. He had never been in control, and so sought it, or its semblance. He had no need for any drug, and now he knew he had no desire for it either. Not to mention head or stomach.

  (That was that. Hanse was off the sauce.)

  He returned to being what most others were, certainly most who were his age: a creature of his own subconscious, a stranger dwelling within him, and he lived as its captive.

  One day someone mentioned his "obvious sense of honor"-and it was obvious-as he put it. Learned, that fellow said, from Hanse's respected mentor Cudget Swearoath, master thief. And Shadowspawn sneered and looked menacing. That the innocent spewer of insults offered to buy him a drink did not advance his cause or Hanse's mental state in the least measure. The poor fellow soon remembered an important appointment elsewhere, well apart from Hanse, and he repaired there at speed. Hanse predictably spent the rest of that day behaving as if he had no notion what honor might be.

  And still he sought, and remembered.

  "Thou shalt have a sword," that voice had said inside his head, a lion agrowl in the shadowed corridors of his mind, "if thou free'st my valued and loyal ally. Aye, and a fine sheath for it, as well. In silver!"

  Hanse knew fear and some anger; he wanted nothing of that incestuous god of Ranke, for it had to be Vashanka whom Tempus served close. No? I serve-I mean... I do not... No? Tempus is my... my... I go to aid a fr-a man who might help me, he tried to tell that god in his mind, for he admitted to no friends and had sworn to Tempus that he had none and wanted none. He who had friends was vulnerable, and Hanse much preferred his image of himself as a separate room, a person apart, an island.

  Leave me and go to him, jealous god of Ranke? Leave Sanctuary to my patron Shalpa the Swift, and Our Lord Ils. Ils, 0 Lord of a Thousand Eyes, why is it not You who speaks to me?

  Yet a miracle surely transpired that night, and it served to save the life of Hanse and thus of Tempus, whom Hanse freed. Hanse knew no pride in having served and been saved by the god of the Rankan overlords, and he found his lake of alcohol. When he emerged and dried out, he was still troubled.

  He was not the first in such straits to have turned god-ward.

  Not Vashanaka-ward! On four separate occasions he had visited the sanctuaries of Us and Shipri All-mother, His spouse. Ils, god of the Ilsigi who long ago fled one land and found this one, and founded Sanctuary. (There was no temple to their fourthborn, Shalpa, who shared birthdate with his sister Eshi. Shalpa was He to Whom There is no Temple, and The Shadowed One, in his night-dark cloak. He was Shalpa the Swift, too. Shalpa of the night, and untempled: patron of athletes and of thieves.)

  Hanse went avisiting the house of gods, and came the time there he felt his hair quiver and start up while his stomach went chill and as if empty, for he felt sure that one of Them spoke to him. A god, aye.

  Us Himself? Shalpa His son? (Considering his recent drinking, Hanse later wondered if it might more likely have been Anen. He was firstborn of Ils and Shipri, and he was patron of bibbers and taverners.)

  Whoever it was
spoke to him in his head, it was not Vashanka, not there in the house of the gods of Ilsig.

  Hanse of the Shadow, Chosen of Ilsig, Son of the Shadow.

  We exist. We are here. Believe. And look for this ring.

  He saw it. The gaud appeared from nowhere and hung there before his eyes. Now it was as if solid, and now he seemed to see through it, into the temple appointments beyond. A ring that seemed a single piece of gold, unfused, and set all about with twinkling little blue-white stones like stars. In its center a big tiger's-eye, caged in gold bands. And that orange-yellow gemstone, that tiger-eye-seemed to stare at him, as if it was more than merely a chatoyant stone of quartz fibers.

  And then it was gone, and so was the voice that had been inside his head, addressing him- hadn't it? Had it?-and he was left slumped and slick all over with sweat. He had to apply his mind and then make conscious effort even to close his mouth. The temple's coolth had become chill.

  After a while he felt strong enough to move. Move he did, for he was not minded to remain there in that joint temple ofllshipri. He departed, all prickly still and wet with sweat even down his legs. He squinted on leaving the dimness of the temple, for the time was mid-afternoon, not night at all.

  Had it begun then, even in daylight?-the hallucinations, the false feeling of importance that was a lie swarming up like a nest of spiders from the lees of swilled wine?

  Or did I hear-could I have heard ... a god? . The god?

  He had walked from the temple, seeing nothing and no one. A person apart and an island indeed! Until, as if a hood had been lifted off his head to bare his eyes, he saw Mignureal.

  She came directly toward him, looking at him, that S'danzo daughter of his friend Moonflower of the Seeing eyes. Moonflower who so well knew him-and did not want him having aught to do with her daughter. Mignureal. Heading purposefully toward him, gazing at him. A girl who looked thirteen and was older, long since pubertous and interested in Hanse-fascinated with Hanse as a woman is ever fascinated by and with the rascal. It pleased her to act as if she was thirteen, not a woman of sixteen, most of whose age-peers were wedded or at least bedded.