Sun Wolf 1 - The Ladies Of Mandrigyn (35 page)

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 corner 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; Gilgath, 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.

“Captain Sun Wolf.”

The voice that penetrated the blackness of his mind seemed to come from a great distance away. It was the Dark Eagle’s, he recognized, obscured by the buzzing roar that filled his skull.

“And in such clothes, too.
Open your eyes, you barbarian; I know you can hear me.”

The Wolf pried one grit-filled eye open and squinted against the burning glare of yellow light.

“They say when you hire out your sword, you meet acquaintances in all corners of the world,” the Eagle went on, “but I hardly expected to see an old friend here.”

Sun Wolf blinked painfully. The light that had blinded him a moment ago resolved itself into the smoldering fireball at the end of a torch stuck in a greasy iron wall sconce, just behind the Dark Eagle’s shoulder. He became slowly aware of the burning ache in his arms; when he tried to move them, he found that they were, in fact, supporting the weight of his limp body. The short chain that joined his wrists had been thrown over a hook a few feet above his head. He was hanging with his back to the stone wall of a room which he guessed was underground—under what was left of the Records Office, presumably—and the memory of another small underground room and the drifting sparkle of unknown fire on the air brought sweat to his stubbled face. He got his feet under him and stood, glaring at the mercenary chief, who was, for the moment, the only other man in the room.

“The least you could have done was keep your flapping mouth shut,” he growled hoarsely.

The Dark Eagle frowned. He was a stocky man of medium height, his black hair falling forward over his bright eyes. “Lost your tongue?”

“A lady poisoned me, and I lost my voice over it,” the Wolf answered quite truthfully, hearing, as he said the words, the metallic rasp of the sound.

The flicker of concern that had glimmered behind the blue eyes fled. The mercenary chief laughed, “I hope you had your revenge. The reason I took you in is that I’m paid to keep order in Altiokis’ domains. Why ever you’ve decided to winter in this lovely town, I’d have to clean up the mess sooner or later. Where are your men?”

“At Wrynde.”

“I didn’t mean your troops, I mean the men you’re leading. And believe me, Wolf, I’m not going to accept that you’re in this town to no purpose. What men are you at the head of?”

Sun Wolf sighed, leaning his head back against the rough rock of the wall behind him. “None,” he said. “No one.”

“You put up one hell of a fight for a man with a clear conscience.”

“You wouldn’t know a clear conscience if you found one in your bed. What in the name of all your sniveling ancestors are you doing serving that demon?”

The Dark Eagle frowned. “Demon?”

“Whatever was in that litter, it wasn’t human. I’ll take oath on that.”

The blue eyes narrowed to slits. “You always could spot them, couldn’t you? But Altiokis is no demon. I’ve seen him summon demons and I’ve seen him handle the things they dread to protect himself against them.”

“He’s no demon, but—I don’t know what he is.”

A white grin split the swarthy countenance, and the uneasy look vanished. “He’s the greatest wizard of the world—and a man of uncommon appetites to boot.” The smile faded. “Why do you say he isn’t human?”

“Because he isn’t, dammit!
Can’t you tell it? Can’t you feel it?”

The blue eyes hardened. “I think we hit you harder than we intended, my friend,” the Eagle said. “Or maybe your light-skirts’ poison addled your never-very-stout brains. Altiokis is a man—and a man who can afford to pay damned well to keep trouble out of his lands. As you shall see.”

He moved toward the cell door, then paused, his hand on the handle. In a quieter voice, he said, “I’d advise you to tell him whatever you’re in, Wolf.”

He opened the door and stepped aside.

Altiokis entered.

Two impressions, spiritual and physical, seemed to overlap for a second in Sun Wolf’s brain.

The spiritual was the impression of a half-rotted tree, leprous with age, its cancered bark still standing but enclosing another entity, a black and lucid fire that showed through the cracks.

The physical was the sight of a man of medium height, impossibly obese from eating rich foods, with bad skin, the suspicion of a shadow of stubble on his pouchy jaw, and too many rings embedded in the flesh of his fat fingers. Contact with merchants’ wives had sharpened Sun Wolf’s appreciation of the value of cloth; the black velvet that formed the underpinning of the jewel-beaded embroidery of the immense doublet sold for fifty silver crowns a yard. The jeweled belts that supported the overhanging rolls of fat would have purchased cities.