A Handful of Men: The Complete Series

by Dave Duncan

“Nothing. Just unusual.” Despite the relative peace prevailing in this sector of the Guwush theater, a few gnomish terrorists still roamed the woods. Inos and Shandie had not been molested — at times they had almost wished that they would be, in the hope that they could thereby pass word of their plight back to Oshpoo — but danger had been part of their troubles. A solitary traveler was a rare sight. Even Imperial couriers were escorted. Of more significance to Inos, though, was the fragile hope of rescue she had nursed for days. If help was to come, it must come in the form of a solitary rider.

  She told herself not to build castles on the clouds. A few minutes later, though, she felt a faint pulse of excitement as the lone horseman — or, please Gods, horsewoman — drew closer.

  “Fair hair?”

  “Oh, come! You can’t possibly make that out at this distance.”

  “I think I can! Even djinns compliment me upon my eyesight. You forget I am half jotunn.”

  Shandie peered curiously at her around the donkey’s ears. “They both look the same to me. Which one is the jotunn one?”

  That was better! She rewarded him with a smile. “The greener one.”

  “They are equally beautiful,” he said solemnly, and returned to watching the lone rider. “Yes, you’re right. Fair hair. And a woman! Praise to the Gods!”

  Dwarves could not ride horses. Goblins would be apprehended on sight. Of the five fellow outlaws due to rendezvous with them at Randport, only one could possibly come in search of them, to find out why they had been delayed.

  And Jarga it must be, for she was kicking her mount to a gallop. Big and raw-boned, leather britches caked in red clay, she was an ungainly rider. She could never have been beautiful, even in her youth, but she had the strength and competence of a jotunn sailor. She was the most welcome sight Inos had seen in months. Inos knew hundreds of her kind in Krasnegar, and knew their worth.

  Flaxen hair streaming, Jarga arrived in a shower of mud. Her attempt to leap from the saddle almost pitched her to the ground. Horse and donkey flashed teeth and temper at each other and were brought under control.

  By that time Jarga had hauled back the leather cover on the cart to peer at the unconscious dwarf on his straw. His cheeks were hollowed under the iron-gray beard. His breathing was shallow, and yet dangerously labored.

  She looked up, face flushed by the wind — and perhaps by anger. “How long has he been like this?”

  “Five days,” Inos said.

  “It happened on the coach, the morning we left Yugg,” Shandie explained. “He just keeled over on the bench. He was at the front, I was at the back… We don’t know if he was struck down by the Covin, somehow, or if he just had a stroke, or…” Realizing that further detail was unnecessary, he fell silent, waiting hopefully.

  “He is old,” Inos added. “And he wouldn’t dare use sorcery to keep himself hale.” That, also, need not be said. Nor was there need to explain why the conspirators had been reduced to buying a cart and donkey to transport the warlock. Adventuring in real life was never as glamorous as it was depicted in the romances Kadie had enjoyed so much. An invalid of any description might carry infection, and a man in a very deep coma was a disgusting, smelly companion. Inns and coaches would not accept such a patron, so imperor and queen had taken on the unpleasant chore of transporting and tending him. Inos had insisted that her experience of raising babies qualified her to cope; Shandie that he had nursed wounded in field hospitals. They had taken turns.

  Apart from keeping him clean and warm, though, they had achieved very little. They had managed to force no nourishment into the sick man, and not much water. Every day he was weaker. That a powerful sorcerer could be brought to such a pass was a sad commentary on the current state of the world.

  Jarga straightened up bleakly and replaced the cover. “It is sorcery, minor sorcery — a sleep spell, is all.”

  Shandie bellowed, “What!” and turned a look of fury toward Inos. “Those accursed gnomes have betrayed us!”

  “I think not.” Jarga glanced around the landscape. There were no houses in sight, and no gnomes, either, in these daylight hours. There was no life to be seen, other than a few pathetic sheep grazing the wet grass of the fields.

  “I am a sorcerer, not a medic,” the sailor said in her harsh Nordland voice. She hesitated. “Hub is noisy now, but I have detected no sorcery close at hand for days. That is both good and bad. Even a little power may betray us.”

  Shandie nodded. “You must be the judge. But I think our friend is worth a risk or two.”

  Jarga smiled gratefully. The concern on her leathery face was oddly touching, and also puzzling. Any hint of tears in her eyes must certainly be a trick of their extreme paleness, closer to the color of winter fog than to blue. A jotunn sailor, even a female jotunn sailor, was no more sentimental than a goblin, and the idea of one feeling attachment to an elderly dwarf was absurd. As well match a walrus and camel.

  But Jarga did look worried. “It is dangerous for a man of his years to lie flat for so long. There is fluid in his lungs, but surely a couple of hours more can do no great harm. A league or so back I detected shielding in a gully.”

  “Excellent!” Shandie said. “Let us take him there and see what you can do.”

  “Would my horse pull your cart faster, do you think?”

  “Not without a horse collar.” Inos was surprised how much the sorceress’s arrival had eased her mind already. In this bleak, alien world of the millennium, she felt vulnerable without sorcery close at hand. Although neither Jarga nor Raspnex dared exercise their powers very often, they could observe and report on what was going on, and just to have them around was reassuring.

  “Would you like to ride awhile, my lady?”

  “Not in this dress.” Inos winked at the sailor. “Surely it would be more fitting for us humble womenfolk to walk and let our lord take the horse?”

  “When you adopt that tone,” Shandie said, “I feel a need for a cohort or two to defend me.”

  “Cavalry, I suppose? And Jarga and I would still walk.”

  “Undoubtedly. Allow me to demonstrate equitation.” Shandie sprang nimbly into the saddle.

  A moment later he dismounted. As he stooped to shorten the stirrup leathers, Inos and Jarga shared smiles of satisfaction at the noteworthy redness of his ears.

  A donkey might scorn an imperor. It could even ignore a queen regnant, but a jotunn armed with a rail was a serious matter. Soon the little beast was displaying more enthusiasm for work than it ever had previously, and the cart jangled forward at a pace it had not approached before, with both women riding on the bench. The lessons had been effective, but brutal. Inos probably felt much worse than Zinixo did.

  “What did you mean when you said 'Hub is noisy'?”

  “Sorcery,” the sailor said. “We think the Covin is dismantling all the shielding. That makes waves.”

  It also made sense. Zinixo — the two-legged Zinixo — was notoriously nervy. Shielding anywhere might conceal enemies. When he had removed all of it, there would be nowhere in the world for opponents to hide.

  Jarga was a woman of few words. She addressed most of them to the donkey, periodically wielding her club. She would brook no slacking.

  Inos wondered again what feelings there could possibly be between a middle-aged jotunn and an elderly dwarf. Even for friendship they had nothing in common except the cause of the counterrevolution. They would make an absurd-looking couple, for Jarga was almost twice his height. Inos had assumed that the warlock, in adopting the principles of Rap’s new protocol, had released all his votaries. She had never asked him, though, and she very much doubted that Shandie had, for the crusty old dwarf was not the sort of man to tolerate impertinent questions. Of course there was no way to find out from Jarga. If she was still bound to the warlock, she would lie about it.

  Jarga’s concern for the old man might stem from nothing more than friendship — Inos herself was anxious for him to be restored to health — but it might
have darker roots. Votarism was rank evil, a slavery of the soul. Rap’s hatred of it was much in character and nothing new. If Raspnex used his powers to gain sexual satisfaction, he would merely have been following an ancient tradition. If he did, Inos decided, he would not impose his wishes by force, he would make his victim willing. He would make her love him. That was well within the powers of a sorcerer, and only marginally less evil than outright rape. On the other hand, the grumpy old scoundrel did seem to have mellowed in the past few months. What had caused that?

  They had all changed. Minutes ago, Shandie had praised Inos’ eyes in an easy, offhand compliment that he would never have managed when she first met him. It had been a meaningless pleasantry, a social grace like a smile, valued only for its own sake. The Shandie of last winter would not have seen the need for such flippancy, would not have attempted it if he had, and would certainly have stammered and blushed if he had tried.

  And she? She was not conscious of change in herself, and yet there must be some. She had lost her husband, her kingdom, her children, and had no hope of regaining any of them unless Rap could somehow overthrow the Covin. Such burdens must change anyone.

  “Faster!” Jarga roared, bringing her rail down hard on the donkey’s back. It brayed and lurched wearily back into a canter.

  About to utter a protest, Inos stopped herself just in time. Gods! she thought. Am I learning patience?

  Or am I just growing old?

  The gully was so gentle that it would have escaped attention had there not been a stream and a ford. Trees closed in on either hand. It was a shaded, gloomy spot, and rain had begun to fall again.

  “Here?” Inos said as the cart rattled to a halt. “Where?”

  “All around,” Jarga said, dropping the reins. “The road runs right through it, or I wouldn’t have noticed, because I wasn’t consciously farseeing.”

  “Why would anyone ever put shielding here?”

  “Ambush,” Shandie said. He was standing by the horse, letting it drink. He frowned at the murky tangle of undergrowth. “How far back does it run?”

  “Quite a way. Would hold a cohort or two.”

  “Let’s hope it isn’t occupied at the moment.”

  “It isn’t,” the sorceress said. She had twisted around to haul the cover away from Raspnex.

  “How long?” he asked in his familiar deep growl.

  Inos gasped with delight, seeing his eyes open. He was upside down from her viewpoint on the driving bench, but he looked better already.

  “Five days, they say.” Jarga was smiling happily at the results of her sorcery. She very rarely smiled.

  Sorcerers did not need long convalescence. Raspnex sat up and already his color was returning, changing from clay buff to his normal gray sandstone hue. Glowering under craggy brows, he flickered his pebble eyes from Inos to Shandie, who had come to stand by the side of the cart to grin.

  “I owe you my thanks,” he muttered. Dwarves were as effusively demonstrative as glaciers.

  “You owe us an explanation!” Shandie said. “Who did it?”

  “I did. It was the first thing that came into my head.”

  The imperor shot Inos a glance of exasperation and then tried again. “Why did you do it, then?”

  The warlock heaved himself to his feet. Even standing, he was barely taller than the two women sitting on the bench, but the cart rocked under his weight. “My nephew tried something new. He came looking for me in the ambience.”

  “Zinixo himself?” Shandie said, startled.

  “In a meld of the Covin. It was a personal thing, though. I recognized him — heard his voice, you could say. I had only seconds before he located me. I had to disappear fast, so I slugged myself.” His ugly face twisted in pain. “Even that was a risk. Sorry.”

  How often did one hear a dwarf apologize?

  “Any risk was better than having you perverted! What do we do now? How can you leave this shielding without being caught? Unconscious again?”

  Rain pattered faster in puddles below and trailing branches overhead.

  “He can shield himself,” Inos said. “Mundane disguise.”

  The warlock bared his teeth. “You’re very free with advice today, aren’t you?”

  “It would be torture!” Jarga roared. “He would be blind and deaf and crippled.”

  “He’ll get used to it! My husband hid his sorcery that way for years.”

  Now the jotunn looked even more dangerous than the dwarf. “And he will be conspicuous! We have an advantage in that the enemy’s loyalty spells show up. A body shielding will show, also. It is unthinkable!”

  “No, Jargie,” Raspnex growled. “She’s right, as usual.”

  Jargie?

  Shandie had been scratching his black-stubbled chin. “If the Almighty can pull this personal-tracking trick, then why hasn’t he done so before?”

  “Because it requires one-on-one contact, and normally that could be dangerous if…” Raspnex winced.

  “If the one you seek is stronger,” the jotunn said. “It is much like hand-to-hand combat But of course the Almighty wields the power of the Covin, so he can be in no real danger.” Pain wrenched her face, also.

  “It will work on any sorcerer?” Shandie asked grimly.

  “Anyone known to him personally.” She took a deep breath. “And I suppose any sorcerer known personally to any member of the Covin. It is a serious development!”

  “Powers preserve us,” Shandie muttered. He glanced apprehensively at Inos.

  So did the warlock and the sorceress.

  Rap? Oh, Rap!

  “Why has he — Zinixo — not done this before?”

  “Perhaps because of Olybino,” Raspnex said. “It happened the next day, remember? When he saw that the opposition could not save Olybino, he decided he had the edge.”

  “What odds would satisfy Zinixo?” she demanded, her voice louder than she had intended.

  The warlock grunted. “About a thousand to one, maybe. Come on, let’s be on our way.” He sat down on the straw and hauled the wagon cover over his shoulders to deflect the downpour.

  “Wait!” The world had darkened for Inos. If even Zinixo was satisfied with his advantage, then it must be overwhelming. “He may have caught Rap the same way?”

  Shandie was avoiding her eye. Had Rap been quick enough to react as Raspnex had done, and hide in unconsciousness? Even if he had, did he have comrades available to tend him, or was he lying helpless in some forgotten jungle? For six days she had believed that Rap was alive, and now that hope had been stolen away again.

  “He may have captured Rap,” Jarga said brusquely. “This is not a game of thali, this is war. Sitting here wailing won’t solve anything.” She jingled the reins and screamed abuse at the donkey.

  Inos grabbed at the side as the cart lurched into motion. “Oh, that’s easy enough for you to say! I’m concerned about the man I love!”

  “So am I,” said a silent voice in her ear, Jarga’s voice.

  “Huh?”

  “Move, you spavined, illegitimate latrine washing! He has been a sorcerer for a very long time, and this privation will distress him greatly.”

  Inos looked blankly at the sailor, who was apparently engrossed in her bullying of the weary donkey.

  “Yes, I love him,” the voice whispered again. “Sometimes I think he loves me. We do not talk of it. He took pleasure of me once, long ago, but only once. After that we never dared.”

  “Oh!” What to say, with the warlock himself so close? “Love does complicate life sometimes.”

  “Faster, you barnacled, brick-brained son of a pig! Better off without it. Forget what I just said. I was joking. Sorcerers can never love other sorcerers, only mundanes — you should know that better than any, Queen Inosolan.”

  2

  Randport was a sleepy but prosperous outpost of Impire, a naval base, and also a favorite retirement town for officers and civil servants. Its buildings, climate, and nightlife were agreed
to be harmonious, monotonous, and picturesque, the order of application depending on the speaker. A few elves down on their luck lived there, prostituting their art to the imps’ notions of culture; gnomes were allowed to enter after dark to remove the garbage; all other races were strongly discouraged. To the military, that meant evicted on sight. Inos saw nothing of Randport proper and had no wish to.

  Just over the headland lay Old Town, a major port crushed between a cliff and the battlements of the naval base. The army preferred to stay out of Old Town, even in daylight, and imps were a minority there. It claimed to be the only city in Pandemia where jotnar lived in peace together. Indeed there was surprisingly little fighting in the jotunn quarter, but the jotunn quarter adjoined the djinn quarter, the boundary being marked by a line of fresh bloodstains.

  To a jotunn, a djinn was an irresistible challenge. To a djinn a jotunn was a barbarian maniac best knifed quickly. A jotunn might concede djinns to be the second tallest race in the world and the second best fighters, but he would insist that they cheated. What the djinns said about the jotnar has no easy translation. Trolls, who were larger than either, worked as porters and stayed out of the fighting. Imps ran the businesses, both honest and dishonest, with djinns close behind. Fauns were rare, but not unknown. Procurers would promise genuine mermaids. Dwarves were quite common, because of the nearby lead and silver mines, and they traveled in packs. Gnomes were everywhere out of the light, and no elf would ever dream of setting foot in Randport Old Town.

  Inos had been hoping that a glimpse of the sea would cheer her up, but Randport depressed her. Its residents were too alien, too numerous, and too surly. The familiar tang of weed and fish made her homesick. For the first time in her life, she was happy to board a ship.

  Northern Vengeance was berthed in a remote corner of the crowded harbor. Throughout her long career as the river trader Rosebud the little ketch had been based in Urgaxox, but she seemed to have survived her ocean voyage around Guwush unscathed. She still bore her original name on her stem — as a nom de guerre, of course.