The Ladies of Mandrigyn

16

“Altiokis is coming.”

“To Mandrigyn?”

Sheera nodded. “Wilarne had it from Stirk the harbor master’s wife this morning.” Above the frame of her starched lace collar, her jaw muscles were settled into a hard line.

Sun Wolf rested his shoulders against the cedar upright that supported the roof of the potting room and asked, “Why? To replace Derroug?”

“Partly,” she assented. “And partly to make a show of force against the rumors of insurrection in the city. Wilarne said he was supposedly bringing troops.” She leaned against the doorpost and looked down at her hands, clasped in the wine-colored folds of her skirts. Like most of the women, she had abandoned wearing rings—a warrior’s habit. In a quieter voice, she began, “If I hadn’t killed Derroug...”

“He’d have had every guard in the palace down on us,” Sun Wolf finished for her. Still she did not meet his eyes. “Does Drypettis know?”

Sheera shook her head, then glanced up, weary hardness in those brown eyes. “No,” she said. “In fact, I had the impression that his death really didn’t concern her one way or the other. It—it was almost as if she didn’t know about it.”

The Wolf frowned. “You think that might be the case?”

“No,” Sheera said. She moved her shoulder against the doorframe; the light glimmered on the swirls of opal and garnet that armored her bodice and festooned her extravagant sleeves. “I went to see her the day after it happened, and she did mention it. But—in passing. Almost for form’s sake. The rest of our talk that day was about—other things.” Her mouth tightened a little at the memory. “And I’m inclined to think you were right about her, after all.”

He was silent for a moment, studying her face. Her eyelids were stained with weariness and, he saw now, had begun to acquire those sharp, small creases that spoke of character and responsibility, which men claimed ruined a woman’s looks. “What did she say?”

“Not much to the point.” She shrugged. “Why did I take your part over hers? Why did I let you poison my mind against her? Were you my lover?”

“What did you tell her?”

She looked down again. “That it wasn’t her affair.”

“She’ll take that for a ‘Yes.’”

“I know.” Sheera shook her head tiredly. “But she’d have taken ‘No’ for a ‘Yes.’”

“Very likely,” he agreed.

Sheera occupied herself for a long moment in rearranging the folds of the lace that cascaded from her cuffs over her hands. Sun Wolf noticed what Gilden had pointed out to him only yesterday—that Sheera, along with most of the women in the troop and scores of women who were unaware of its existence, had gone over to what they called the “new mode” of dressing, without the stiff boning and lacing-in and padded panniers. Though as elaborate and ostentatious as the old style had been, it allowed for more comfort and quicker movement. Privately, the Wolf thought it was more seductive as well.

She raised her eyes to his again. “What do you think of her?” she asked.

He considered the question for a moment before replying. “What do you think of her?”

“I don’t know.” She began to pace, her restless movement somehow feral, like that of a caged lioness. “I’ve known her from the time we were girls in school together. She said I was the only person who was ever good to her. Good to her! All I ever did was extend her common courtesy and keep the other girls from teasing her because she was proud and solitary and talked to herself.”

He smiled. “In other words, you were her champion.”

“I suppose. One goes through a stage of being someone’s champion—or at least, I did. And I know one goes through a stage of being in love with another girl—oh, perfectly innocently! It’s more a—a domination of the personality. A ‘pash,’ we called it—a ‘rave.’ And it seldom goes beyond that. But—I suppose you could say Dru never outgrew her ‘pash’ for me.” She shrugged again. “Dru was such a precocious child, but socially she was so backward.”

“She still is a precocious child,” the Wolf pointed out, “at the age of twenty-five.”

Sheera’s eyes flashed suddenly, and he saw in her again the head girl of the school, beautiful and imperious at the age of ten, taking under her wing the wealthiest, proudest, and most miserable child in her class. She had always, he thought, been a champion, even as she was now. “It doesn’t mean she would betray us,” she said defiantly.”

“No,” he agreed. “But what it does mean is that there’s no knowing which way she’ll go if she’s pushed. With most things—men or women, horses, demons, dogs—you know at least to some degree what they’ll do if you push them—get angry, break down, stab you in the back. Drypettis...” He shook his head. “The bad thing is that we’ve given her a certain amount of power.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Sheera said glumly.

The Wolf shrugged. “I wouldn’t have given you power, either,” he returned. “I’ve been wrong before.”

Absurdly, color flushed up under that thin, browned skin. “Do you really mean that?”

“Am I in the habit of saying things I don’t mean?” he inquired. The yellow fox eyes glinted curiously in the gloom of the potting room. “You’re a fine warrior, Sheera, in spite of the fact that you’re crazy; and if it weren’t for the sake of another warrior who’s both finer and also crazier than you, I might just be tempted to fall in love with you. Though the thought makes me shudder,” he added.

“Good grief, I should hope so!” she said, genuinely appalled at the idea.

Sun Wolf laughed. It was a horrible sound, like the scraping of rusty iron, and he stopped, coughing. Sheera had the grace to look unhappy. The loss of his voice was her doing, and she knew it.

“Listen, Sheera,” he said after a moment. “How long would it take the mining superintendents’ comfort brigade to find out how many men Altiokis is bringing with him?”

Sheera frowned. “I think Amber Eyes can get a report within a day. Why?”

“Because it occurs to me that this may be our time to strike, while Altiokis and a lot of his troops aren’t in the Citadel at ail. Yirth says that the tunnels from the mines up to the Citadel are guarded with illusion and magic—but if Yirth is going to be the one to try and break the illusions, it would probably be better if she did it when Altiokis was gone.”

Sheera was staring at him, her dark eyes blazing with sudden fire. “You mean—strike now? Free the men now?”

“When Altiokis comes to Mandrigyn, yes. Can you?”

She took a deep breath. “I—I don’t know. Yes. Yes, we can. Eo’s made copies of the keys to most of the weapons stores and gates in the mines... Amber Eyes can get word to Tarrin to be ready...” She was shivering all over with suppressed excitement, her hands clenched in the velvet of her skirts. “Lady Wrinshardin can get word to the other Thanes,” she continued after a moment. “They can be ready to strike once we’ve freed the men.”

“No,” the Wolf said. “The Thanes are always ready to fight, anyway—we won’t give Altiokis the warning of a rumor. He’s here to investigate the rumors Gilden and Wilarne started the night they burned the Records Office. How soon will they arrive?”

A meeting was called that evening in the orangery, the heads of the conspiracy arriving secretly, slipping across the canals and through the tunnels to assemble in the vast cavern of the dim room. Amber Eyes came in with Denga Rey, their constant company in the last few days since Amber Eyes had parted from the Wolf explaining a lot of things about the gladiator’s commitment to the cause. Gilden and Wilarne arrived by separate routes—a different sort of friendship, the Wolf thought; probably closer, for all its lack of a physical or romantic element. Having waded through the morass of their jokes, verbal and otherwise, he had developed a hearty sympathy for his half-pints’ respective husbands.

After a few minutes of the swift crossfire conversation among those four, Sun Wolf saw Yirth arrive, fading soundlessly from the shadows of the door and moving like a cat to take her place in the darkness beyond the single candle’s flicker. She’d been there almost ten minutes before any of the others noticed her, listening, her crooked mouth smiling; Denga Rey’s expression when she finally did see her was almost comical. But when they heard the sound of the door closing again, and all eyes turned—as they always did—to watch Sheera stride into the circle of the candle’s light, Sun Wolf felt the witch’s gaze, brief and speculative, touch him.

Sheera sat down among them, and her look traveled from face to face. “Well?”

“Eo says the keys are ready,” Gilden reported.

“Yirth?”

“I have read and studied,” the witch said softly, “everything that my master left me on the subject of Altiokis and upon illusion. I am as prepared as any can be who has not crossed through the Great Trial.”

Sheera smiled and reached across the table to clasp the long, heavy-knuckled hands. “It’s all we ask of you,” she said. “Amber Eyes?”

“Cobra just got back from the mines,” the girl reported in her low, sweet voice. “She says they expect a force of about fifteen hundred with Altiokis, leaving about that many in the Citadel. Cobra says Fat Maali was going to see if she could find Tarrin himself. She’ll come to us directly here.”

Sheera’s face was half in shadow, half edged in the primrose softness of the dim light. Sun Wolf, watching her, saw the change in her eyes at the mention of Tarrin’s name, saw the champion, the war leader, the woman who would be Queen of Mandrigyn, change suddenly for a fleeting second to a girl who heard her lover’s name. In spite of all she had done to him, his heart went out to her. Like Starhawk, she was seeking, with single-minded brutality, to find and free the man she loved.

Then she was all business again. “Captain Sun Wolf?” she asked. “Would you say the women are ready?”

“I’d rather have another two weeks,” he said, the harsh scrape of his voice startling in the gloom. “But I think Altiokis’ absence and fewer troops make up for the lack. I have only one request of you, Sheera.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said. “Yirth, I was going to ask you—”

“No,” Sun Wolf said. “It isn’t that. I want to lead the troops myself.”

The silence was as echoing as the silence that followed thunder. The women were staring at him, openmouthed with astonishment. In that silence, his eyes met Sheera’s, defying her to refuse to let him shove his nose in her right to command.

“You may be a decent commander,” he said after a moment, “and you may even be good, in about another five years. But I’ve trained these women and forged them into a weapon; and I don’t want that weapon being broken by inexperience. If you’re taking on Altiokis, you’ll need a seasoned leader.”

Sheera’s eyes were wide and dark in the candlelight; surprise and relief at having a seasoned general and fighter like the Wolf struggled with resentment at being supplanted and relegated to second place. After a moment of silence, she breathed, “Would you? I mean—I thought—” The resentment faded and vanished, and the Wolf smiled to himself.

“Well, we both thought a lot of different things,” he growled. “And if I’m going to mess around with magic, anyway, I want to make sure the job gets done right.”

It was a momentary stalemate whether the leadership of the resistance forces of Mandrigyn would behave like grim and serious conspirators or like thrilled schoolgirls; and regrettably, instinct won out. Wilarne flung her arms around Sun Wolf’s neck and planted an enthusiastic kiss on his mouth, followed in quick succession by Gilden, Sheera, Amber Eyes, and a bone-crushing hug from Denga Rey. Sun Wolf fought them off with a show of disgust. “I knew this would happen when I went to work for a bunch of skirts,” he snarled.”

Gilden retorted, “You hoped, you mean.”

He was conscious again of Yirth’s watching him from the shadows, of the puzzlement in the sea-green eyes. He glowered at her. “What’s the matter? You never seen a man change his mind before?”

“No,” the witch admitted. “Men pride themselves on their inflexibility.”

“I’ll get you for that,” he promised and saw, for the first time, an answering sparkle in the sardonic depths of her eyes.

Then the sparkle vanished, like a candle doused by water; she swung around, even as he raised his head, hearing the sound of footfalls on the wet gravel of the garden path. A moment later the orangery’s outer door opened, and the woman they called Fat Maali came in.

Fat Maali was clearly one of Amber Eyes’ skags, the lowest type of camp follower, of the class of women whom mercenaries referred to by a name as descriptive as it was unrepeatable. She could have been thirty-five, but looked fifty, immense, blowsy, and strong, with a hard face that had never been beautiful and was now ravaged by poverty and debasement. Her eyes were limpid blue and cheerful. Sun Wolf wouldn’t have wanted to be drunk in her company, if she knew he had any money on him.

She was dressed in a filthy green gown with clearly nothing underneath. Brass-colored curls tumbled down over her shoulders like a young girl’s. The effect was almost as horrible as the stench of her perfume.

She said, “I’ve seen Tarrin.”

Sheera was on her feet, her face alive with eagerness. “And?”

“He says don’t do it.”

Sheera sagged back as if struck, shock and disbelief parting . her lips without words.

It was Amber Eyes who spoke. “Did he say why?” she asked quietly.

Fat Maali nodded, and her eyes were downcast. “Yes,” she said softly. “He says—and I—I agree with him—that if we attacked the Citadel while Altiokis and his men were in the town, he’s afraid of what would happen to the people here. The ones who didn’t have anything to do with any of it, who just want to be let alone. He says the old bastard would massacre ’em, sure.” She looked up, her eyes troubled but unwavering. “And he would, Amber. Y’know he would.”

There was silence, the fat woman’s gaze going worriedly from Amber Eyes to Sheera, and to the faces of the others in turn—Denga Rey, Gilden, Wilarne, Yirth, Sun Wolf. It was Sun Wolf who broke the silence. “He’s right,” he said.

“M’lord Tarrin—” Maali said hesitantly. “M’lord Tarrin said he wouldn’t buy his freedom or the city’s at that cost. He said he’d die a slave first.”

Two days later, on orders from Acting Governor Stirk, the larger portion of the population of Mandrigyn turned out along the Golden Street, which led into the town from the tall land gate, to welcome Altiokis of Grimscarp, Wizard King of the Tchard Mountains. Though the crowds that lined the way were thick—troopers of the governor were going from house to house to make sure of it—they were silent. Even those who had welcomed the soldiers who had put an end to the succession troubles in the city ten months before in Altiokis’ name no longer cheered.

In the thick of the crowd, dressed in his patched brown gardening things, with Gilden and Wilarne brightly veiled and giggling on either arm, Sun Wolf watched the Wizard King ride in.

“He never came after Iron Pass,” Gilden whispered, her calmly businesslike tone belying the caressing way she rubbed her cheek on his arm. “The captain of his mercenaries—the Dark Eagle, his name is—led his troops into the city, with Derroug and Stirk and some of the other chiefs of the council who’d been exiled by Tarrin. Amber Eyes tells me...”

A harsh blare of trumpets rose over the deeper drone of the battle horns, cutting off her words. The Wolf raised his head, the sounds prickling his spine. Rolling like thunder down the wide, tree-lined street, the deep boom of the kettledrums was picked up and flung from wall to marble-fronted wall. Sun Wolf and the girls had taken their positions in the last straight reach of the Golden Street, where it ran down to the Great Landing; beyond the crowds, the gilding of the ceremonial barge flashed in the wan sunlight. Across the way, on a balcony draped with pennons, one of Amber Eyes’ girls sat combing her hair, preparing to tally the number of troops as they passed.

“There,” Wilarne whispered.

Around the comer of the lane they appeared, a mass of black-mailed bodies, their measured tread lost in the sonorous crash of the drums. Antlike heads, faceless behind slit-eyed helmets, stared out straight ahead. Sun Wolf wondered, with a prickle of loathing, whether the eye slits were functional or merely to keep the populace from suspecting. Like the nuuwa in the palace gardens, these soldiers marched unarmed.

“Altiokis’ private troops,” Wilarne breathed, under cover of the Wolf’s drawing her closer to him as if to protect her. Though his ancestors help the man who thought this sloe-eyed scrap of primordial mayhem needed protection! “That’s Gilgath at their head, riding the black horse. He’s the Captain of Grimscarp, Commander of Altiokis Citadel.”

The Wolf considered the inhuman, mailed bulk with narrowed eyes. Like his men, Gilgath was masked and hidden by his armor. Men at his sides led beasts on chains—huge, strange beasts, like slumped dog-apes with chisel teeth and mad, stupid eyes—ugies, Lady Wrinshardin had called them.

More of them walked with the black-mailed guards around the Wizard King’s ebony litter. The people in the street had fallen utterly silent; the only sounds now were the blows of the drums, steady and inescapable as doom.

At the sight of the litter, the Wolf felt his flesh crawl. It was borne by two black horses, their eyes masked with silver, led by the black-armored guards. Pillars of twisted ebony, whose capitals flashed with opal and nacre, supported dead-black curtains; where the curtains had been drawn back, the interior of the litter was masked by heavy lattices of carven Blackwood. Sun Wolf, who stood taller than anyone around him in that chiefly female crowd, craned his neck, but could see nothing of the wizard within, except for a still, dark shadow, unmoving against the blackness of the cushions.

And yet, at the sight of it, something stirred in Sun Wolf, anger and an emotion deeper than anger; revulsion and an implacable hate. The impact of his feelings startled him, with the awareness that he looked upon pollution. And behind that came the horrible and revolting certainty that he had sometimes felt in the haunts of the marsh demons of the North—the certainty that he looked upon that which was not entirely human.

This was not a demon, he knew, edging his way forward through the crowd to follow the litter with his eyes. But something ...

He pushed ahead to the front edge of the packed throng as the litter descended to the landing stage and the waiting barge. No snake, no spider, no foul and creeping thing had ever affected him with such cold loathing, and he struggled for a glimpse of the thing that would emerge. Distance and the angle confused his line of sight; Goliath, the Commander of the Citadel, was deploying his soldiers across the covered tunnel of the Spired Bridge, to line the canal route toward the governor’s palace. Behind him, other marching footsteps echoed in the narrow street as the rest of Altiokis’ force approached.

Then the Wolf heard a single deep voice call out, “Arrest that man.” Turning, he found himself staring up into the face of the Dark Eagle, captain of Altiokis’ mercenary forces.

The Eagle hadn’t changed since they’d campaigned together in the East. The sardonic blue eyes still held their expression of bitter amusement as Sun Wolf turned to flee.

He found himself hemmed in by the civilians at his back and the City Troops that were running toward him from all sides. Gilden and Wilarne had melted away into the crowd, already heading in opposite directions to get the news to Sheera. The Eagle spurred his black mount forward toward him, bowmen clustering around his stirrups—if the Wolf remembered the Dark Eagle’s specialties, there wasn’t much chance they’d miss. Civilians were crowding away from him, panic-stricken. Someone grabbed his arm from behind and shoved a sword blade against his ribs; he ducked and feinted. An arrow shaft burned his shoulder as it buried itself in the body of the man behind him.

The Wolf grabbed the sword from the slacking grip and spun to meet his would-be captors, throwing another one of them into the path of the second arrow and darting for the mouth of the nearest alley. A man in his way cut at him with a halberd; he parried, slashed along the shaft, and jumped over the falling weapon. The crowd milled and scattered before him. The Eagle’s mercenaries and the City Troops broke ranks to pursue.

He was closed in, he saw He cut another man’s face open and turned to strike a third. Though battle concentrated his mind, he was somehow peripherally aware of movement near the landing, of a stirring in the black curtains...

Something, he did not know what, like a smoky and confusing cloud, struck at his face, and he turned to slash at it. His sword cleaved it like air, haloed in a splattering of red lightning. In the last second in which he realized that it was merely an illusion sent to break his concentration, something hit him on the back of the head, and darkness closed around him.