The mercenary captain smiled slowly; one of his men laughed. Sheera made a move to draw her sword, and Starhawk caught her wrist, knowing it would do no good.
“Quite a convincing tale,” the Dark Eagle said. “But considering that I have here my lord Tarrin’s lady—no uncommon general, I might add, my lady—not to mention the witch who led the miners through the traps and into the Citadel—if my lord is dead, which I have yet to believe, the power he wielded will be up for the taking. We can—”
“If you can touch the power he had, it will snuff your brains out like a candle flame,” the Wolf said harshly. “Go down the corridor and through the door. Look through that pox-rotten glass of his—look at what you see. Then come back, and we’ll talk about power!” His voice was trembling with strain and rage, his brain blinded with the effort of holding itself together against those tearing, muttering, black roots that were thrusting it apart. “Now let us the hell out of here, unless you want that Thing in there to take root in my brain as it did in his!”
The Dark Eagle stood for a moment, staring up into Sun Wolf’s face, into the hagridden, half-mad, yellow eye that stared from the mass of clotted cuts, stubble, and filth. The captain’s own face, under the soot and grime of battle, was smooth, an unreadable blank. Then without a word, he signed to his men to let Sun Wolf and the women pass. The Dark Eagle turned and walked down the corridor toward Altiokis’ observation room.
Sun Wolf had no recollection of passing the gate of the Inner Citadel or crossing the causeway over the fosse that was littered with the bodies of the slain. The men the Dark Eagle had sent to guard them halted at the far end of the causeway, and the Wolf slumped down in the shadows of the turreted gates, with his back against the raw, powder-burned stone. Looking back, he could see the towers of the Inner Citadel alive with men and nuuwa, fighting in the corridors or looting the gilded halls. The shrieking came to him in a vast, chaotic din, and the shivering air was rank with the smoke of burning. The sinking sunlight gilded huge, billowing clouds of smoke that poured, black or white, from the tower windows. Heat danced above the walls, and now and then a man or a nuuwa would come running in flames from some inner hall, to fall screaming over the parapet, gleaming against the sunset like a brand. In the direction of the distant sea, torn rags of cloud covered the sky. It would be a night of storm.
Wind touched his face, the breath of the mountains, polluted by the stinks of battle. Everything seemed remote to him, like something viewed through a heavy layer of black glass. He wondered idly if that had been how things appeared to Altiokis—unreal, a little meaningless. No wonder he had sought the grossest and most immediate sensations; they were all he could feel. Or had his perceptions changed after he had given up?
Darkness seemed to be closing in on Sun Wolf. He reached out blindly, not wholly certain what it was that he sought, and a long, bony hand gripped his. The pressure of Starhawk’s strong fingers helped clear his mind. His remaining eye met hers; her face appeared calm under the mask of filth and cuts; the sunset light was like brimstone on her colorless hair. Against the grime, her eyes appeared colorless, too, clear as water.
Beyond her, around them, the women stood like a bodyguard, their own blood and that of their enemies vivid on their limbs against the rock dust of the mines. He was aware of Yirth watching him, arms folded, those sea-colored eyes intent upon his face; he wondered if, when his mind gave up and was drowned in blackness, she would kill him.
He hoped so. His hand tightened over Starhawk’s.
There was a brief struggle on the far end of the causeway. A sword flashed in the sinking light; one of the soldiers at that end, in the armor of Altiokis’ private troops, went staggering over the edge into the ditch.
The Dark Eagle came striding back, sheathing his sword as he picked his way carefully across the makeshift of rope and pole that had been thrown up to replace the burned drawbridge. Under the tattered wrack of his torn helmet crests, his face was green-white and gray about the mouth, as if he had just got done heaving up his farthest guts. The dying sunlight caught on the gilded helmet spike as on a spear.
When he came near, he asked, “How do you mean to destroy it?”
“Light the powder,” Sheera said. “Tarrin and the men are clear of the place now.”
“There are nuuwa all over the corridors,” the Eagle informed her, speaking as he might speak to any other captain. And so she looked, Sun Wolf thought, with her half-unraveled braids and black leather breast guards, her perilous beauty all splattered with blood. “By God and God’s Mother, I’ve never seen such a hell! You’ll never get back to put a fuse to it. And even if you did...”
“The Wolf can light it,” Starhawk said quietly. “From here.”
The Dark Eagle looked down curiously at the slumped figure propped among the women against the wall. His blue eyes narrowed. “His Nibs was right, then,” he said.
Sun Wolf nodded. Fire and cold were consuming his flesh; voices echoed to him, piping and far away. The shadow of the tower already lay long over the fosse and touched him like a finger of the coming darkness.
Fumblingly, as if in a drugged nightmare, he began to put together the picture of the observation room in his mind.
He could not see it clearly—there were nuuwa there, shambling over everything, blundering into walls, shrieking at their mindless brother and maker, who clawed and screamed through the black glass. He formed the shadows in his mind, the shapes of the powder sacks, the harsh lines of the broken chair...
The images blurred.
Suddenly sharp, he saw them from the other side of the window.
He pushed the image away with an almost physical violence. It intruded itself into his mind again, like a weapon pushed into his hands. But he knew if he grasped that weapon, he would never be able to light the flame.
Both images died. He found himself huddled, shaking and dripping with sweat, in the blue shadow of the tower, the cold wind licking at his chilled flesh. He whispered, “I can’t.”
Starhawk was holding his hands. Trembling as if with fever, he raised his head and looked at the setting sun, which seemed to lie straight over the mountain horizon now, glaring at him like a baleful eye. He tried to piece together the image of the room and had it unravel in his hands into darkness. He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“All right,” the Hawk said quietly. “There’s time for me to go in with a fuse.”
It would have to be a short fuse, he thought...There were nuuwa everywhere...If she didn’t get out by the time it went off...
There would be no time for her to get out before the sun set. And it was quite possible that she knew it.
“No,” he whispered as she turned to go. He heard her steps pause. “No,” he said in a stronger voice. He closed his eyes, calling nothing yet, losing himself in a chill, sounding darkness. He heard her come back, but she did not touch him, would not distract him.
Small, single, and precise he called it, not in pieces but all at once—room, shadows, chair, powder, window, nuuwa, darkness. He summoned the reality in his mind, distant and glittering as an image seen in fire, and touched the gray cotton of the sacks with a licking breath of fire. The nuuwa, startled by the sudden heat, drew back.
The thunderous roar of the explosion jerked the ground beneath him. The noise of it slammed into his skull. Through his closed eyes, he could see stones leaping outward, sunlight smashing into the centuries of darkness...light ripping where that darkness had taken hold of his brain.
He remembered screaming, but nothing after that.
Chapter 22
“THERE ISN’T THAT MUCH more to tell.” Starhawk crossed her long legs and tucked her bare feet up under the tumble of sheets and flowered silk quilts at the end of the bed. Against the dark embroidery of her shirt and the gaily inlaid bedpost at her back, she looked bleached, clean as crystal, remote as the winter sky, with her long, bony hands folded around her knees. “Amber Eyes had a picked squad of the prettiest girl
s—Gilden and Wilarne were two of them—and they tarted themselves up and went in first, to slit the throats of the gate guards before they knew what was happening. The alarm was out after that, but it was too late to keep the troop out of the mines; once we’d made it to the first of the armories and Tarrin got his men rallied, it was easy.”
Sun Wolf nodded. From long professional association, he understood what Starhawk meant by easy. The women all bore wounds of hard fighting. Twelve of the fifty had died in the darkness of the mines, never knowing whether their cause would succeed or not. But the fight had been straightforward, with a clear goal. He doubted whether either Starhawk or Sheera had ever questioned their eventual victory.
He leaned back against the silken bolsters and blinked sleepily at the primrose sunlight that sparkled so heatlessly on the diamond-paned windows. Waking in this room, he had not been certain of his surroundings. It turned out that this was Sheera’s best guest room, and that amused him. Never in his stay in Sheera’s household had he been permitted inside the main house. He had half expected to wake up in the loft over the orangery again.
Sheera had not yet come.
“She’ll be at the coronation,” Starhawk said. “It killed me to miss it, but Yirth said she’d rather not have you left alone. Yirth stayed with you yesterday when I went to the wedding—Sheera and Tarrin’s, I mean. There was a hell of a dust kicked up over it with the parliament, because Tarrin and Sheera insisted that they be married first and then crowned as joint rulers, rather than have Tarrin crowned King and then take Sheera as Queen Consort.” She shrugged. “Parliament’s meeting this afternoon, and there’ll be a town-wide gorge on free food and wine all night to celebrate. Tomorrow, if you’re up to it, you’ll be received by Tarrin and Sheera in the Cathedral Square.”
He nodded, identifying at last the faint wisps of noise that had formed a background to the room. It was music and cheers, coming from the direction of the Grand Canal. If the town had found time to reorganize itself for celebrations, he realized, he must have been unconscious for longer than he had thought.
He smiled, picturing to himself the jewel-box vaults of the Cathedral of the Three and Sheera in a gown of gold. Drypettis had been more right than she knew. Sheera was worthy to be Queen—but Queen on her own terms and not on any man’s. He was glad she’d achieved it, no matter what the hapless Tarrin had felt on the subject.
“What do you think of her?” he asked. “Sheera, I mean.”
Starhawk laughed. “I love her,” she said. “She’s the damnedest woman I’ve ever met. She’s a good general, too, you know, easily better than Tarrin. She always had her forces at her fingertips—always knew what was going on. Even in the worst of it, getting through the traps that guarded the ways up to the Citadel, she never batted an eye. Yirth showed her the true way, and she followed, through illusion and fire and all hell else. The rest had no choice but to do the same.”
Sun Wolf grinned and reached up to touch the bandage over his eye that would soon be replaced by the patch that he would wear for life. “Even a man’s deepest fear of magic,” he said in his hoarse voice, “isn’t strong enough to make him admit that he’s afraid to follow where a woman leads.”
One of those dark, strong eyebrows moved up. “You think I haven’t capitalized on that ever since you made me a squad captain? One memory I’ll always cherish is the look on the face of Wilarne M’Tree’s husband when they met in the battle in the tunnels. It was a toss-up whether he’d die of a stroke induced by outrage or I’d die laughing. She all but hacked the arm off a mine guard who had him cornered—she’s wicked with that halberd of hers—and he looked as indignant, when he finally recognized her, as if she’d made a grab at him in the street.”
Sun Wolf laughed. “I suspected Sheera would be a good fighting general,” he said. “But sending her green into her first battle—and an underground one involving magic at that—in charge of fifty other people, would be one hell of an expensive way to find out I was wrong.”
“You know,” Starhawk said thoughtfully, “I always did suspect you were a fraud.” The gray eyes met his, wryly amused. “The hardest-headed mercenary in the business...”
“Well, I was,” he said defensively.
“Really?” Her voice was cool. “Then why didn’t you sneak off to Altiokis first thing and offer to trade information about the whole organization for the antidote? It would have got you out.”
Sun Wolf colored strangely in the pale, butter-colored sunlight. In a small voice, he answered her. “I couldn’t have done that.”
She extended her foot like a hand and patted the lump of his knee under the covers. “I know.” She smiled, got to her feet, and walked to the window. The shadows of the lattice crisscrossed her face and her short, sulfurous hair. Over her shoulder, she said to him, “The Dark Eagle says there’s going to be years’ worth of pickings, with Altiokis’ empire broken up. Tarrin told me this morning they’d gotten news of a revolt in Kilpithie. You know they lynched Governor Stirk—the man Altiokis appointed here in Derroug Dru’s place. There’s already war in the North between Altiokis’ appointees in Racken Scrag and the mountain Thanes. With the fortune Altiokis amassed in a hundred and fifty years, the money will be incredible.”
Her back was to him, only a part of her face visible, edged in the colors of the window; her quiet voice was neutral.
Sun Wolf said, “You know I can’t go back, Hawk.”
She turned to face him. “Where will you go?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. To Wrynde, at first. To let Ari know I’m alive and to turn the troop over to him. To give Fawn money.”
“To pay her off, you mean?”
There was a time when he would have lashed back at those words, no matter who had said them, let alone Starhawk, who had never criticized his dealings with women before. Now he only looked down at his hands and said quietly, “Yes.” After a moment, he raised his head and met her eyes again. “I didn’t treat her badly, you know.”
“No,” the Hawk said. “You never treated any of them badly.”
It was the first time he had heard bitterness—or any other emotion, for that matter—in her voice. It both stung him and relieved him, to let him know where she stood.
“Do you blame me for it?” he asked.
“Yes,” Starhawk said promptly. “Completely illogically, since I was the one who never told you that I loved you—but yes.”
Sun Wolf was silent, trying to choose his words carefully. With any of his other women, he would have fallen back on the easier ploys of charm, or excused himself on the grounds of his own philandering nature. But this woman he knew too well to believe that her love for him would keep her by his side if he was anything other than straightforward with her. With any of his other women, he realized that it had not much mattered to him whether they stayed by him or not. The last several months had taught him that he did not want to live without Starhawk in his life.
At last, finding no adequate way to excuse himself, he only said, “I’m sorry I hurt you. I wouldn’t have done it knowingly.” He hesitated, fumbling for words. “I don’t want to have to do this to Fawn, because I know she is fond of me—”
“Fawn,” Starhawk said quietly, “loved you enough to leave the troop and come with me to look for you. She traveled with me as far as Pergemis. She loved you very much, Wolf.”
He heard her use the past tense and felt both sadness for that gentle girl and shame. Shame because he had, in fact, loved Fawn no more than a kitten, no more than he had loved the others—Gilden, Wilarne, Amber Eyes, or any of his concubines before. “What happened in Pergemis?” he asked.
“She married a merchant,” Starhawk replied calmly.
Sun Wolf looked up at her, the expression of hurt vanity on his face almost comical.
Starhawk continued. “Farstep and Sons, spices, furs, and onyx. She said she would rather marry into a firm of merchants than be the mistress of the richest mercenary in creation,
and to tell you the truth, I can’t say that I blame her. I was asked to stay there myself,” the Hawk went on in a softer voice. “I thought about it. We had lost so much time, I don’t think she ever thought you’d come out of this alive.”
“She wasn’t alone in that opinion,” the Wolf growled. “Will he be good to her?”
“Yes.” Starhawk thought of that tall stone house near the Pergemis quays, of Pel Farstep in her tall hood and elaborately wrought widow’s coif, and of Ram and Imber and Orris, smoking and arguing in front of the hearth, amid a great brangle of children and dogs. Anyog should never have left there, she thought, and then wondered whether he would have been any happier living among them constantly than she would have been, had she given up her quest and accepted Ram’s love.
She realized she had been too long silent. Sun Wolf was watching her, curious and concerned at the change that had come over her face. She said to him, “They are good people, Wolf. They’re the kind of people whose homes we’ve looted and whose throats we’ve slit for years. I can’t go back to our old life in Wrynde any more than you can.”
She walked back to the bed and leaned her shoulder against the gay carvings of the inlaid pillar, her long fingers lying among the curved patterns of ivory and gold, like something wrought there of alabaster, the strong knuckles and wrinkled, pink war scars like the work of a master craftsman against the alternation of abalone and ebony. “So here we are,” she said ironically. “Your father was right, Wolf. We’ve been spoiled for our trade by love and magic.”
He shrugged, leaning back against the shadowy silk of the many pillows. “Looks as if we’ll have to seek a new trade. Or I will, anyway.”
He reached up and touched the eye bandage again. As he suspected, his depth perception was completely gone. He’d have to retrain himself with weapons to compensate, if he ever wanted to fight again. “Sheera told you what happened to me that night in the pit?” he asked.
The Ladies of Mandrigyn Page 36
