It was on the tip of Fawn’s tongue to ask her, but Starhawk was not a woman of whom one asked questions without permission. Besides, Fawn could think of no reason why anyone would have left the comforts of the Convent to follow the brutal trail of war.
Instead she asked, “Why did she lie?”
“The Mother only knows. She was a very old lady then—she died a year or so after, and I don’t think anyone else in the Convent ever knew what she was.”
Fawn’s tapering fingers toyed with the cup, the diamonds of her rings winking like teardrops in the dim, golden light. Somewhere quite close, a drunken chorus in another tent began to sing.
“All in the town of Kedwyr,
A hundred years ago or more,
There lived a lass named Sella...”
“I have often wondered,” Fawn said quietly, “about wizards. Why is Altiokis the only wizard left in the world? Why hasn’t he died, in all these years? What happened to all the others?”
Starhawk shrugged. “The Mother only knows,” she said again. As ever, her face gave away nothing; if it was a question that had ever crossed her mind, she did not show it. Instead she slapped the deck of cards before Fawn. “Bank?”
Fawn shuffled deftly despite her fashionably long, tinted fingernails. It was one of the first things she had learned when she’d been sold to Sun Wolf two years ago as a terrified virgin of sixteen—mostly in self-defense, since the Wolf and Starhawk were cutthroat card players.
Watching her, Starhawk reflected how out of place the girl looked here. Fawn—whose name had certainly been something else before she’d been kidnapped en route from her father’s home in the Middle Kingdoms to a finishing school in Kwest Mralwe—had clearly been brought up in an atmosphere of taste and elegance. The clothes and jewelry she picked for herself spoke of it. Starhawk, though raised in an environment both countrified and austere, had done enough looting in the course of eight years of sieges to understand the difference between new-rich tawdriness and quality. Every line of Fawn spoke of fastidious taste and careful breeding, as much at odds with the nunlike barrenness of Starhawk’s living quarters as she was with the rather barbaric opulence of the Chief’s.
What had she been? the Hawk wondered. A nobleman’s daughter? A merchant’s? Those white hands, delicate amid their carefully chosen jewelry, had certainly never handled anything harsher than a man’s flesh in all her life. The loveliest that money could buy, Starhawk thought, with a wry twinge of bitterness for the girl’s sake—whether she wanted to be bought or not.
Fawn laid the cards down, undealt. In repose, her face looked suddenly tired. “What’s going to become of him, Hawk?” she asked quietly.
Starhawk shrugged, deliberately misunderstanding. “I can’t see the Chief being crazy enough to get mixed up in any affair having to do with magic,” she began, and Fawn shook her head impatiently.
“It isn’t just this,” she insisted. “If he goes on as he’s doing, he’s going to slip up one day. He’s the best, they say—but he’s also forty. Is he going to go on leading troops into battle and wintering in Wrynde, until one day he’s a little slow dodging some enemy’s axe? If it isn’t Altiokis, how long will it be before it’s something else?”
Starhawk looked away from those suddenly luminous eyes. Rather gruffly, she said, “Oh, he’ll probably conquer a city, make a fortune, and die stinking rich at the age of ninety. The old bastard’s welfare isn’t worth your losing sleep over.”
Fawn laughed shakily at the picture presented, and they spoke of other things. But on the whole, as she dealt the cards, Starhawk wished that the girl had not touched that way upon her own buried forebodings.
Sun Wolf felt, rather than heard, the woman’s soft tread outside his tent; he was watching the entrance when the flap was moved aside. The woman came in with the wild sea smell of the night.
With the lamps at his back, their light catching in his thinning, dust-colored hair and framing his face in gold, he did look like a sun wolf, the big, deadly, tawny hunter of the eastern steppes. The woman put back the hood from her hair.
“Sheera Galernas?” he asked quietly.
“Captain Sun Wolf?”
He gestured her to take the other chair. She was younger than he had thought, at most twenty-five. Her black hair curled thickly around a face that tapered from wide, delicate cheekbones to a pointed chin. Her lips, full almost to the corners of her mouth, were sensual and dark as the lees of wine. Her deep-set eyes seemed wine-colored, too, their lids stained violet from sleepless nights. She was tall for a woman and, as far as he could determine under the muffling folds of her cloak, well set up.
For a moment neither spoke. Then she said, “You’re different from what I had thought.”
“I can’t apologize for that.” He’d put on a shirt and breeches and a brown velvet doublet. The hair on the backs of his arms caught the light as he folded his strong, heavy hands.
She stirred in her chair, wary, watching him. He found himself wondering what it would be like to bed her and if the experiment would be worth the trouble it could cost. “I have a proposition for you,” she said at last, meeting his eyes with a kind of anger, defying him to look at her face instead of her body.
“Most ladies who come to my tent do.”
Her skin deepened to clay-red along the cheekbones and her nostrils flared a little, like a horse scenting battle. But she only said, “What would you say to ten thousand pieces of gold, to bring your troop and do a job for me in Mandrigyn?”
He shrugged. “I’d say no.”
She sat up, truly shocked. “For ten thousand gold pieces?” The sum was enormous—five thousand would have bought the entire troop for a summer’s campaign and been thought generous. He wondered where she’d come up with it, if in fact she intended to pay him. The size of the sum inclined him to doubt it.
“I wouldn’t go against Altiokis for fifty thousand,” he said calmly, “And I wouldn’t tie up on a word-of-mouth proposition with a skirt from a conquered city for a hundred, wizard or no wizard.”
As he’d intended, it prodded her out of her calm. The flush in her face deepened, for she was a woman to whom few men had ever said no. An edge of ugly rage slid into her voice. “Are you afraid?”
“Madam,” Sun Wolf said, “if it’s a question of having my bowels pulled out through my eye sockets, I’m afraid. There’s no amount of money in the world that would make me pick a quarrel with Altiokis.”
“Or is it just that you’d prefer to deal with a man?”
She’d spat the words at him in spite, but he gave them due consideration; after a moment, he replied, “As a matter of fact, yes.” His hand forestalled her intaken breath. “I know where women stand in Mandrigyn. I know they’d never put one in public office and they’d never send one on a mission like this. And if you’re from Madrigyn, you know that.”
She subsided, her breath coming fast and thick with anger, but she didn’t deny his words.
“So that means it’s private,” he went on. “Ten thousand gold pieces is one hell of a lot of tin from a private party, especially from a city that’s just been taken and likely tapped for indemnity for whatever wasn’t carried off in the sack. And since I know women are vengeful and sneaky...”
“Rot your eyes, you—” she exploded, and he held up his hand for silence again.
“They have reasons for fighting underhand the way they do, and I understand them, but the fact remains that I don’t trust a desperate woman. A woman will do anything.”
“You’re right,” she said quietly, her eyes burning with an eerie intensity into his, her voice deadly calm. “We will do anything. But I don’t think you understand what it is to love your city, to be proud of it, ready to lay down your life to defend it, if need be—and not be allowed to participate in its government, not even be allowed by the canons of good manners to talk politics. Holy Gods, we’re not even permitted to walk about the streets unveiled! To see the town torn apart by factionalis
m and conquered, with all the men who did fight for it led away in chains while the wicked, the venal, and the greedy sit in the seats of power...
“Do you know why no man came to you tonight?
“For decades—centuries—Altiokis has coveted Mandrigyn. He has taken over the lands of the old mountain Thanes and of the clans to the southeast of us; he sits like a toad across the overland trade roads to the East. But he’s landlocked, and Mandrigyn is the key to the Megantic. We made trade concessions to him, turned a blind eye to encroachments along the border, signed treaties. You know that’s never enough.
“His agents stirred up trouble and factions in the city, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the rightful Prince, Tarrin of the House of Her, split the parliament—and when we were exhausted with fighting one another, he and his armies marched down Iron Pass. Tarrin led the whole force of the men of Mandrigyn to meet them in battle, in the deeps of the Tchard Mountains. The next day, Altiokis and his armies came into the city.”
Her eyes focused suddenly, an amber gleam deep in their brown depths. “I know Tarrin is still alive.”
“How do you know?”
“Tarrin is my lover.”
“I’ve had more women in my life,” Sun Wolf said tiredly, “than I’ve had pairs of boots, and I couldn’t for the life of me tell you where one of them is now.”
“You’d know best about that,” she sneered. “The men were all made slaves in the mines beneath the Tchard Mountains—Altiokis has miles of mines; no one knows how deep, or how many armies of slaves work there. The—girls—from the city sometimes go up there to—do business—with the overseers. One of them saw Tarrin there.” The expression of her face changed, suffused, suddenly, with tender eagerness and the burning anger of revenge. “He’s alive.”
“We’ll skip over how this girl knew him,” Sun Wolf said. He was gratified to see that tender expression turn to one of fury. “I’ll ask you this. You want me and my men to rescue him from Altiokis’ mines?”
Almost trembling with anger, Sheera took a grip on herself and said, “Yes. Not Tarrin only, but all of the men of Mandrigyn.”
“So they can go back down the mountain, retake the city, and live happily forever after.”
“Yes.” She was leaning forward, her eyes blazing, her cloak fallen aside to reveal the dark purple satin of her gown, pearled over like dew with opal beads. “No man came to you because there was no man to come. The only males left in Mandrigyn are old cripples, little boys, and slaves—and the cake-mouthed, poxy cowards who would sell their children to feed Altiokis’ dogs, if the price were a little power. We raised the money among us—we, the ladies of Mandrigyn. We’ll pay you anything, anything you want. It’s the only hope for our city.”
Her voice rose, strong as martial music, and Sun Wolf leaned back in his chair and studied her thoughtfully. He took in the richness of the gown she wore and the softness of those unworked hands. Supposing the city were taken without sack—which would be to Altiokis’ advantage if he wanted to continue using it as a port. Sun Wolf was familiar with the soft-handed burghers who paid other men to do their fighting, but he had never given much thought to the strength or motivations of their wives. Maybe it was possible that they’d raised the sum, he thought. Golden earrings, household funds, monies embezzled from husbands too cowardly or too prudent to go to war. Possible, but not probable.
“Ten thousand gold pieces is the ransom of a king,” he began.
“It is the ransom of a city’s freedom!” she bit back at him.
Starhawk was right, he thought. There are other fanatics besides religious ones.
“But it isn’t just the cost of men’s lives,” he returned quietly. “I wouldn’t lead them against Altiokis and they wouldn’t go. It’s autumn already. The storms will break in a matter of days. It’s a long march to Mandrigyn overland through the mountains.”
“I have a ship,” she began.
“You’re not getting me on the ocean at this time of year. I have better things to do with my body than use it for crab food. We’ll be a few days mopping up here, and by then the storms will have started. I’m not waging a winter war. Not against Altiokis—not in the Tchard Mountains.”
“There’s a woman on board my ship who can command the weather,” Sheera persisted. “The skies will remain clear until we’re safe in port.”
“A wizard?” He grunted. “Don’t make me laugh. There are no wizards anymore, bar Altiokis himself—and I wouldn’t take up with you if you had one. I won’t mix myself in a wizards’ war.
“And,” he went on, his voice hardening, “I’m not interested in any case. I won’t take ten thousand gold pieces to buy my men coffins, and that’s what it would come to, going against Altiokis, winter or summer, mountains or flatland. Your girlfriend may have seen Tarrin alive, lady, but I’ll wager your ten thousand gold pieces against a plug copper that his brain and his soul weren’t his own. And a plug copper’s all my own life would be worth if I were fool enough to take your poxy money.”
She was on her feet then, her face mottled with rage. “What do you want?” she demanded in a low voice. “Anything. Me—or any woman in the city or all of us. Dream-sugar? We can get you a bushel of it if you want it. Slaves? The town crawls with them. Diamonds? Twenty thousand gold pieces...”
“You couldn’t raise twenty thousand gold pieces, woman. I don’t know how you raised ten,” Sun Wolf snapped. “And I don’t touch dream-sugar. You? I’d sooner bed a poisonous snake.”
That touched her on the raw, for she was a woman whom men had begged for since she was twelve. But the rage in her was something more—condensed, like the core of a flame—and it was this that had caused Sun Wolf to speak what sounded like an insult but was, in fact, the literal truth. She was a dangerous woman, passionate, intelligent, and ruthless; a woman who could wait months or years for revenge. Sun Wolf did not rise from his chair, but he gauged the distance between them and calculated how swiftly she might move if she struck.
Then a draft of wild smoky night breathed suddenly through the tent, and Sheera swung around as Starhawk paused in the doorway. For a moment, the women stood facing each other, the one in her dark gown sewn with shadowy opals, with her wild and perilous beauty, the other windburned and plain as bread, her man’s doublet accentuating the wide shoulders and narrow hips, the angular face with its cropped hair. Starhawk’s rolled-back sleeves showed forearms muscled like a man’s, all crimped with pink war scars.
They sized each other up in silence. Then Sheera thrust past Starhawk, through the tent flap, to vanish into the blood-scented night.
The Hawk looked after her in silence for a moment, then turned back to her chief, who still sat in his camp chair, his hands folded before him and his fox-yellow eyes brooding. He sighed, and the tension seemed to ebb from his muscles as much as it ever did on campaign. The door curtain moved again, and Fawn entered, her dark hair fretted to tangles, falling in a soft web over her slender back.
Sun Wolf stood up and shook his head in answer to his lieutentant’s unasked question. “May the spirits of his ancestors,” he said quietly, “help the poor bastard who falls afoul of her.”
Chapter 2
SUNLIGHT LAY LIKE a thick amber resin on the surface of the council table, catching in a burning line on the brass of its inlay work, like the glare at the edge of the sea. For all the twinge of autumn that spiced the air outside, it was over-warm up here, and the Council of Kedwyr, laced firmly into their sober coats of padded and reinforced black wool, were sweating gently in the magnified sunlight that fell through the great oriel windows. Sun Wolf sat at the foot of the table between the Captain of the Outland Levies and the Commander of the City Guards, his hands folded, the glaring sun catching like spurts of fire on the brass buckles of his doublet, and waited for the President of the Council to try and wriggle out of his contract.
Both the Outland Captain Gobaris and the City Commander Breg had warned him. They themselves fought for Kedwyr
largely as a duty fixed by tradition, and their pay was notoriously elastic.
The President of the Council opened the proceedings with a well-rehearsed paean of praise for the Wolf’s services, touching briefly upon his regrets at having had to go to war against such a small neighbor as Melplith at all. He went on to speak of the hardships they had all endured, and Sun Wolf, scanning those pink, sweaty faces and hamlike jowls bulging out over the high-wrapped white neckclothes, remembered the rotten rations and wondered how much these men had made off them. The President, a tall, handsome man with the air of a middle-aged athlete run to fat, came to his conclusion, turned to the ferret-faced clerk at his side, and said, “Now, as to the matter of payment. I believe the sum promised to Captain Sun Wolf was thirty-five hundred gold pieces or its equivalent?”
The man nodded in agreement, glancing down at the unrolled parchment of the contract that he held in his little white hand.
“In the currency of the Realm of Kedwyr...” the President began, and Sun Wolf interrupted him, his deep rumbling voice deceptively lazy.
“The word ‘equivalent’ isn’t in my copy of the contract.”
He reached into the pouch on his belt and pulled out a much-folded wad of parchment. As he deliberately spread it out on the surface of the table before him, he could see the uneasy glance that passed among the councilmen. They had not thought that he could read.
The President’s wide smile widened. “Well, of course, it is understood that—”
The Ladies of Mandrigyn Page 2
