Aftermath tw-10

by Robert Asprin

  Samlor cut at the neck of the next thug with the watermarked dagger while drops of blood still winked in the air as they flew from the neck of his first target. The hilt of the unfamiliar weapon was slimmer in his hand than the knife he'd left in the corpse, but the blade's relative point- heaviness gave heft to the slashing blow. The youth got his left arm up in time to block the edge with his forearm while his leader sprayed curses and tried to clear his chain from the staff which now held it rather than the reverse.

  There wasn't enough hilt for Samlor's hands. The shock threatened to jar the knife away from him as the blade sank deep into the leading armbone and cracked it through as the Cirdonian twisted. The youth squealed in hopeless panic, but luck or practice spun one end of his weighted chain in a loop around the weapon that had crippled him.

  Samlor punched the tough in the chest lefMianded, then jerked down on the butt of his coffin-hiked dagger. The youth's leather vest was sewn with flat metal washers; the narrow point in Samlor's left hand scratched across the face of one before it sank deep enough into unprotected flesh to prick a lung.

  Whether or not the metal in the dagger blade had spelled Samlor a warning, it served well enough for a fighting knife. At the Cirdonian's swift tug, the edges sawed through the silvered chain and freed them- selves. The severed knob spun to the muck on the alley's cobblestones with its bit of attached chain twitching like a lizard's tail.

  The thug lost his footing and fell backward. He should have tangled himself with his leader, but the youth with the gilded chain danced clear.

  On his toes, buttocks flattening against the tavern wall as his fellow sprawled beneath him, he whirled a spiked knob at Samlor in a down- ward arc that split the difference between vertical and horizontal.

  The stranger's hood had flopped back and his cape was twisted so that its broach closure was at his left shoulder instead of his throat. When the street tough dropped him to deal with Samlor, the man raised a hand and began to stutter words in a language the caravan master did not know. As the spike chain spun at Samlor's skull in a curve as dangerous as a sword stroke, the stranger stopped talking and prodded the youth be- tween the shoulders with his staff-

  Samlor dodged back to avoid the spikes, forgetting the bulge in the wall behind that rocked him to a halt. The knob sparked across the stone and tore the Cirdonian's left ear as the youth tried to recover from the push that sent him off balance.

  He didn't get the chance,

  The youth wore a necklace strung with the protective charms of at least a dozen faiths, and the front of his vest was strengthened with gilt and silvered studs. None of that helped him when Samlor stabbed up- ward from the groin level. While the punk thrashed like a gigged frog on the twelve-inch blade, the caravan master punched him repeatedly with the push dagger, aiming at the base of the jaw just below the bandanna and the steel cap it covered.

  The youth collapsed. His eyes were open and his lungs were still work- ing well enough to form bubbles in the blood that drooled from the comer of his mouth. A mixture of body fluids and digestive products followed the blade of the long knife as Samlor withdrew it. Their foetor was briefly noticeable even in this alley.

  He was probably fourteen years old or so. He looked younger, but bad diet pinched and stunted the faces of those bom here into permanent childhood,

  "Now the others," chirped a little voice. "Do not kill a snake and leave its tail!"

  The caravan master was on his knees. He did not recall closing his eyes, but he opened them now. The man with the staff was on his feet again and straightening his disordered cape. The manikin was back on his shoulder, strutting proudly with hands on hips.

  "You," said Samlor very distinctly. "Shit it in or you'll join 'em."

  The little figure yelped and disappeared again.

  Samlor, Star, and the stranger were alone with the dying youth. The other two toughs had disappeared down the alley, and no one else seemed to have entered the passage behind the caravan master. There were voices from within the taproom, deep and hectoring, but Samlor didn't care enough to try to understand the words.

  His niece, shivering also, minced over to him without looking down and put her arms around Samlor's shoulder. "I'm sorry you hurt your ear, uncle," she said in a voice that trembled with the child's attempts to control it. "I shouldn't have-"

  She hugged him harder. "But I thought I could climb up from the bench when it was dark and I didn 't know where you were-" Her words tumbled out like flotsam in the current of the sobs wracking her little body.

  "-and the, those men came and I couldn't do anything!"

  "You did fine, darling," the Cirdonian muttered. He encircled the child with his left arm, careful that the point of his push dagger was turned outward. He couldn't put it away until he cleaned it, the way his right hand was wiping the watered steel of the longer knife on the pantaloons of the boy whose breathing had ceased in a pair of great shudders. "But you've gotta listen to me, or really bad things could happen."

  The blade of the long dagger showed a nick midway up one edge, but it had come through the struggle at least as well as any other knife was likely to have done. Samlor tried to sheathe it and found the new blade was a trifle too broad near the tip to fit the scabbard meant for the knife it replaced.

  He slid it beneath his belt instead; wiped the push dagger; and rose with that miniature weapon in his right hand while his left arm guided Star behind him again.

  "Who would you be, my friend?" Samlor asked the man who was fingering his staff now that his cape was rearranged.

  "My name is Khamwas," the fellow said in a cultured voice that tried to be calm. The peak of his hood must have added several inches to his height, because he was clearly shorter than the caravan master as well as much more slightly built. "I'm a stranger here in your city."

  The manikin silently reappeared on Khamwas's shoulder. The tiny features were unreadable in the dim light, but the figure's pose was appre- hensive.

  "Did you have a friend in that tavern?" asked the caravan master softly. When his right thumb turned to indicate the wall of the Vulgar Unicorn, the point of the push dagger winked knowingly toward Khamwas's eyes. There was an ethnic if not familial resemblance be- tween this man and the one who had died in the Vulgar Unicorn.

  "I don't know anyone in this city," Khamwas said with cautious dig- nity. "I'm a scholar from a far country, and I've come to ask a favor here from a man named Setios."

  "Uncle, that's-" blurted Star, catching herself before Samlor's free hand could waggle a warning.

  "A bird who flies to the nest of another," chirped the manikin senten- tiously, "will lose a feather."

  "What in hell is that?" asked the caravan master deliberately, pointing at the manikin with his right index finger. The bodkin-bladed push dag- ger paralleled the gesturing finger as if by chance.

  The manikin eeped and cowered. Khamwas reached across to his right shoulder with his cupped right hand, as if to shield and stroke the little creature simultaneously.

  "He does no harm, sir," the self-styled scholar replied calmly. "I- when I was younger, you understand-prayed to certain powers for wis- dom. They sent me this little fellow instead. His name is Tjainufi."

  The manikin stared balefully at Khamwas, but his own arm reached out to pat the hand protecting him. "A fool who wants to go with a wise man," he said, "is a goose who wants to go with the slaughter knife."

  Samlor blinked. He was confused, but that probably didn't matter, not compared to a dozen other things. "You know my name, then?" he said, harshly again, sure that Khamwas had to have some connection with the stranger in the tavern. A sorcerer who knew your name had the first knot in a rope of power to bind you ...

  "Sir, I know no one in your city," Khamwas repeated, drawing himself up and planting the staff firmly before him with his hands linked on it. "I have a daughter the age of your niece, so I-tried, I should say, to intervene when she seemed to be in difficulties."

  He pause
d. For an instant his staff flowed again. The grain of the wood made ripples in the phosphorescence, and a haze of light wrapped Khamwas's hands like a real fog.

  Star reached past her uncle and touched the staff.

  The glow flicked out as Khamwas started, but a tinge of blue clung to the child's fingers as she withdrew them. Samlor did not swear, because words had power-especially at times like these. His left hand caressed his niece's hair, offering human contact when he could not be sure what help, if any, the child required.

  If Khamwas's toying had done any harm, he would be fed his liver on the point of a knife.

  Star giggled while both men watched her with fear born of uncertainty. She opened her fingers slowly and the glow between their tips grew and paled like the sheen of an expanding soap bubble. Then it popped as if it had never been.

  Khamwas let out his breath abruptly. "Sir," he said to the caravan master, "I didn't realize. Forgive me for intruding in your affairs."

  Tjainufi, who had disappeared when Star lifted light from the staff, now waggled an arm at Khamwas and said, "Do not say, *I am learned.' Set yourself to become wise."

  Khamwas would have stepped by and continued up the alley, but Samlor restrained him with a gesture that would have become contact if the scholar had not halted, "You saved Star from a bad time before I got here," he said. "And likely you saved me, besides distracting the little bastards. My name's Samlor hil Samt." He sheathed the little dagger behind his collar. "You and I need to talk."

  "All right. Master Samlor," agreed the other man, though the way his lips pursed showed that the suggestion was not one he would have made himself. He gestured up the passageway, the direction from which the Cirdonian had come, and added, 'There are more suitable places to discuss matters than here, I'm certain."

  "No," said Samlor flatly, "there's not."

  It wasn't worth his time to explain that the direction in which Khamwas was headed would be a no-go area for at least the next hour. The passageway was narrow enough to be defended by one man, and both flanks were protected by masonry that would require siege equip- ment to breach. If their luck were really out, they could be attacked from both directions simultaneously, but that risk was better than being trapped in a cul-de-sac with no bolthole.

  Given the nature of Sanctuary, this was probably the safest place within a league in any direction.

  "What do you know about Setios?" the caravan master demanded, no more threatening than was implicit in the fact that he had already dem- onstrated his willingness and ability to kill,

  Star was squatting, her skirts lifted and wrapped around her thighs to keep the hem from lying in the muck. A tiny glow spun within the globe of her hands as she cooed. Its color was more nearly yellow than the blue which had washed Khamwas's staff.

  The glow was reflected faintly by the eyes of the dead youth.

  Khamwas's face worked in something between a grimace and a moue of embarrassment as he watched the child. "Ah," he said to Samlor. "That is, ah-are you ... ?"

  The caravan master shook his head, glad to find that the question amused him rather than arousing any of the other possible emotions. "On a good day," he said, "I might be able to recite a spell without stumbling over the syllables-if somebody wrote 'em out for me really careful." That was an exaggeration, though not a great one.

  "My sister, though," he added, embarrassed himself for reasons the other man should not be able to fathom, "that was more her line."

  To the extent that anything besides sex was Samlane's line.

  "I see," said Khamwas, and he continued to glance down at the child even as he returned to the earlier question. "I don't know Setios at all," he explained, "but I know-I've been told by, well-"

  He shrugged. Samlor nodded grimly; but if this fellow called himself scholar rather than wizard, he at least recognized that the latter was a term of reproach to decent men.

  "Serve your god, that he may guard you," said Tjainufi, stroking his master's-could Khamwas be called that?-right ear.

  "He has," Khamwas went on after the awkward pause, "a stele from my own land, from Napata-"

  "Of course," Samlor interrupted, placing the stranger at last. "The Land of the River."

  "The river," Khamwas agreed with a nod of approval, "and of the desert. And in the desert, many monuments of former times"-he paused again, gave a gentle smile-"greater times for my people, some would say, though I myself am content."

  "You want to ... retrieve," said Samlor, avoiding the question of means, "a monument that this Setios has. Is he a magician?"

  "I don't know," said Khamwas with another shrug. "And I don't need the stele, only a chance to look at it. And, ah, Samlor-?"

  The caravan master nodded curtly to indicate that he would not take offense at what he assumed would be a tense question.

  "I will pay him well for the look," the Napatan said. "It's of no value to him-not for the purpose I intend it-without other information. It will give me the location of a particular tomb, which is significant to me for other reasons."

  The light in Star's hands was growing brighter, throwing the men's shadows onto the wall of the alley. Khamwas's face looked demonically inhuman because it was illuminated from below.

  Samlor touched his niece's head. "Not so much, dearest," he mur- mured. "We don't want anybody noticing us here if we can help it."

  "But-" Star began shrilly. She looked up and met her uncle's eyes. The light shrank to the size of a large pearl, too dim to show anything but itself.

  "She didn't know how to do that before," said Samlor, as much an explanation to himself as one directed toward the other man. "She picks things up."

  "I see," said Khamwas, and maybe he did. "Well."

  He shook himself, to settle his cape and to settle himself in his resolve. "Well, Master Samtor," the Napatan continued, "I must be on." He nodded past Samlor toward the head of the alley.

  "Not that way," said the caravan master wryly, though he did not move again to block the other man.

  "Yes, it is," Khamwas replied with a touch of astringence. He stiffened to his full height. The manikin on his shoulder mimicked the posture, perhaps in irony. 'The direction of Setios's house is precisely"-he ex- tended his arm at an angle toward Samlor; hesitated with his eyes turned inward; and corrected the line a little further to the right-"this way. And this passage is the nearest route to the way I need to follow."

  "Do not do a thing you have not first considered carefully," Tjainufi suddenly warned.

  The caravan master began to chuckle. He clapped a hand in a friendly fashion on Khamwas's left shoulder. "Nearest route to having your head stuck on a pole, I'd judge," he said. The Napatan felt as fine-boned as he looked, but there was a decent layer of muscle between the skeleton and the soft fabric of his cape.

  "Look," Samlor continued, "d'ye mean to tell me you don't know where in the city Setios lives, you're just walking through the place in the straightest line your ... friends, I suppose, tell you is the way to Se- tios? Are these the same friends who gave you wisdom?" The caravan master nodded toward Tjainufi.

  "I think that's my affair. Master Samlor," said Khamwas. He strode forward, gripping his staff vertically before him. His knuckles were white.

  The manikin said, " 'What he does insults me,' says the fool when a wise man instructs him."

  Khamwas halted. Samlor looked at the little figure with a frown of new surmise. There was no bad advice-only advice that was wrong for a given set of circumstances. And, just possibly, Tjainufi's advice was more appropriate than the Cirdonian had guessed.

  "All I meant, friend," Samlor said, touching and then removing his hand from the other man's shoulder, "was that maybe there aren't any good districts in Sanctuary-but your straight line's sure as death taking you through the middle of the worst of what there is."

  Star had stood up when Khamwas started to walk away. The light which now clung to her left palm had put out tendrils and was fluctuat- ing through a series of p
astels paler than the colors of a noontime rain- bow. Impulsively, she hugged the Napatan's leg and said, "Isn't it pretty? Oh, thank you!"

  "It's only a-little thing," Khamwas explained apologetically to the child's uncle. "It-I don't know how she learned it from seeing what I did."

  Samlor noticed that the staff glowed only when Khamwas could con- centrate on it, but that the phosphorescence in Star's hand continued its complex evolutions of shape and color even while his niece was hugging and smiling brightly at the other man.

  The light glinted on the bare blade of his new dagger, harder in reflec- tion than the source hanging in the air seemed.

  The caravan master blinked, touched his tunic over the silver medal- lion of the goddess Heqt on his breast, and only then slid the weapon back from its temporary resting place in his belt. The twisting phospho- rescence gave the markings a false hint of motion; but they were only swirls of metal, not the script he thought he had again seen.

  Khamwas watched with controlled apprehension. Deciding that it was better to go on with his proposal than to wonder why Samlor was staring at the knife whose guard still bore dark stains, the Napatan said. "Master Samlor, you understand this city as I do not. And you're clearly able to deal with, ah, with violence, should any be offered. Could I prevail on you to accompany me to the house of Setios? I'll pay you well."

  "Do not walk the road without a stick in your hand," Tjainufi said approvingly.

  "We need to find Setios, Uncle Samlor," said the child in a voice rising toward shrill. She released Khamwas and instead tugged insistently on the elbow of her uncle's right sleeve. "Please can we? He's nice."

  Cold steel cannot flow, twist, parse out words, thought the caravan master. The nick in the edge was bright and real: this was no thing of enchantment, only a dagger with an awkward hilt and a very good blade.

  Star pulled at Samlor's arm with most of her weight. He did not look down at her, nor did his hand drop. That arm had dragged a donkey back up to the trail from which it had stumbled into a gulley a hundred feet deep.