"This interests me," Joe told him, "but what if your plan fails?"
"Then tactics change. We lose nothing. That is the beauty of it. Uh—by the way, speaking of Ruddygore, how does it happen that your girl has one of his rings in her nose?"
He'd thought long and hard about that question. "I haven't the vaguest idea," he responded. "And I'm afraid you'd have to ask her original owner in Hell. I had no idea whose it was, only that she's mine now."
"Ah, that explains it, then. The old fart always was a real hypocrite. Have you ever met him?"
"Once, my lord. He was an impressive sort of man, as I recall."
"Indeed he can be that. He could have ruled all Husaquahr and probably would have, had he not that trick of escaping into the Other World for his pleasures. It diverted him from greatness into moralizing and preaching, only it is he who determined what is good or bad according to his present moods. To him, this is all just a game, and everyone other than himself is just a game piece, to be toyed with, played with, even sacrificed. He is so ancient now and has played these games so long that he plays now for the game's sake, without any goals or purposes in mind. I could never accept that sort of thinking. One plays a game to win. Don't you agree?"
"I do not fight to lose, my lord," he responded.
Sugasto laughed. "Well said! Ah—I know your stomach may feel its bruises, but will you risk lunch with me?"
"In truth, sir, I feel like a starving man."
They went to a huge tent pavilion where a galley had been set up. It was full of officers when they arrived, but, to the mutual amusement of Joe and Sugasto, almost all of them miraculously finished eating and got out of there when they entered.
"Now that's the fun of it." The sorcerer chuckled. "If your own side isn't terrified of you, what right have you to expect that your enemies will be?" He paused, then stared straight at Joe. "But you're not scared of me, are you?"
"There is fear, which is unreasoned, and that I do not have," Joe lied. "But there is also respect, which is both reasoned and earned, and that I have for you in great abundance."
The answer really pleased the man in black. "You are delightful! In truth, sir, you are the first nonmagical human being I have been able to talk to like this in years! Ah, let us eat. Take care, sir, that your stomach not rebel, but eat with confidence. Either my armies eat only the best or they eat the cooks!"
"My stomach has survived worse than a bad piece of meat," Joe responded. "I will not let it cheat me of a decent meal."
Sugasto laughed. He looked over at Mia. "Girl, come over and sit on the ground beside me here a bit."
Mia looked nervously at Joe, who nodded. "Go ahead."
"Yes, Master," she responded, and went around to Sugasto's side of the table.
It was unusual for a sorcerer, male or female, to take much interest in sex except as another, sometimes required, tool of the trade. Joe couldn't figure out whether that was it, or whether it was the personal slave concept itself that turned the man on. It might just have been that, having had Boquillas around in Mahalo's body for so long, he just wanted a woman around who was always respectful, obeyed orders, and kept her mouth shut. Joe could see by Mia's eyes that she was far too terrified to have such thoughts herself.
The meal was not merely good, but excellent, and Joe had to wonder if this sort of fare was what the officers usually got. Somehow, the day the general showed up for inspection, you always got filet mignon instead of old army boot.
"So you are on your way to Tsipry," Sugasto said over wine. "A pilgrimage, of sorts, I take it?"
Joe nodded. "Yes, sir. I have funds at the moment, I have no pressing need of employment, and I always promised myself that I would do it. I have no memories of it that I can call true and I want to see it once.''
"That's in the Upper Lakes district, if I remember," the sorcerer replied. "Cold up there, even this time of year. With summer waning, autumn on its way, and the need to divert resources, I've been playing with a little spell. Boquillas worked it out for our own people, but it's rather simple, once you know it. It insulates against weather, sort of in the same way much fairy flesh does it for them, yet, like them, you can't see it or know it's there. The only problem is, it seals in what is there as well, so you can't add much of anything, either, and it plays hob with hair. Not practical for most people, I fear, but slaves like your girl, here, are perfect. We're going to distribute it and have all the slaves treated this way. It dispenses with the need for those idiotic hafiids even in subzero cold and for sun protection in the tropics, reducing the cost to food alone. With your permission, I'll do you a favor."
Joe could hardly refuse in any event. He watched as the sorcerer turned the kneeling Mia toward him, then made a few hand passes and ran his hands over some of her body at a very slight distance.
"There," Sugasto said. "Now, within the normal extremes of nature, she's as protected as a nymph. Just keep her like this and all you'll need do is feed her. In fact, you'll have to. As our experiments with this on some of our undead show, the spell rejects anything not within its field. Otherwise, there are no side effects. A little gift, in hopes that once you make your pilgrimage, you'll return and sign on with us." He snapped his fingers and the Bentar aide, who had not eaten—they were, if Joe remembered right, eaters of carrion and sometimes freshly killed prey—snapped to attention.
"Give me some paper and a stylus," the sorcerer instructed, and it was quickly gotten. Sugasto scribbled something on the paper, then made a pass over it. The writing, which, although in the ideographic Husaquahrian alphabet, had been rather primitive scrawls actually seemed to wriggle around on the page as if composed of tiny snakes, forming then absolutely perfect characters that looked like woodcuts. He made another pass, and Joe recognized the seal of Hypboreya when it faded in in sort of a gray color. The paper was then handed to Joe.
"Take that with you," the sorcerer told him. "It is a safe conduct good for sixty days throughout my realm. It should ease problems in travel and make things easier. It will also get you better food, I suspect. After that, I hope we will learn that you have joined us completely. I believe we can offer a very high commission to one like you. You could wind up a military governor someday. I wish I could offer you quick passage to the Lakes, but little goes to and from that area, and we have other needs."
"I thank you, my lord, for your extreme, unexpected, and unwarranted generosity," he responded, hardly able to contain himself. This was better than he could have hoped. "I admit, though, to looking longingly at one of the flying horses you have. Why weren't they in our old battles?"
"The pegasus? They're tough to tame, hard to ride, and fragile as all hell. There's less there than meets the eye. They wouldn't last minutes in a battle. We use them to speed orders and maintain communications links around the empire. They're not good for much more. Sorry—there's only two in this entire military district."
"I was not trying to impose, just commenting."
"Well, I understand. It's a long, long way to Tsipry," he noted. "Now, it has been a genuine pleasure, sir. I have much to attend to and you must excuse me, but I feel certain that we will meet again."
"As do I, sir," Joe responded, rising. He gestured to Mia, who got up and scampered after him.
As soon as they were away, a Bentar officer approached and bowed.
Sugasto looked at him. "Well?"
"A considerable number of coins, the usual clothing one would expect of one coming from the south, including loincloths, and the remains of what appeared to be bronze ornamentations, a rather elaborate beltlike contraption that makes noises when moved or put together whose function we cannot fathom, although it appears innocuous, and the usual saddlebag materials. Nothing else, my lord."
"Hmmm . . ."the sorcerer said, thinking. "That man is one of the most dangerous nonmagical men I've ever met, but he does seem to be precisely what he claims."
"You had many ways to plumb his very soul and beyond, my lord. If yo
u still have doubts, why didn't you use them?" the aide asked him.
"Partly because someone that strong has strong magical allies who could shield him, and partly because, to get through those, I would have most likely destroyed someone who might be extremely useful. There was also this very odd sense of fairy about him when I initially probed him that defied explanation. The girl had it, too, last night, which is why I found her so intriguing, but then she didn't have it today. It's the damndest thing . . . But he's a mercenary all right, and a good one, and she's definitely a properly bound slave, as both seem to be. Still ..."
"If he passed all the conventional tests, why do you still doubt him?" the aide asked.
"Because, while I know I have never laid eyes on that man in my life, I could swear, after talking to him, that I've met him before, even spent some time with him. It's just a feeling; there's no rational basis for it, but I can't get it out of my mind. Perhaps it will come to me, sooner or later, or I'll find some good way to divine it without having to pay a price to a demon."
"But you gave him safe conduct, my lord!"
"Northbound, yes. Where can he go that isn't ours? As I suspected, he was illiterate. He never even tried to read the safe conduct, which is a natural act of any literate person. It is valid, but it also states that, if he tries to leave the empire, he is to be arrested using all necessary force."
"Still, my lord, you permit a potential spy of high capability to roam freely behind us?"
"Let him look. He won't be difficult to find. He has deep, genuine affection for that girl, perhaps even love of some kind, and she worships him as a dog worships her master. A big mercenary with a naked slave girl in the north won't exactly be unnoticed. The same spell that protects her binds her to me. If the spell is removed, she dies horribly. If it is not, then at any time I wish I can command her as easily as I work my will upon the dead. I can summon her soul to me, no matter where she is. No, gentlemen, I don't believe we have much to fear by giving him a little rope."
Joe used his abilities of fairy sight to examine the pass and found nothing there. It was just what it said it was. Of course, he had no guarantee it was really a safe conduct, but that would be easy enough to test.
He breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, that sure turned out better than it had a right to," he noted.
"Yes, Master."
"But?"
"No, it is not that, Master. I have thoughts again of the flying horse."
"Forget it. You heard what the man said. No use pushing our luck."
"But there is one night of the full moon left, Master! The longest, just about all night! If one of us could somehow be next to that creature at moonrise ..."
"Hmmm ... I see what you mean. It might carry us and our supplies a pretty fair distance by dawn."
"Then you will give me permission to do it?"
He looked around. "There's got to be thousands of lonely men on this base. I'm not gonna leave you here for hours and hours just on the off chance you might get in there. Too dangerous."
"Master, I am but your property, your tool. It is my function to try this if it is possible.''
"No, if anybody tries it, it should be me. I can bluff my way around for a while if this pass is any good, and I weigh more than twice what you weigh, so more could be carried."
"Master, someone must get everything together and ready. I cannot leave without you. They would notice. Your safe conduct is nothing for me. And if I left carrying your sword, if I could, it would be noticed. But if you left, they would hardly remember the slave you came in with. I am the only one. And as you will change, too, probably to Kauri, you will be able to fly as well. But you must remember to wrap all things iron securely and only what we need and what the two of you together could lift."
He frowned. Damn it, it did seem worth a try, and since they wouldn't really be stealing anything, nothing would be missed. And, so long as she was not caught and managed to get away, two big "ifs," even if it proved impractical, it wouldn't be that much of a problem.
"You really think you can do it?"
"Master, the worst that happens is that I get caught and must be a tearful slave who lost her way. Otherwise, I shall simply become one of these men, or a Bentar, or something similar and nothing is lost. Yes, I believe I can do it."
"All right, then. Let's test out this safe conduct and go see the pegasus. If you can give everybody around the slip and hide nearby, it's on. Otherwise, you get on your horse, which will be left there, and you come out with me."
She nodded.
When you act like you have nothing to fear, it's amazing how easily you can move around restricted areas. They were stared at, now and again, but they reached the area where the flying horses—or, as they discovered when they got there, more properly flying horse—were kept before anybody even tentatively asked for their authorization.
Joe whipped out the safe conduct, and the man who made the challenge blanched and lost all his belligerence. Sugasto was right about one brag: his army was scared stiff of him.
The pegasus was grazing, much like any other horse, the huge wings folded up and at its sides. Joe stared and stared at it and couldn't for the life of him figure out how something this large could fly without a jet engine, but he'd had much the same feeling about Kauris, too. Not that the pegasus was a big animal; disregarding the wings it was actually a bit smaller than it looked when flying, perhaps more like a circus pony, complete with hairy hooves, although the legs looked impossibly thin, so thin that it was almost easier to believe it could fly than to believe it could stand up for long on them. Incredibly, aside from a long rope tied around its neck on one end and to a post on the other, there was no apparent stable or pen for it, and there seemed nobody around to ask.
"You really think you can do this?" he asked her, worried.
"Yes, Master, I do. There are plenty of shadowy places near the buildings there, and tall grass and rocks."
"Like as not the guy'll come back and fly it away. Then what?"
"Then I will return to you as something else."
They walked away from the pegasus and toward the shadows from the nearest building, which appeared to be some kind of livery supply or maintenance shed. In a moment, they were in back of it and out of possible sight against the back of a hill. After a minute or so, he knew they'd not been seen.
He stood there a moment, looking at her. She was hairless and naked and plain-looking, a hairless little eunuch ...
He grabbed her suddenly, and kissed her the way neither he nor any other man had ever kissed her before, the kind of kiss you know only in your dreams. Suddenly, he released her, whispered, "Don't fail me," and walked back out into the open, leaving her standing there, totally speechless.
She would never fail him, she knew. She would die for him first.
****
"You left her where to do what?" Marge almost shouted at him. "How could you? Her life versus maybe two weeks time?''
"It was her idea. She came up with it and she just about pleaded to do it."
"With maybe twenty thousand horny guys around and Sugasto, for Christ's sake! Not to mention the Bentar!"
"I know, I know."
"Yeah? You ever thought that, if she actually does make the change, she's gonna need almost a runway to take off in, galloping the whole way? And when she gets up there in the dark she's gonna have some big, leather-winged goons just waiting to pounce? You think a horse can fly like a Kauri?"
"No, I hadn't thought about some of those things, and thanks for giving me more things to worry about," he responded.
"Then why in hell did you let her do it?''
He stared at his old friend and comrade. "Because I thought she could," he said simply.
She stared at him. "Holy cats! You're in love with her! Oh, great! What an odd couple you two make!"
He sighed. "You've been a fairy too long, Marge. You don't plan these things. Since we left Terindell, she's been a whole different person. And,
no, I know what you're thinking—it's not the kinky bondage stuff. I'd do away with that in a minute if the Rules allowed it. It's beyond that sort of crap. Throw it away. Ignore the slave thing. She's been a partner, tough, has more guts than any man of any status I ever met, as smart as anybody I know, and in just a short week she's become my indispensable left arm. She's got all the qualities I loved in Ti, only more so, but without the qualities that kept us apart. I don't know another person who wouldn't have been destroyed by what's been done to her, yet the more she was stripped of everything, the stronger she's grown. The laws, the Rules, and the sorcerers took everything people think they desire from her, stripping her down to her core, and that core's proved already to be somebody remarkable. ''
She stared at him. "Boy, you got it bad." Still, she had to admit, he had a real point. That girl was beginning to look like somebody who, were it not for the slave business, would take Husaquahr by the tail and shake it.
The odd thing was, had she not been a slave, she probably would never have revealed or even known how good she was. She'd be somebody's wife, or maybe a political manipulator or something like that, depending on where she was, but she'd never have been forced to test herself and would never have been willing to take the kind of chances she took. When you had nothing, not even your dignity, you also had nothing to lose. With no inhibitions even possible, and with her brains and resourcefulness, Marge thought, she was probably more dangerous than anybody, even Joe in a rage.
"She's not gonna look any better, either," Marge pointed out.
He shrugged. "I married my first wife because she had the most stunning looks of any woman I'd ever seen. She had the soul of a viper—if she has a soul at all. With Ti, it was not only her looks but her education, her background, her breeding—all the stuff neither I nor my first wife had. I may be slow and ignorant, but even I eventually learn. I guess it was because everybody always prejudged me by my looks. This is a primo lesson in how unimportant that crap really is. Boquillas was one of the best-looking, dashing, charismatic men I ever met. Sugasto was kind of a pretty boy, too, when we first met him. It's what's behind the face and eyes that count."
Songs Of The Dancing Gods Page 22
