“BUT YOU TOLD GUILLOR you would buy a pony.” The girl eyed their packhorse dubiously. It was a small animal, little more than a pony in size, but Mar was also small, and by careful repacking of their weapons into their own saddlebags, the spare horse could carry both the girl and the balance of the provisions they would stop to buy.
“I told her you would need a pony.” The corners of Dhulyn’s lips twitched. “Not that we would have to buy one.”
The girl stood still, blinking. “Guillor Weaver’s considered a shrewd woman, a hard dealer,” she said finally, halfway between admiration and annoyance.
“Nay, don’t be offended,” Parno said, chuckling at the look on the girl’s face. “Your foster mother’s reputation stands firm. But Mercenaries deal and bargain with all sorts, not just people buying cloth.”
“And we deal for our lives, little Dove,” added Dhulyn. “That makes us sharper.” When she was satisfied that the girl wouldn’t fall off immediately, Dhulyn nodded to Parno and they mounted their own horses. Both Warhammer and Bloodbone knew what packs meant, and were fidgeting, impatient to be off. How they’d feel after a day’s long riding in this cold weather was something else again.
Their first stop was the market, where, after buying a good supply of roadbread and dried fish, Parno and Mar waited with the horses while Dhulyn went to the book merchant’s stall. There she traded the three books she had finished-carefully rolled and tied into tubes-for a single new one, a copy of Theonyn’s poems bound into a traveler’s volume made of the lighter, imported paper instead of parchment, cut into pages and sewn into a binding of stiff leather. She could only afford the one book, and the poems would take longer to read than anything else of equal size.
“What is it, little one?” Dhulyn looked up from stowing her book. Mar’s fidgeting was enough to make the packhorse itself restive.
“Nothing, that is…” the girl hesitated.
“A heavy silence for nothing,” Dhulyn said.
“It’s just… I was wondering if I might be able to say good-bye to my friend Sarita at the weapons stall.”
“Who would stop you? We take you where you wish to go, do we not?” Dhulyn spoke lightly. No point in terrorizing the girl. “Never mind, my Dove. Slip down and go. The Lionsmane and I will wait for you over by that barrel.” Dhulyn pointed out an empty barrel holding up one end of a baker’s stall. There it would be possible for them to stand at least partly out of the way.
Mar glanced over at the weapons stall and nodded. “I won’t be long,” she promised as she hurried off.
“You don’t think she’ll run,” Parno said, watching the girl weave her way between early morning buyers and sellers.
“She hasn’t the look of it, no,” Dhulyn said, drawing down her blood-colored brows. “But then, we have a clear sight of the weapons stall from here, she won’t get far on foot, and we’ve our travel money to Gotterang in any case.” She smiled her wolf’s smile, and Parno threw back his head and laughed.
It was not possible for them to stand completely out of everyone’s way even so early in the day, but marketers tended to part around the two Brothers with little or no complaint. Mercenary badges often encouraged even the most unruly to mind their manners. They stood facing each other, their eyes drifting apparently aimlessly as they spoke, taking in all of their surroundings, never looking in the same direction at once.
“How is it,” Dhulyn remarked in the nightwatch murmur that would be unintelligible to any passerby, “that I have lived thus long without ever hearing the name Tenebro, since it makes even strong men pale?”
Parno bit back a curse. He should have known she would notice something. She would never have asked, but this was something he should have told her before. Caids knew, the middle of the market square in Navra was not the best place for his life story.
“What if I told you it was just a trick of the light?” he said, forcing a smile to his lips.
“You’d be lying.”
Best place or no, he had to say something; this might be the last chance they had to speak privately for the next half moon.
“I knew them.” He watched as her eyes widened and her mouth formed a soundless “oh” of comprehension.
“Will they know you?” She was asking more than if they would recognize him. She was asking whether there was danger in it if they should. There were many reasons a man might leave his Household for the Brotherhood. Blood duel was only one of them.
“Caids, not likely,” he said, making it sound as certain as he could. The difference between seventeen and thirty-one, he thought. A lifetime of change.
“You would tell me,” she said, turning to nod and smile as the kitchen boy from the inn passed close to them-marketing on his free day from the look of his good clothes.
“Of course,” he said, eyes flicking to her face. How could she doubt that he would fail to warn her of possible danger? They were Partnered, a sword with two edges.
“Any odds it’s not the same House?”
“I keep telling you, less poetry and more politics.” Parno snorted, relieved that she questioned him no further.
“Then why would I need you, my soul?” She reached out and punched him lightly, barely a touch, above his heart. “All the same family then?”
Parno twisted his lips to one side, resisting the temptation to squeeze his eyes shut. “The same House,” he said, indicating Mar with his eyes, “though not necessarily the same family. The Tenebros are one of the five High Noble Houses, the ones most likely to provide a Tarkin should one be needed. They’ve Households and Holdings of all sizes throughout the Letanian Peninsula. For the sake of influence, and courtesy, we’re… they’re all considered kin, though the blood runs thinner the farther away from the main branch. Just the same, every Household and Holding owes their allegiance there, and all are counted as House Tenebro. Both Householders and Holdings use the noble form of their names, as Mar-eMar was quick to remind us. But not the high noble form-”
“Which is?”
“The mirror reverse. If our little Mar was herself the House, or heir to that dignity, her name would be pronounced Mar-EE-Ram, not Mar-EE-Mar.”
“Ah, I’ve seen that in books, I should have asked you before what it meant.” Dhulyn gave herself a nod of satisfaction.
Parno shook his head. “It’s an odd time to send for the girl, having let her Holding lapse these ten years. There’s more to this than reuniting lost kin. The Tenebros are First Blood to the Tarkin himself. More important than that it’s difficult to be, though they were so once, and perhaps with these new troubles, they are trying to be so again.”
“I have read history, which you call politics,” Dhulyn said, frowning. “If I recall correctly, was there not a Tenebro Tarkin before Nyl-aLyn, father of the present Colebro Tarkin?”
Parno shrugged. “I think two reigns before his. It seems their luck turned bad. It began within the House itself, a generation or two back. Unexplained, or insufficiently explained illnesses, a disappearance or two. Then it followed as these things follow.” Parno shrugged again. “A battle lost here, an ill-advised marriage there, an assassination or so. The High Houses intervened, the Tarkinate was put to the Ballot, and House Tenebro proved to have insufficient support to retain the Carnelian Throne.”
“They were not wiped out?” Dhulyn’s eyes narrowed and Parno followed her glance over his shoulder to where he could see Mar talking to her friend. A small flat object, which he recognized as parchment even at this distance, was passed between them. Was that a bit of green seal? The girl had more than the one letter then.
“Oh, no,” he said in answer to Dhulyn’s question. “Too numerous and too powerful for that, for all they’d lost the Throne. Some of the smaller branches, the Holdings, withered, it is true…” Parno’s voice dried in his throat, and Dhulyn looked sharply back at him, waiting with brows lowered for him to say something more. He shifted his eyes away, pretending to scour their surroundings for enemies. He wanted to tell her, he should tell her. But he hadn’t thought the pain was still so close to the surface that it could shut his throat.
“And Mar-eMar is a twig from such a branch, or so her letter seems to say,” she said finally, ignoring his silence. Bloodbone snorted and stepped back as someone nudged her from the far side. Dhulyn cocked her eye and smiled at a man in a painter’s stained work clothes who ducked his head and smiled in return before he dropped his own gaze. She ran her hand along Bloodbone’s neck until the mare quieted. “Which means that marriage is not just a wishful thought on the little one’s part. Here I thought she had listened to too many bard’s songs.”
“Not at all. The songs usually have some root in fact, swords on the bed notwithstanding. At these rarefied heights, allegiances can be tricky things, and it’s difficult to find someone of sufficiently noble blood who is not politically suspect, or who is not already too closely related for progeny. A country branch of your own family is ideal. In the old days it was not unheard of to begin such branches for that very purpose.”
Again their eyes locked. This time it was Dhulyn who looked away.
“Keeps the property together too, I shouldn’t wonder,” she said. “Now we know why Mistress Weaver was so sure we would be paid, and so anxious for the family to know of her good care.” Dhulyn’s eyes found Mar again as she moved through the stalls of the market making her way back to them. “Though why would the Weavers not escort the girl themselves, if it comes to that?”
Parno nodded. “True, merchants aren’t known for giving away profit. They’re towns folk, though, let’s not forget,” he continued. “They would have had to hire guards anyway, and then…” He cocked his head. “Doing favors for the powerful is a chancy thing. Less reward for them this way, perhaps, but less risk, too.”
“More risk for us, you mean.”
They fell silent as they watched Mar wait for a boy driving a donkey with water jugs in its panniers to cross in front of her. Parno lowered his voice still further. “Dhulyn? When you touched her, what did you See?”
“I Saw our little Dove wearing a cloth-of-silver gown. Hand in hand with a line of dancers.”
“Her wedding, do you think? The wedding she expects?”
Dhulyn shrugged. “Rich and alive,” she answered. “It seemed like a good omen for us who are to be her guards. And I’ll tell you something else, my Brother,” she said. “If they were so very anxious to have her back in the bosom of the family, why did the Tenebros not send some trusted servants of their own?” She smiled her wolf’s smile. “Perhaps there’s more than bandits and Cloud People for us to be wary of.”
Parno shook his head. Whatever she might have guessed from his evasions, she was willing to let it drop, at least for now.
“Caids take you,” he said, “as if we didn’t have enough problems!”
Laughing, Dhulyn thumped him on the shoulder before swinging herself up on Bloodbone, leaving Parno to help Mar regain her seat on the packhorse. When they were both ready, Dhulyn led them north through the market and into the wide avenue that would become the Gotterang Road once it passed through the north gates of Navra. The streets were unusually crowded this morning, and when they were within sight of the town’s wall and the gates themselves, she saw why. Only one leaf of the heavy timbered gate was open, and the people, horses, and carts ahead of them had been formed into a line and were being stopped by the Watch before they were allowed to pass through. While Dhulyn was looking the situation over, one short man with a tinker’s pack on his back was escorted away to the guardroom while the others in line stood waiting.
Dhulyn checked Bloodbone, keeping the horse to a much slower pace than the animal wanted. Too late to get out of line and try a different gate-or a different way out of the city entirely. They were behind two farm carts and a small company of strolling players, and there wasn’t much room to maneuver. Dhulyn shrugged, making sure the sword lying along her spine was loose in its sheath. There were only five guards, and if worse came to worst…
Dhulyn spotted the helmet crest of the officer of the Watch, and even from this distance she had no trouble making out how his lips were thinned by a look of frozen displeasure. The very look, Dhulyn considered, of a man following orders he didn’t agree with. Give too many of those, and you could have a revolt on your hands.
And she’d bet her second-best sword that the Jaldean standing behind the gatemen had something to do with it. Looked as if they’d got the Finders out just in time-and perhaps they should have gone with them.
Casually, as if she were just checking the numbers in line behind them, she turned to look back at Parno. Mar and the packhorse were between them, but Dhulyn had no trouble catching his eye over the girl’s head. He scratched his left ear with his right thumb. So he agreed. Too late to change their minds. They’d have to see if they couldn’t bluff their way through.
Whatever it was that had the officer clenching his teeth, his men looked content enough, though there was none of the relaxed informality Dhulyn would have expected from gate guards in a country at peace. And now that she was looking for it, there was a tall fair guard having trouble hiding his smirk, grinning openly whenever he was sure that his officer wasn’t looking. Dhulyn smiled. That kind of discord spelled real trouble, and where there was trouble in the ranks, there was room for a good Mercenary to maneuver.
The two farmers and the traveling players passed through without incident, and Dhulyn pulled up as Bloodbone came abreast of the officer’s crest. The nearer guards gave ground, and the three farther away came closer, until there was a cleared circle with Dhulyn, Parno, and the girl in the center. Dhulyn glanced up. There were crossbow men at the top of the gate. Still, if Parno took care of the bowmen, she could manage the five guards down here before any others arrived. And from the wide-eyed look on the face of the nearest one, he knew exactly what she was thinking and believed it as well. If she hadn’t already taken money to make sure the girl was safe… She smiled her wolf’s smile at the officer.
“Step to the side, Mercenaries, please,” he said, staring steadily at a point just over her left shoulder. “Over there if you will.”
And if I won’t? Dhulyn didn’t say the words aloud. “But you know us, Officer.” She tapped her Mercenary badge with the fingers of an obviously empty hand. “Mercenaries of the Brotherhood. This young one’s Mar, fosterling of the Weavers in Threadneedle Alley. We’ve been given the charge of taking her to her family in Gotterang.” Dhulyn was careful to keep her tone light, as if she were just gossiping, and the guard officer was just a friend.
The Jaldean pushed his way forward and laid his hand on the thin wool covering Dhulyn’s knee. “You go to Gotterang, Mercenary?”
Dhulyn bit down to keep from gasping as
flashed through her mind almost too quickly to see. It took all of her training and concentration not to flinch away from the Jaldean’s hand.
THE MAN IN FRONT OF HER CROSSES THE STREET, HIS EYES GLOWING GREEN
“We do,” she answered, pleased at how steady her voice was. “Would you mind stepping back, friend? You’re making my horse nervous.” Dhulyn took hold of Bloodbone’s mane in a special twist, and the mare tossed her head and brought her right forehoof down on the Jaldean’s foot.
The officer suddenly looked away and Dhulyn was quick to draw in her brows and “tsk,” as Bloodbone continued dancing and rolling her eyes like a horse about to bolt. Nursing his foot, the Jaldean flicked his hand toward them and the officer, eyes now bright in his stiff face, acknowledged Dhulyn with the slightest of bows, and waved them through the gate.
As soon as they were through Mar’s packhorse fell into place at Dhulyn’s right hand of its own accord, even though Dhulyn was still having trouble with Bloodbone. When Parno took up position to Mar’s right, the girl looked from one Brother to the other.
“I don’t understand,” Mar said. “Were they going to stop us?”
“Seems like they meant to,” Parno said. “At least until they knew where we were going.”
“Almost makes you wonder why, doesn’t it?” Dhulyn said. Bloodbone was now perfectly calm, except for the head tossing that looked remarkably as though the animal were laughing.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Parno said, turning back to stare at Navra’s wall.
Five days later they were in the foothills of the Antedichas Mountains, heading for the pass, and Cloud Country. Dhulyn and Parno rode with bows strung and arrows ready. Even if the packhorse could carry food for three almost a whole moon-which it could not and carry Mar as well-they’d be heartily sick of roadbread and dried fish if they did not hunt.
Dark still came early at this time of year; the search for a place to spend the night began after the midday meal, which was roadbread and dried fruit eaten on horseback. It was obvious the town girl did not have the trick of eating the roadbread, and finally Dhulyn took pity on her.
“You’ll break your teeth, my Dove,” she said. “The stuff’s dense as bricks. Break off a small piece in your hands, or with your knife if your fingers aren’t strong enough,” she advised. “Then hold it in your mouth until it softens enough to chew.” Dhulyn watched to make sure Mar could manage before turning her attention back to the road ahead.
She’d learned on their first campaign together not to let Parno choose their camps. He always stopped too early, and so the journey took half again as long as was needed. Twice, Dhulyn turned down likely looking places without comment before settling on a hollowed clearing nestled in a small copse of half-grown pine trees.
“Toss you for it?” Parno dismounted and shook a cramp out of his left leg.
“No,” Dhulyn said, “you go ahead and set up the perimeter, I’ll help the Dove.” As with the roadbread, Dhulyn watched Mar before offering any advice. It didn’t take long to see that the town bred girl knew nothing about travel. She was clumsy with her bedding, shy about her personal needs and, Dhulyn sighed, no doubt useless as a cook. And how could she not be? Weavers were not known as great travelers. And those like Guillor Weaver traveled less than most, since her business was in a port town, and trade would come to her.
Not for the first time Dhulyn wondered what it would have been like to grow up with walls that did not move. Not a tent or a ship or the back of a horse. Where the same people were there every day.
“That is not the way,” Dhulyn said when she’d finished laying out her own bedding with Parno’s and turned to where Mar fumbled with hers. “First, if you put your bed there, you will lose the benefit of the fire.”
“But I’m closer to the fire than you are.”
“And I’m closer to this tall brush that will reflect the fire’s heat down on me,” Dhulyn responded. “Put your bedding here, next to ours. No, a good layer of these old needles first. You’ll find the ground quite hard enough the first few days, I’ll wager.”
The girl eyed Dhulyn’s own bed. “Don’t you have to sleep alone?” she asked shyly. “I mean, your vow?”
“My vow’s over, but I will be sleeping alone,” Dhulyn said, grinning. “I’ll sleep when Parno’s on watch. Then he’ll sleep while I watch. When it gets colder, the two not on watch will sleep together for added warmth.”
“Colder?” squeaked Mar.
“Colder as we move into the mountains, closer to the pass.”
Both women turned as Parno followed his voice out of the darkness, a skinned rabbit hanging from his hand. “Then warmer again once we’re through. That’s why we want to get through as quickly as possible.” Parno took in the campsite with a quick glance and nodded. “Who is cooking tonight?”
Dhulyn skewered the cleaned rabbit on a short iron rod and propped it between carefully set rocks close to the fire.
“There are traveling tools, then, for every thing,” said Mar watching closely. “Just like at home? Things to cook with and clean with?”
“Not so much cleaning on the road, as you’ll find out,” Dhulyn said, sitting down cross-legged within easy reach of the spit.
“Not that you’ll notice after a while, since we’ll all be equally dirty,” agreed Parno. “I once traveled without the benefit of cooking rods, pots, or skillets, however.”
“What did you do?” said Mar.
“Roasted rabbits, just like today,” he said. “But I used my sword for a spit.”
“Doubtless all it was good for,” Dhulyn remarked solemnly.
Mar shook her head, but Dhulyn saw the ghost of a smile on the girl’s lips and relaxed.
“How did you learn to do all of this? Find your directions by looking at the sun? Learn where to set up your camp? How to cook?”
“We have close to twenty years of Brotherhood between us,” Parno said. “Much of that time spent on campaign. Not surprising that we should know how to set up camp.”
“Are you so old, then? Old enough to have been Mercenaries all that time?”
“I have seen the Hawk Moon twenty-six times,” Dhulyn said, unsure what prompted her to answer in the Outlander’s roundabout way. “Parno, to be sure, is an old grandfather next to me.”
“Alas, too true,” Parno said, shaking his golden head. “And yet there’s no respect for my ancient bones and hard-learned wisdom.”
“You don’t look like town people,” Mar said. “I couldn’t guess your ages. I’ve seen the… the Hunt Moon eighteen times,” she added, smiling at the Wolfshead.
“Still not old enough for me,” said Parno lying back on the bedroll. “So you may rest easy. Wake me when the food’s ready, would you, young ones?”
When Mar awoke that first morning in camp, there was something very hard bruising her left hip, her back felt sore, and her nose was cold. And there was an odd, rhythmic chuffing sound, familiar, and yet too quick to be the sound of the loom. She sat up, suddenly remembering that her mornings might never start with the sound of the loom again.
Lionsmane was blowing on the embers of the fire, but that wasn’t what Mar had heard.
Movement caught her eye, and Mar saw sunlight flash on the edge of the blade before she saw the woman who wielded it. Suddenly she realized that the rhythmic sound was Dhulyn Wolfhead’s breathing. Little puffs of fog left her lips as she danced around the clearing where they camped. Mar had seen the City Watch doing this once, also early in the morning when she had been unable to sleep and had volunteered to fetch the early milk. Shora, it was called. A kind of mock combat that could be practiced alone or with others. But the City Watch’s practice was clumsy beside what Mar saw now. The Wolf-head’s every movement was precise, fluid and effortless, like the running and leaping of a deer, and with something of the deer’s grace and heart-stopping beauty. The swords moved faster and faster, the blades disappearing as the air around the Wolfshead blurred, until they abruptly took on form once more as she regained perfect stillness.
And the Wolfhead’s breathing never changed.
Mar released the breath she was holding, truly frightened for the first time since she had received the letters from Gotterang. Looking at the Mercenary woman’s cold face, it seemed that what Mar had agreed to do might be considerably more dangerous than she’d thought.
“Practice, practice, practice,” Lionsmane said in a comfortable voice. “And yet it was I who saved Dhulyn Wolfshead from death at Arcosa, the day we met.”
Mar turned her eyes away from the motionless Wolfshead, relaxing into the warm rumble of Parno’s voice. She looked again at the expression on his face as he watched Dhulyn. That’s why I’m safe withhim, she thought with a sense of awakening even further. That’s why he says I’m too young. Because he can look at her like that. Mar took her bottom lip between her teeth. If Ysdrell had ever shown her such a look, she thought, she might have ignored her Tenebro letters, and none of them would be here-or would Wolfshead and Lionsmane be on their way to Imrion just the same? As if he could feel her eyes on him, the Lionsmane shook himself and looked back at her.
“You’ve never seen the Shora practiced?”
“I’ve seen the City Watch.” She glanced back. The Wolfshead had lowered her blades and was automatically wiping them clean, though there was no blood on them. “But it wasn’t like that, exactly.”
“The difference you cannot explain is the difference between Mercenaries and ordinary soldiers. I know,” he added as she turned to him, “because in my time I have been both. The word Shora means patterns in the old tongue, the tongue of the Caids, as our friend there would be the first to tell you, and there are eighty-one of them. Each with at least three, but some with up to one hundred and eight separate moves. Shora for the sword-single-or double-handed-Shora for the knife, the dagger, the razor, the club, the stick, and the stone. Shora for the hands, feet, and head. For anything held in the hand, as well as for the hands alone. Shora for breathing, for smell and sight and hearing. I know the basic twenty-seven that all Mercenaries must know to be considered Schooled.” Parno Lionsmane shrugged. “Maybe a few others. The Wolfshead knows over fifty. If she lives, she will know them all, and she will School others.”
If she lives. Mar shivered, watching Dhulyn sheathe her weapons. The morning was colder than she’d thought.