Warrior of the Altaii Read online

  “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Perhaps she’s infected them with her feelings about men, my lord.”

  “It seems everyone knows about these feelings of hers except me.”

  “She takes care not to expose them except to those who can do her no harm.”

  We resumed our way to the tents. I was, if it’s possible, grimmer than before. “Then she’s dropped me to the ranks of those who can’t harm her. She made no effort to hide her thoughts yesterday. Perhaps I can arrange something.”

  “Perhaps, my lord, but I can’t see what.” He seemed to want to say something further, looking at me every other step, muttering to himself.

  “What is it, Orne?” I said finally. “You’ve thought of a way to make Talva stop ruining the slaves?”

  “No, my lord. It’s not that. It’s—” He took a deep breath. “My lord, there’s a Morassa at your tent. He says he has to see you urgently.”

  “You’ve taken to letting vermin into my tent, Orne?”

  He was shocked. “I left him outside, my lord, with a couple of lances to make certain he doesn’t go where he’s not wanted.”

  “He’s not wanted here,” I said. “But since he is, I’ll see what he wants before I send him on his way.”

  We stopped by the side of my tent, and I looked around it to see my visitor. He squatted off near the entry, scratching his greasy topknot and leering at Sara and Elnora. His clothes wouldn’t have made good rags for wiping down a horse, except for a lavishly brocaded vest he’d stolen somewhere and an emerald as large as his thumb hanging from his ear.

  His horse stood nearby, head down, lathered sides still heaving. It had been a fine animal once. Its lines still showed. Now it was little more than food for dril.

  Angrily I motioned to an unbranded boy, and he rushed for a bucket of water. Across the way a group of warriors stood casting dice. They gave more attention to my visitor, though, than to their game.

  “You want something, Morassa?” I stepped out and moved to face him.

  “I see you, Wulfgar,” he grunted.

  “If I knew you from a goat, I’d see you, too. As it is, I smell you. What do you want here?”

  “You make a joke.” He laughed, and rose to his feet. It was no improvement. He was just as dirty standing, and even uglier. “You Altaii make good jokes.”

  “When you’re finished laughing at my jokes, maybe you’ll tell me why you’re here,” I said impatiently.

  “I come from Ivo, Sword Arm of the Lord of Thunder.” He sounded as if the titles were his.

  “So?”

  “So? So? So Ivo sends this message to you. Ivo, his own self. He will meet with you, tomorrow.”

  “Why would I want to meet with Ivo? I have even less to say to him than I do to you.”

  “Ivo is an important man,” he said angrily, “a great warrior. He is—”

  “Hear me, Morassa. I don’t care what Ivo is. Tell me why he wants to meet me. Without bombast. Now.” I put hand to sword hilt and looked at him meaningfully.

  “Ah, yes.” He swallowed nervously. “Now. Of course. It is those Lantan women, you see. Such fine-looking women, eh. Well, they have made a proposal to Ivo.” He stopped expectantly, but I kept silent. He began to shift from foot to foot, rubbing his hands on his greasy tunic. Finally, his impatience won. “These women,” he burst out, “they have proposed to Ivo that we Morassa should unite with them to destroy the Altaii. Ay? What do you think of that?”

  “What do I think? I’m wondering how many times your head will bounce when it hits the ground.”

  His nose twitched, and he took a step back. “Your jokes become less funny, Wulfgar. I will tell you this. Why should you want to cut off my head?”

  “Now it’s you who make jokes, Morassa. You ride in here, tell me that your lord, this Ivo, plots with the Lantans to destroy my people, and yet you don’t know why I’m going to cut off your head. You Morassa make good jokes.”

  Relief flooded across his face. “No, no! You misunderstand. Ivo makes no plots. Such a thing is far from his mind. He is of the Plain, as are you. Ivo wants only to talk with you, to see how this thing can be turned to the advantage for our peoples.”

  Hearing him link the Altaii with the dog-ridden Morassa was enough to turn my stomach, but I kept to the business at hand. “This plot that Ivo wants to turn to our advantage, what is it?”

  He shrugged, confident once more. “I do not know. Ivo told me so much and no more.”

  “And where is this meeting to take place? Some place where a few hundred Morassa can lie in wait, I suppose?”

  “Or where Altaii lances can set an ambush, eh?” His eyes glittered now that I appeared to be going along. “No, that cannot be. It must be a place where none can bring many men, or afford to let any, shall we say, ‘disturbance’ start.” He was trying to look open and honest. He only succeeded in looking shiftier than ever.

  “I assume Ivo has some place in mind,” I said dryly.

  “Of course. The Blue-Backed Scal, a tavern on the Street of Five Bells in the Metalworkers’ Quarter of Lanta, by the Weavers’ Quarter.”

  “Lanta!” At least he’d succeeded in surprising me.

  “Of a certainty,” he said, throwing his arms wide as if to show how open he was being. “Neither you nor Ivo can bring many men. The Lantans are wary of having many men of the Plain in their city at one time. For that same reason no one will start any trouble. Those City Guardsmen are very touchy about little things like brawling.”

  “And when is this meeting to take place? Tomorrow, you say?”

  “At the third hour after noon. You will come?” He leaned forward eagerly.

  “I will come,” I said, and he sighed so heavily with relief that I thought he’d deflate. “Now ride back to Ivo with your message, and don’t waste any more time.”

  Muttering, he mounted and rode away. The smell stayed behind. A handful of lances followed after to see that he went as he’d been told.

  Orne walked around the corner of the tent shaking his head. “Treachery, my lord, treachery so strong I could smell it from back there.”

  I laughed. “That was the Morassa you smelled.”

  “You don’t intend to trust them? You’re not going? Why—”

  “I gave my word, Orne. I’ll go. Trusting, now, is another matter. Tell me, how many coins have you lost playing the game of the shells and the pea?”

  “None, since I was a stripling,” he answered, puzzled. “What has that to do with this?”

  “The youth follows the shells’ every move, certain that he knows where the pea is. And all the time the pea is in the gamester’s hand. We’re no longer in our youth, Orne. We know where the pea is. But does Ivo?”

  “My lord, I don’t understand. You say you’re going to the tavern, and all this talk of peas and shells. It’s beyond me.”

  “It’s a trap, beyond question, but a trap can take the trapper, too. Ivo will expect me to arrive tomorrow afternoon, with as many lances as I think I can safely bring, but he’ll expect me. If they thought I was suspicious, this meeting wouldn’t have even been suggested. Now, Ivo will be there.”

  “He will?”

  “Of course. There’ll be Lantans hidden behind every peddler’s cart, but if Ivo’s not there, someone may say he was afraid of me.”

  “So, he will be there, and the Lantan guards will be there. But you say we’ll be there, too. I still don’t understand.”

  “Because you’re watching the shells.” I laughed. “On this afternoon I’ll enter the city, not tomorrow. And it will be merchants and tradesmen and farmers who enter, not Altaii lances. By tonight we’ll have rooms in The Blue-Backed Scal. Tomorrow, while the soldiers wait to take us outside, Ivo will enter the tavern, to show he isn’t afraid to be there to meet me. And, to his surprise, he will meet me. We’ll have a little talk in private about this plot, and when he’s told me everything he knows, a party of respectable Lantans will leave the inn and w
alk right past the soldiers.”

  “It’s madness,” he said, “and I love it.”

  “Then find me six or eight men who can walk a city street without looking like they’d rather be on the Plain in high summer.”

  “I know them already. When do we leave?”

  “Not you, Orne. My height will be hard enough to keep from attracting notice. Trying to sneak you in would be like disguising a tusk-beast as a sheep.”

  Exasperated, he ran both hands through his hair. “I’ve never before regretted being a decently sized man, but now I wish I was a runt. Well, if you must have runts for this, I’ll see that they’re the best runts in the tents.”

  He strode away, muttering all the while. I’d have bet heavily that he’d show up with the others in some disguise he’d claim would get him through the gates of Lanta. It wouldn’t be easy to talk him out of it.

  I noticed a pointed silence from Sara and Elnora. Elnora was kneeling by the fire, preparing a stew for the noon meal. Sara was figuring the amounts spent on food and the like. Both were silent almost to the point of not breathing. For Sara especially this was unusual. When I first told her she must do the accounts, she refused. It was her place to look beautiful and please me, she said, not to play with numbers. Although she saw them as her worst chore, she usually chattered away all the while she did the accounts. Now she worked in silence. It wasn’t natural.

  “You disapprove,” I said to the air.

  “You’ll be killed,” said Sara, “or maybe worse.”

  “And we’ll have to serve someone old and ugly who’ll beat us,” added Elnora.

  “It’s none of your concern,” I said. They bent back to their work. “And where is Elspeth? Did she run away as well?”

  They looked at each other and giggled.

  “No, my lord,” said Sara. “Talva came for her.”

  “And what happened to rouse your mirth?”

  Elnora grinned by the fire. Sara laughed. “She did tell her that there was some mistake, and that if Talva would only talk to you it could all be straightened out, my lord.

  “Talva had four of her apprentices, and she was in no mood for arguing. The apprentices just picked Elspeth up and carried her away, calling all the while that you’d straighten it all out.”

  “Sara was busy with accounts,” Elnora broke in, “so I followed to see what happened. When I got to Talva’s tent Elspeth was already hanging by her heels outside. I wish I knew how to curse like that. She said things about Talva’s birth and the means of her conception that—”

  “I’m not interested in what she said, girl. What happened?”

  “Well, two of Talva’s biggest apprentices beat her with paddles, like she was a carpet. She won’t be able to sit down for a long time. It took her some time to get around to begging properly. All she did at first was howl and make threats. And even after Talva let her down, she started cursing again. Talva threatened to put her in with those falcons of hers.”

  “She didn’t,” I said anxiously. “Those birds sometimes attack.”

  “Oh, no. She just hauled Elspeth up by her heels and beat her some more.”

  “I’d better stop this,” I muttered to myself, “before that fool girl gets herself hurt.”

  “Nonsense.” Mayra walked up to me and frowned at me. The two girls made obeisance, sitting back on their heels, foreheads on the ground. “You’ll do her worse harm than Talva ever will if you take her away now.”

  I didn’t stop to wonder why she’d come to the tents. She rarely did. Her spells had been part of her so long that the presence of iron or steel in large amounts made her feel ill, even if no spell was being worked.

  “How?” I asked. “How will it hurt her?”

  “She’s learning the rules of existence, Wulfgar, the rules that a child picks up as it grows. She wasn’t born here, and the rules she learned aren’t the rules here. I don’t think she really believes that violence can touch her. She’s learning the one lesson she must learn if she’s to survive. She cannot live in this world using the rules of the world she’s left.”

  “All right,” I said slowly. “I’ll leave her there.”

  “Good. Now to why I came. Could we sit out here? There’s too much iron inside.”

  The words hadn’t left her mouth before Sara and Elnora rushed to her with a chair. They had to go back for one for me. After all, I was only a man and Mayra was a Sister of Wisdom.

  “Last night,” she began, when we both were seated and the girls had returned to their work, “after the attempt on your life, I decided to check the effect of your death on the vision I conjured. At dawn this morning, exactly, the most propitious hour for such things, I cast another spell and tossed the rune-bones. I found out many things, bad things for a time of day so close to life.”

  “And what did you find? Do I die?”

  “Make no jokes about this, Wulfgar. The sands of a man’s life can’t be counted, not by spells or by magic.”

  “I’m sorry, Mayra, but what did you see?”

  “First this.” She took a small bag from beneath her tunic and tied it around my neck. I leaned forward to help her. It felt cold against the skin. “That will protect you against the Most High.”

  “I need such protection?”

  “You need all the protection I can give you. If I could put you back as an egg in your mother’s womb, with no one to know you were there, I would. Yes, and Harald, too. I saw nothing of the manner of your death. Only this. If both you and Harald die within the year, the Lantan plot will succeed.”

  “Surely—”

  “Surely nothing. As the Wanderer is a key, so too are you a key, and Harald. I should have realized that something so important would come in a sanctified number. There are three of you who are keys. Elspeth must be utilized in some manner that I don’t yet know, and it must be done by you or by Harald, preferably by both. If she dies, or is taken, there’s small chance that we will survive as a people. If you and Harald die, there’s no chance.”

  “And nothing about how to make use of her,” I sighed. “The one thing I need to know, and instead you tell me they’d like to see me dead. That much I know already. Maybe I can find out something useful from Ivo.”

  “They don’t just want you dead,” she said intently. “They must have you dead. You’ve got to realize the importance of that difference. And why would Ivo tell you anything?”

  “I’m meeting him tomorrow in Lanta.” Her face twisted in despair, and she shook her head. I hastened to reassure her. “I know it’s likely to be a trap, Mayra, but I have a plan to turn the trap on him.”

  “After what I’ve told you, you can still say that? They’ll never get a better chance to put an end to you. You’ll walk up and lay your head on the block.” She took a deep breath, and I realized she was keeping calm with an effort. If anything did, that underscored the urgency of her words. She wasn’t one to get overwrought about trifles, or about great matters, either. “You’ll forget about this meeting now, I assume. You’ll stay here in the tents.”

  “I gave my word,” I said simply.

  “Then you’re a fool,” she snapped.

  “I’m a man.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I think it’s the same thing.”

  IX

  OUT OF THE TRAP

  The Imperial Gate of Lanta was so named because the road that passed through it led to the great city of Caselle. Once Basrath had marched along that road, with the greatest army ever seen until that day, to add Lanta to his endless string of conquests. But Basrath was dead along with most of a still-larger army at the Heights of Tybal, and Caselle was a great city of trade. The Lantans were never ones to let the past stand in the way of a profit.

  The gates were wide enough for fifty men to ride through abreast, and the whole of that width was jammed. The traffic was heavy, both in and out, from single peddlers to huge caravans going to the edge of the world. No one noticed a few more travelers among so many.
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  On my back I carried a roll of rugs, crudely woven on a country loom. I was bent and stooped, letting the pace of the entering throng set mine as the crowd carried me along. To any who noticed, I was a sheepherder from the hills to the east of the city, come to sell a few tendays’ work with the shearings.

  I couldn’t see any of the others, and I worried. The guards carried their spears instead of leaning on them. They were watchful. Everything felt their scrutiny. With the weight of their eyes on my back it was hard to keep the slow walk through the gate. For a moment I wondered if Mayra had been right.

  Five of the six men who followed me into the city I knew well. Two of them, Karl and Hulugai, had ridden with me many times, from my first battle on. Of the sixth, a youngling named Brion, I was less sure. He’d worn the warrior brand less than a year. Such men are often wild, going out of their way to seek glory. Orne had chosen him, though, and I would trust his judgment.

  At the third street beyond the outer gate, an unpaved alley in fact, I turned off the main road. It was a different world there, only a few steps from the main thoroughfare. The crowd was less exotic, but just as colorful in its rags and cast-off finery. Jugglers and puppeteers and the like were back out on the Imperial Road, where the gold was, but there were cutpurses aplenty, here, and stands at every other step hawking fruits and foods of all descriptions, to be cooked later or eaten there on the street. I kept a hand on my purse, as any shepherd would, and ignored the odors drifting from the stands.

  I counted five taverns down the street, the best of them little more than an opening in the wall, and entered the fifth one. I sat at a table by myself and set the rugs on the other bench. The disguise was still needed, and had I intended to sell the rugs, I’d not have dropped them on the dirt floor.

  The tavernkeeper, wiping his hands on a greasy apron, came waddling to my table.

  “Kuva,” I ordered, and he shuffled away.

  As I waited Hulugai entered, a net bag of carved wooden boxes over his shoulder. By the time he’d found a table and given his order, Karl was there. I began to feel better.