The Bladeforge (fiction - reader discretion advised)

[HuManBing]

Coup de Grace

Back at camp, there was much frenzied talking. I had rallied well, apparently. The impressionable young boys who had joined me still held me in awe at my exchange of taunts with my sire, and they had viewed my proud walk from the arrows as a sign of bravery, instead of the showy act of stupidity it so essentially was.

Although I'm sure the militia camp was drinking and hooting inside the town walls at my impotent anger, our men in the camps at least seemed to hold me in high standing despite the utter failure of our endeavor.

We settled in, preparing siege engines as part of a protracted bombardment. My men were adamant that they could expel Nanje's few soldiers and punish Wilmar for his misplaced loyalties. They had heard of the battle at Palt before, and thought they could take Forg by similar means. I humored them, more out of a need for something to do than any actual military plan.

With such a small force, we might be able to man a bombardment line, but once the walls came down, we could do very little against a larger militia. It seemed hopeless.

* ~ * ~ *

As spring turned to summer, I got a visitor in the camps. It was Prent.

"Bela-jir," he said. "What is your aim?"

I answered something vague about duty and loyalty and service to the town.

"Your men love you and will follow you to the ends of the world," he said. "This is an enviable gift. But you must be sure you know where you are going before you set off."

I said nothing. His lofty pronouncements had started to grate.

"Bela-jir, these men will die for you. And it's precisely because of that, that you must do all you can to make sure you lead them to survival," he said.

"Get to the point," I said evenly.

Prent showed me a Templar writ. At the bottom was an ornate seal, but the rest may as well have been chicken scratches for all I could make of it.

"This is a bull from Bishop Trandamere himself," he said. "It says that the country has been riven by internal feuds for too long and that these petty squabbles are draining us in our fight against Malarchus."

"The Bishop has a fancy way of stating the bleeding obvious," I noted.

"Well, he has written you an interdict, annulling the bounty on your head, and giving you a conditional pardon good against all outstanding criminal charges," Prent said. "I need not say that it took considerable persuasion to convince him of your value to him alive instead of dead."

"What's the 'condition' you speak of?" I asked.

Prent scanned the bull. "He requires you to demobilize your camps and to release your men from your service, whereupon Forg's leaders are obligated to pardon them of all counts of rebellion. You must personally relocate to the town of Hawkbluff, but you may bring a company of men not exceeding one dozen. There you may train the town's garrison and make your martial expertise useful in the heartland."

I blinked. "In plain tongue...?"

Prent smiled and handed me the writ of interdict. "Your closest men will go with you to Hawkbluff and train soldiers there. Your recruits will disband back to Forg and will not be punished for taking up with you."

I considered this. To accept it would be to reject the brave service that these men and boys pledged to me. We would never liberate Forg. They would go back to their homes and would be subjects under Nanje again. I would leave the town forever, when all my life I had fought in its interest.

Then again, Prent did have a point. My host was so small that it would be swept off the field by any true column. The only reason I was still alive was that Forg's leaders thought me too far beneath their notice to bother swatting me dead.

I thought about this, but my thoughts went back to Bela and Sootri. I had fought for Forg, but most of all I had fought for them. I had killed Malarchus so that they would be free. I had defied Wilmar and raised my arm against Nanje for their sakes - the family who could not leave the city, who could not raise their own swords to defend themselves.

Prent stood before me, watching my face.

"What do you think?" he said.

I gave him a look of pure, unfeigned regret.

"I am sorry, Prent," I said, and meant it.

Then I tore up the writ to small pieces.

* ~ * ~ *

Wilmar proved to be a more dedicated leader than Nanje. He organized the Flex and Forg men to work together, to foster some camaraderie. He also sent out details of scouts to spy on my movements. Their first reports were of our siege engines, and that created an extreme response in Wilmar's camp. He must have thought I was getting ready to destroy the board, now that I had learned I could not win the game.

Wilmar was so concerned about this, he sent word back to Nanje asking the Captain to return to Forg. Against all expectations, this happened. Nanje arrived with a number of his men and took up in Forg again. Somehow, he had healed the rift with Taric.

And my prospects for success grew ever fainter.

Lotal took command of the riders to scour the land for enemy scouts, and one day he came to me with a captive.

Apparently, this man had some important news about my family. But he must not be allowed to know that he was speaking to me. Lotal asked me to pretend to be my own aide-de-camp and to hear what the captive had to say about Captain Cob's family. Lotal refused to even let him speak when others were in the room.

Equal parts angry and intrigued, I sent Lellik-jir, Prasti, and Kash out. Then it was just me, Lotal, and this man who cringed before me.

Lotal had already taken him to task. I could see the beginnings of a black eye and some dried blood at his nose and the corner of his mouth.

"You have something to tell Captain Cob?" I said, without preamble. "He's a busy man. Tell me what you have to say and I'll make sure it gets to him."

"Y-y-yes, sir," he said.

"Good. Name?"

"S-s-s-Sarpurin, if it please you," he said timidly. I noted a Flex accent in his voice.

"Get on with it or I'll tell Cob you wasted my time and he will have you whipped to death," I said levelly.

Sarpurin glanced dismally at Lotal, who flashed him a look of pure unbridled hostility. He cringed and began talking.

"Captain Nanje is taking the townsmen to task," he said. "He's been putting people on the rack to find out who Cob's kinsmen are. Who he can punish by family association."

I started at this. Wilmar, Nanje's own right hand man, was my sire. How had he weathered this strange turn of events?

"And?" was all I could say.

"Well, they found this lady who seemed to know Captain Cob. She said she was his sister. She couldn't hear none too well but she was able to talk just fine. She could read and write, too," Sarpurin said.

He noted the interest on my face.

"So, they take her into a room without a window and they ask her questions. She says she'll tell them about Captain Cob and how he once tried to rape her. She shows them a cave in the hillside. She says Cob took her there when she was a child and did things to her," Sarpurin said.

Lotal nodded. "Get to the testimony about the festival," he said.

"Okay, so the festival. This deaf wench said Cob went to a festival with her maybe last year, as her brother, but then he got her drunk. Then Cob took her up to the cave and tried to give it to her good, but there was too much wine in him, and he couldn't do it," he said. "Then she ran down and kept quiet, because she was so ashamed for that this man would try to force his own sister."

I found my voice somehow. Suddenly my world was swimming as the realization of this last betrayal dawned on me. I had to know if it was true. Because if it was, then everything I had ever done or striven for was in vain, and I really was better off dead in the field.

"Did... did they find anything in this cave?" I asked, dreading the answer.

Sarpurin thought awhile, and looked despairingly at Lotal, then his face lit up.

"Oh yeah," he said. "She showed them a sword up there, like what a kid would play with. Also there were two disks there, I think. There was something carved on them but they were too faint to tell."

I stood up unsteadily.

"Captain... Captain Cob will be informed," I said, in a dry voice that was barely above a whisper. "Thank you for your cooperation."

Sarpurin bowed uncertainly. "Yessir," he said.

Lotal looked at me as he took Sarpurin outside, and I raised my thumb discreetly - the sign for a quick death. Lotal had disposed of him and sheathed his blade in the time it took me to sit down and pour myself a glass of wine in violently trembling hands.

"Cob?" Lotal asked.

I tried to answer, but my lips wouldn't form the words. I looked down at my hands, which were refusing to obey me. The wine splashed over the dirt floor and the glass shattered in my hand.

"Cob?!" he said again, as I fell from my seat, blood oozing from my white-knuckled fist.

He sprang up and caught my shoulders. There was a terrible weight in my chest, as though something were sitting on my ribs with enough force to stop my breathing.

"By Mislaxa! Get me some water!" Lotal bellowed. He fumbled with the straps of my helmet and yanked it off my head. I coughed and sputtered as my vision blurred and swam.

He sat down with my upper body on his lap and splashed cold water in my face. I looked up at his face, upside down above me, and then looked down at myself, my jerkin, the burnished steel of my blade at my waist.

Sootri, what have you done? Her laughter, the only thing never hampered by her deafness, rang in my ears alongside my guttering heartbeat.

My head was still pounding from all the pressure and the pain in my chest grew worse. I arched my back and gave a monumental heave for air, but all I could do was choke and retch.

Tweet tweet! What a lovely bird I am! Her smile as she swung gently under the tree branch. Then her smile, charged with a different emotion, as she reached for my nakedness in the firelight of the cave - a woman now.

The blurring had faded and now a bright, sparkling darkness was spiralling in as my eyes turned up in my head. An airy feeling of lightness suffused my body and Lotal's frenzied shouting faded into a glorious soothing music akin to the spheres.

I love you. Take care. The last words, fading as all color bled out of the world and the sky collapsed into the plain and took all order, all logic, with it to blackness.

* ~ * ~ *

I stayed in my tent for days. The first day, Lotal and the others were there to tend to me. Then I sent them all away except for Lotal. Then I got sick of Lotal's presence and I ordered him to leave as well.

Nothing mattered now. It was that simple. The rest of the world could go hang. I was finished: a man without a family, a town, or a cause left worth fighting for. The only thing left was to recover the strength in my sword arm and end it all the way nature intended.

Finally it was Prent who managed to coax me out. He came with some healing spices and herbs and it quietened the fury in my chest. It did nothing to dull the sudden emptiness, though.

Prent had something for me, which he produced from a tube and unfurled on the table. It was an intact copy of the Bishop's writ of pardon, and the terms were entirely unchanged from before.

There was a long moment, and I sighed and took it.

This time, I did not tear it up. I showed it to Lotal, and had Prent read it for him, and then I nodded once and returned to my cot.

And that is how I gave the final order to my recruits to disband and return to Forg in peace. And for my few personal followers to pack up and follow me to Hawkbluff, heartland town and birthplace of Bishop Trandamere.

And that is how I turned my back on Forg, Sootri, and the hearth of Bela - everything that I had held dear in my old, dead life as Bela-jir Ah-Cob.




_

[HuManBing]

Part Five: The Temple's Servant

The Road to Hawkbluff

The men who left me did so reluctantly at first, but then I told them that the glories of the battlefield would await them, and would not be diminished under Nanje's banner. Several came up to me to shake my hand and to wish me luck.

Then the day of the pardon came, and they went to the towns to surrender their weapons. Nanje came to the gates to welcome them in. Of Wilmar, my traitorous stepfather, there was no sign. Nor of his wife, my mother Bela, who wished I was dead in a ditch. Nor of my sister Sootri, who wept when I wouldn't make her a woman in a cave, and now told others that I had raped her.

Turning my back on Forg was easier than I thought. There was nothing left to keep me here.

Trandamere's largesse did not extend to our transportation. My personal retinue of men borrowed coin from relatives and asked for the counsel at Forg to remember our past glories, and basically resorted to every miserable begging trick short of outright theft to secure the funds to travel to Hawkbluff.

It would be a long trip. Hawkbluff was deep in the heartlands, a large city second in size only to the Thenolite capital of New Aurim itself. It lay risewards from Forg, past Flex, and who knew how many days' travel further.

We fell in with a caravan of steel merchants bringing Forg's output to the capital. By we, I meant Prasti, Lotal, Lellik-jir, Kash, young Gram, and a handful of other young men who were too idealistic or stupid to leave me and too broke in Forg to stay there.

The first trip took us to Flex, and once again I remembered the awestruck wonder with which I first regarded the journey down, as a boy. We had fought in the lists, years ago - with Terrek, who was now a sergeant in Nanje's army. With Lindo, now a hideaway in Bela's cellar. With Prasti and Lotal, who now marched penniless beside me and bore their scars with indifference.

At Flex, we waited in the shantytowns for the next convoy onwards. The Temple outposts in the slums had been finished quickly and there was much new construction going on. It appeared that the Temple's fortunes were progressing as well as those of its leader, Bishop Trandamere. I saw a couple of the buildings I had worked on in the dust now stood tall and anonymous among other buildings as the city expanded outwards.

I remembered a grave I had dug, and went to see the resting place of Bett - a crazed woman who had taken it into her head to steal Sootri from me. I had killed her for that. I had done more than that in defense of Sootri.

I dashed the heel of my hand against my eyes, hating the tears that started to them.

And for what? So that Sootri could betray me, like everybody else? Better I had thrown her off my shoulders and crushed her infant skull beneath my boot than to know this agony of wasted trust.

I went into a Temple, seeking some solace there, and I saw a face I dimly recognized. The priest was a paunchy man in his middle life, and his face might have been welcoming, but for a great scar across it.

I watched him awhile, wondering how I knew him. And then it came to me. He had been in the brothel I raided with the Company of the Scimitar. He had also taken my money to care for false Sootri. I had even feigned hatred for her in front of Varadis, so that Varadis would not realize how important Sootri was to me. Strange that it should come to this, that I would now need no pretense to wish her dead.

I went up to the priest. I do not know why.

"Do you remember me?" I asked. "I left a deaf girl in your care once."

He shook his head. "We have had so many war orphans, sir. But I can help you find her if you like."

I laughed harshly. "No, I know where she is. And it's not worth the time to find her."

The priest looked askance. "I am sorry to hear that."

"I loved her once, more than anything in the world," I said. "I gave her to your care and gave you money too. You wrote me a receipt but I could not read it. Now she has betrayed me and thus I stand before you instead of at her side."

A look of doubt came into the priest's eyes. "Are you feeling unwell?" he asked.

"I saved your life at a brothel in the brookside slums," I said flatly. "I even killed a man so you could escape." Then his eyes went wide and he remembered.

"Come, sir. We should talk," he said.

And we sat in the booth and spoke for hours. He talked to me about the grand designs of Mislaxa. About the iniquities of fate and the need for faith. About how the deceiver, Hiteh, waits for us to falter and trip, whereupon he will catch us and tempt us. About the need to nourish and cherish at least a flicker of compassion, even when all about you is dark and filled with the winds that howl in the night.

I told him about Sootri, and only her. About how I had lied, cheated, stolen, and killed for her when I was barely more than a child. And about how her feelings for me had changed and her unnatural desire for me. And finally about the lies she told my homestead about me, making my entire life foolish and vain.

"Sir, there is a time that comes to us all when our faith is questioned," he said. "And this comes regardless of whether you are religious or not. The world shapes you, it is true, and the winds of change batter you as you sail through. But always - always - there must be a bright guiding light in the back of your mind to lead you. We are all responsible for our acts, even if the world moves us towards them, because we have the power to choose to refuse. And that guiding light is essential and it must lie in your own soul. If you put your faith solely in others, then if they fail, so too must you fail."

I unclenched my hands. My breath was ragged, but my hands had stopped trembling. I dried my eyes and patted my pockets.

"Father, I have no coin this time round," I began.

"Nor need you coin," he said. "You saved my life when I was in peril. It is the least I can do to give you kind words now that you go into the unknown. Bishop Trandamere does nothing without a grand design. You will have a new life awaiting you in Hawkbluff."

I bowed my head to him. Walking out of the Temple, I was a man who had set down a burden. One who would live only for himself.

* ~ * ~ *

It would be a week before the next big convoy to Hawkbluff, so we found some digs in the city. On a whim, we went to Loafbringer street and I knocked on a door I remembered. Thin, anxious faces looked at me as I asked whether they knew Sardricor. When they nodded, we went in and offered our protection to them as long as we were in town.

Sardricor and his men came three days afterwards, as his informants told him there were more than the licensed number of unrelated adult tenants in the house. They came in the front door and unhasped their clubs, catching me and Prasti in the middle of a perfectly good game of cards.

They set about us with their clubs, bravely enough at first, but then Lotal, Lellik-jir, Kash, and the others filed down from upstairs and the fight turned against them. It didn't help either that my men would not cow and quail before a boor with a bludgeon.

I punched a guy in the face and then brought my elbow into his nose, crunching it flat in a spray of blood. Two hands tried to seize me from behind and I stepped down hard on his shin and foot, then turned and grabbed his head. I jabbed my fingers into the soft spot behind his ear where the neck meets the jaw, and then belted him on the temple for good measure. Beside me, Lellik-jir lifted a man bodily and then dumped him on another guy, and then smashed the table over them both.

I saw Sardricor come up, his face pocked with some venereal disease, and his mouth missing teeth as he bellowed orders to his men. I called for Gram to close the door, and then we were all trapped inside, for better or worse.

We brought knees into groins and bit fingers and stomped a few heads. I took a clubbing to the head that made me smart for a while, but gave back as good as I got. In the end, we turned out a little leaky and bruised in places. But the Company of the Scimitar lay unconscious or groaning on the floor. All except Sardricor, who had met the business end of a chair leg and was now rising up, arms akimbo, as we winched him from the ceiling to hang helplessly.

"Ya bastards," he kept saying.

I stood in front of him. "That's mercenaries of the King's Army to you, slumrat." He avoided my gaze.

"Look at me," I said. "This isn't the first time we met."

He cast his gaze around, still refusing to meet me eye to eye.

I took out some pins.

"Look at me or I will pin your eyelids to your forehead," I said.

He looked at me. There was no recognition in his eyes.

"Outside the slum brothel, with the priest. I killed Paldras. You watched the whole thing and then clocked me over the head. I woke up at the headsman's block," I said.

He started shivering now. His legs twitched in midair and his hands, still hanging out by his sides because of the rope, waved and jerked as he trembled.

"You should be dead," he said.

"Aye. And you're not the first man who's said that to me," I said. "But when we're done, you'll wish I was."

Lotal uncorked a bottle of wine and we took poker irons from the fireplace. Over the course of the next hour, we broke Sardricor's bones, starting with his shins and then working upwards. We tied his arms around pegs and then pulled on the cloths to open his joints. When his yells of pain got too great, I took out a mallet and gave him six heavy, judicious blows to the chin and cheekbone that knocked his jaw askew and filled his mouth with blood. His screams subsided to a dull, monotonous gurgle that sounded like some beast in a butcher's yard, regular as breathing, yet punctuated at times with a shriek of agony as we got to work on the rest of him.

At one point, Lotal showed how he could make Sardricor's toes touch his own hip in front. I cut a line through Sardricor's clothes and pulled his left shoulderblade clean off his back so it jutted out at an angle like a bird's broken wing.

We wrapped him up in some sheets and dumped him outside, a shivering wreckage of flesh that hardly even seemed human anymore. Some of the men who had regained consciousness watched us, eyes wide and silent.

"Take him back to Lady Varadis, and when you get there, send her the regards of her kinsman," I said. "Sadly we won't be in town long enough to meet his replacement. But I'll make sure to visit the good Lady in person someday."

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

The Storyteller

The convoy left and we left with it. The wagons were spacious and we kipped out well. Every so often we'd stop and circle around and switch up. Lotal and Prasti went with the women, where Prasti made up stories of gallant bravery to explain his scarred and puckered face. Lellik-jir, for all his size, was an excellent horse handler and he managed to get a merchant to let him ride one of the steeds. Gram and Kash and the younger men told stories and chewed straws in the sunlight.

I found myself sitting mostly on my own, far back in the covered wagon away from the light. A mood was descending upon me, and my men knew it when they saw it. They left me to my own reflections, and the wagoners caught on quickly too.

I was not entirely pleased then, when the opening of my wagon darkened and somebody hung there, peering in. I could make out a figure carrying some sort of box amid voluminous robes.

"Yes?" I asked.

The figure hesitated. "I'm sorry, but is this Driver Waleran's wagon?" she said.

Waleran was the name of the man who'd accepted to take us on. But my men had left his wagon, as the driver was too quiet for their liking.

"That would be, yes," I said. I was about to say something more, but the woman dumped the box into the wagon with a clatter and hoisted herself up.

"Excellent, I'll be your neighbor for a while then," she said brightly. "Mind if I take in some sun?"

She sat ahead of me, and opened her chest of papers. Inside were several loose sheafs of printed paper.

"It gets so shaky on the smaller carts," she said, flipping through pages. She had fine hands, with long fingers that handled the bundles gently - almost lovingly, but what caught my attention the most was her hair. It was a deep shade of red, a color I'd never seen before. "And these proofs have to be done before I get there or they'll be wanting discounts for lateness. Hopefully once Waleran gets his horses going it'll be smooth enough - this wagon's big enough and it doesn't seem like it'll list much over every little cobble or rock. But you never know for sure. Always good to get those few good pages' worth of proof in before they crack the whip."

She looked back at me and smiled, her eyes slightly narrowed in a conspiratorial expression, and her light skin positively blinding in the light. For a heartbeat's space, she was silent, seeking a page, and then she burst forth in a torrent of words again.

"Yes, this serial's about the war. Working title Perils of Parshelian. Just like the others were about the war. It's ridiculous really, when you come to think of it. All the refugees are fleeing from the outer towns to get away from it all, and here you've got my readership in their powdered wigs and marbled halls all wanting more war stories. Probably the closest they'll ever come to wielding a sword is carving the roasted swan at their dinner balls, the swine," she said - apparently without pausing for breath.

I broke in. "I'm sorry," I said. "Did you say Parshelian Ridge?"

She stopped for a second. "Parshelian Ridge?" she echoed. "Oh! The serial. No, it's Perils of Parshelian. Or maybe that's the same thing. It's not a very upbeat story," she added, wistfully.

I looked at it. Somewhere in those squiggles was the battle that my own eyes had seen - however illiterate.

"You want to read it?" she asked. She reached down and picked up another copy. They were maybe a dozen pages, held together at one corner by a hasp. "Have this one. It doesn't have my edits in."

I held the pages, unsure of what to do with them. Also, thinking back to the battle itself.

"It was necessary," I said at length.

She looked at me. "What was? The edits?"

"What we did there," I said. "I hope your story made that clear. That all that bloodshed was done so we could drive Malarchus from the valley for good. And it wasn't an easy choice to make, and I'm not sure I'd do it again if I had to."

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped.

"You were there?" she said.

"Yes, but don't I wish otherwise," I said. "Parshelian was a bad business. It was necessary, but it made us cruel."

She dropped the pages unceremoniously and scrabbled amongst her chest. She brought out a folio of unprinted paper.

"Well by Manith's name, tell me all about it!" she said, sitting down next to me.

I looked at her. And damn me if I don't know why, but looking at her fascinated gaze and rapt attention, something made me do it. I started from the time that Taric summoned me up as Captain and we chose to press the attack, and finished off as we triumphed over Malarchus' undead hordes and burned them from the field. Her nimble fingers took down my words as her quill scratched along the page, and occasionally she asked me to repeat names and places. But by and large, she was an enthusiastic listener and it seemed even my mundane, plodding relating of events drew her awe and admiration.

"This is gold," she said. "They'll lap this up in Hawkbluff."

We were talking for so long that we hardly noticed the wagons start, then stop for dinner, and then start up again. It wasn't till the sun had long gone down and the woman had lit a lantern that we realized the entire convoy had stopped and made camp for the night. We still kept talking, until Lellik-jir came to the flap of my wagon.

Bleary-eyed, he said: "Captain, I never thought I'd have to ask you this, but could you and your lady keep it down please? We're trying to sleep over here."

My companion giggled and stoppered her inkwell and patted her pages into order. Then she stuck her hand out, and I shook it, more than a little bemused at her forwardness.

"Well," she whispered to me. "It's been a pleasure talking to you. Maybe we'll have more of the same tomorrow?"

I nodded. "Sure, if you like. But that's really all I have to say about Parshelian Ridge."

She laughed loudly enough that Lellik-jir's retreating figure stopped and turned at us tiredly.

"I don't think I've even begun to plumb your depths, my good Captain!" she said. "When you're done with Parshelian, I'll ask you about Palt. Then Roshan. Then Lothgren. I'll get you to talk about Taric and Nanje and Trandamere. And I'll write it all down, sure as my name's Alicov."

I tipped my head to her, smiling despite myself.

"Alicov? What kind of a name is that?" I asked.

"It's short for something else, but I won't tell you unless you tell me your name," she said craftily.

I thought about this. 'Bela-jir' would be quite inappropriate, seeing as the specific Bela to whom I was -jir had said in no uncertain terms that she wished I was dead. As for 'Cob', it was just a nickname, and a derogatory one at that. And there was nobody left to call me 'Ah-Cob'.

"My men just call me the Captain now," I said. "Maybe I'll think of a new name for myself later."

"Ooh! A nom de guerre!" she said merrily. "That's perfect!" She scribbled on her pages. "They'll lap this up. A grizzled veteran of two campaigns, bearing more than just his scars, The Captain breaks his silence to tell of his harrowing heroics on the field."

"I didn't understand a single word you just said, woman," I said. Then I laughed hard, for no reason.

"...'eeep it dowwwwwn pleeeeease..." came the plaintive cry from another wagon nearby.

Alicov smiled and caught her lower lip between her teeth. "See you tomorrow, Captain," she said. Much to my surprise, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. The glossy curls of her hair brushed against my nose as she withdrew and stood looking at me again.

Then she dropped down from the wagon and was gone.

I rolled over and put out the light and tried to get to sleep.

Then I realized several things all at once: firstly, that I hadn't eaten anything and I was ravenously hungry. Secondly, that I hadn't relieved myself for a while and I desperately needed to make my stream. And thirdly, I had laughed for the first time in quite a while. And this red-headed chatterbox who wrote like a fiend had been the one to make me do it.

* ~ * ~ *

A little too late for breakfast, I woke up on the second day. Lotal had saved me some ham, mulled wine, and cheese from their meal, which I wolfed down gratefully. I took a brief stop in the rushes to relieve myself, then climbed back into my wagon. Cocky Lotal sat there, polishing his sword - the only weapon he had carried from the camps - and whistling a tune. Oddly, he had a saucy look on his face when I came in.

"Very late night for you, eh?" he said, with a jaunty raise of the eyebrow.

"So?" I said. "People sleep at different times."

Replacing his sword in the sheath, Lotal looked around at the inside of the wagon. "Evidently. Are you sure you got enough sleep? Do you know, this is actually quite a nice wagon," he said admiringly. "Spacious. Funny, now I wonder why we left it."

"Obviously because you went out to look for girls, and you found my company did not satisfy your exacting standards," I said.

Realization, or a well-mimicked act of it, dawned as Lotal drove his palm against his forehead.

"Exactly! Very true, that was it," he said. "Except for you, it seems the rest of us actually have to forage for our grazing."

Right about then, I started to sense his point. Yet I would make him work for it.

"Mislaxa's grace, what's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"Absolutely nothing, Captain," he said mischievously. "Not all our meals come looking for us."

He meant Alicov, the writer.

"I think she was just looking for a smoother ride," I said. "...-to write on her papers," I added hastily as Lotal's face broke into a puckish grin.

"Well, the rest of the men are very happy for you," Lotal said in a tone that bordered on the motherly side of concern. "All those nights when we got to entertain some pretty valley flowers... and you'd always find some reason to leave us."

"You're treading on thin ice," I said, though I couldn't keep the exasperated amusement from my voice. "She spent the whole day and most of the night just listening to me talk and writing down whatever I had to say, you know."

Lotal seemed a little put out by that. "Really? Well what was she doing with you for the rest of the time? You said 'most'."

"Well, she did ask a few questions," I suppose.

Lotal blew out his cheeks in feigned disgust. "Such a waste of a good redhead," he said, shaking his own russet locks, though much fainter than hers. "You really have to pull your finger out of your arse, Cob."

My hand closed around his shoulder in the time it took him to say the last word. My grip wasn't harsh, but it was firm, and he turned his eye to me, startled.

"Don't call me that again," I said with quiet menace, all my earlier jocularity gone. "That name belongs to a dead man."

Lotal looked at me and then nodded, serious now.

"As you say, Captain," he said. "Won't happen again."

The entrance of the wagon darkened again with Alicov's light step.

"Oh," she said, seeing Lotal. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"No, no," he said brightly. "I was just on my way out. I'll leave you to your own devices."

As he left, he shot me a grimacing smile of favorable appraisement over his shoulder - much as an ostler might on seeing a fine filly. I narrowed my eyes at him briefly.

Alicov hung her lamp from the cover, and sat down next to me again, smoothing her skirt and plopping down a fat sheaf of virgin paper in her lap. She blew a wayward strand of crimson out of her eyes and then looked at me.

She burst into a delighted laugh, eyes wide as though at something unexpected.

"What?" I asked. "What's so funny?"

She held up her notes from our previous conversation.

"This," she said. "I read through them last night. My stars, but this is pure gold. I won't have to scrape and pore over second-rate doggerel again, once this hits the presses."

I had to admit I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Book printing, periodicals, gazetteers," she said. "I'm an editor." She pronounced this word with evident pride.

My blank look must have spoken volumes.

"Hmm, maybe a graphical explanation will help," she said. She put her pen into the inkwell and sketched a few symbols on her paper.

"All right. Say this is me, and this is the reading public," she said. Then she scribbled a few lines, boxes, and circles and then she filled them up with a few words in her flowing script. "Then this is the printer, who's got the presses and the paper. And this is the writer, who sits amidst wine bottles and loose women in a garret somewhere in his jimberjams."

She illustrated this last point with a deft little cartoon of a man at a desk, oblivious to the several female figures lolling on a bed behind him.

"The writer comes up with the ideas and then he puts them into some winestained draft copy," she said. "Then he tells the women how he's written them as characters into his existentialist bildungsroman of purgatorial angst, and the youngest one usually protests at how she's been portrayed as a slut."

She drew a fireplace with something burning in it.

"The oldest courtesan usually starts a fight and in the process, many literary pearls are tragically lost," she said. "This process of self-selection can take many forms. Fire is the usual cull, but one time the writer contracted botulism and ran out of toilet paper, with regrettable results for his copy. Anyway, this means that only the best and most worthy manuscripts find their way to me, the editor."

She illustrated this with three books coming from three different writers, all arrowed to her, but with one in flames and another being eaten by wolves.

"I read everything they send me and I advance them a retainer," she said. "Usually just enough for them to buy enough wine to induce tremens delirium, which then restarts the creative cycle yet again. Meanwhile, I'm going through and correcting errors. Sometimes they'll get a few things inconsistent, like the color of somebody's hair. Other times it's a question for experts, like how the celestial spheres work, or phases of the moon. When that happens, I have to get to a library or find an expert on these matters to put me right."

"That sounds like dull work," I said sympathetically.

"Actually, it's the best work in the world," she said. "You learn so much, and much of it is fascinating stuff. One of the books I'm editing is for the nobility and it's about raising exotic mammals. Apparently there's a type of little armored mammal out there where the male has a manhood about two-thirds the length of its entire body."

"Gosh."

"I know, right? I didn't believe it myself until I consulted a sage about it, but it's true. Wait till we get to Hawkbluff, I'll show you later," she said. "And this other book I was working on was a farce about the River Folk, and the writer wrote in something about a fish that swims really quickly against the flow of warm water and it's got spines on its sides," she said, warming to her subject. "One of his characters took a leak in the river and ended up in a supremely regrettable accident."

"That is...really quite remarkable..."

"That's what I said! And a riparian sage showed me an actual specimen, which just goes to show there is much beauty and wonder in nature if you only know where to look. So, anyway, after I've done the fact checking and cleared all errors, I send it back to the writer," she said, scribbling another little drawing.

"By this time the writer has usually exhausted his cash advance and needs more to sustain his dissolution, which means he'll usually do what I tell him to do with the copy - whether it's rewriting key passages or adding in new plots and stories. However, the ones who are really good usually get to demand more from me in advance, which means they haven't exhausted their means entirely yet. This makes them difficult to deal with because they think they can stand on what they call artistic integrity," she said, with a trace of skepticism. "Getting them to start starving can literally take months before they do what I say."

I broke in. "What about the ones that manage their money well and live modestly?" I asked.

"Lucky for me, those don't exist outside of fairy tales," she said with some relief. "Editors everywhere would be out of a living otherwise."

She tapped her stylus against the steadily-expanding chaos of her graphical explanation.

"So the back-and-forth process of editing goes on, usually for three or four exchanges at least," she said. She held up the sheaf of printed papers she had been editing before she talked to me. "This is an example of that. Perils of Parshelian needed to go back at least seven times, and the writer keeps introducing more things that need to be corrected. I'm this close to dropping him from my list."

"Do they ever get sick of it and leave?" I asked.

"Yeah, but they usually come back after a while," she said. "In the end, they're the ones with the raw ideas, and I'm the one who can tell them the best way to express it. We need each other. But they do work in little digs at me. There's plenty of books out there by different authors who feature some red-haired woman as the evil seductress or the cold-hearted mistress. I've seen myself jilted, raped, cheated out of all my money, and even beheaded in so many different stories I can't keep count."

She giggled again.

"Those I don't mind. But the dangerous ones are the subtle ones," she said. "I'm talking about them sliding hidden messages into character names, or into each sentence's first word. One time I caught 'ALICOV SPREADS FOR EVERY MAN', which is just an attack on me so it wasn't too bad. But some writers try to get me in trouble by slipping in slurs against our lord or Bishop Trandamere - stuff like that. One woman got so fed up with my editing of her dark romance novel that she renamed a character 'Timos Gavain' and I didn't catch it till the printer had already run off two hundred copies."

"I don't get it," I said.

"I'll show you later. So... once I've got something to give to the printer, they take the manuscript and set it to type. This takes time because they make a point of hiring the most illiterate personnel possible to do the job, and it comes back to me barely legible. I have to go through the book and correct even more mistakes, and then when that's done I finally get to send it out."

"So at what point in this process do you make money?" I asked.

"People buy the book in my bookstore if it's a quarto or octavo. If it's a folio - something really posh for the nobles on commission - I usually get a fee upfront that I split with the writer. If it's a periodical or a gazetteer, the printer will save some space for other tradesmen to promote their wares in the pages, for a fee," she said.

"So... what will you do with my story?" I asked. "Send it to a writer?"

She shook her head. "No, no, no!" she said. "You are all mine, and I'm keeping you for myself." She shuffled the papers. "I haven't seen anything this good for a long time, so for you I get to be author and editor."

I scratched my head. "Well, that's good. I feel like there's a lot that needs to be told about the war, but I'm not a very learned man. It would be hard for me to tell this story by myself."

She waved this away. "Don't worry about that. I'll do the telling, and you just give me the facts. What happened, where, to whom. How it felt. How it looked. The best of it, and the worst." She smiled broadly. "You're the real thing, too. I can tell. You've got scars on your face and hands that clearly didn't come about from aristocratic fencing."

"No ma'am," I said. "These all have a battle and a foe to them. Except for the really old ones, which have my training partners and competitions to thank."

She chewed her lip.

"This is going to take some time," she said. "And it's a lot bigger than Parshelian Ridge, I think. Maybe we should start from the beginning."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

She tapped her stylus against her teeth.

"Tell me," she said at length, "about your first sword."

* ~ * ~ *

After the second day, Lotal and the others knew to leave my wagon alone. Occasionally, after hours of talking, I would get tired of the sound of my voice, which would assume a monotone as I recounted dates and facts. I would look up at Alicov, her fingers moving madly across her page, and apologize, and she would shoot back encouragement. She was tireless and would write for hours, at a pace that I could barely sustain just talking.

She would interject questions too. Some of them were simple, like how I'd gotten to know Prasti, Lotal, Prent, and the rest. Some of them needed some thought, like how old I was when Forg won the prize in Flex, and later when I was barred from the contests.

But some of the hardest questions were about how I felt. This first came about when we got to the fight when the woman got stuck between me and Himlak, blocking my shot to save him.

"That's terrible!" Alicov said. "How did that make you feel?"

I looked at her.

"What kind of a question is that?" I asked.

She flipped back through the pages.

"You remember very clearly how the fight went, and the blows you took, and the blows you gave," she said. "But you never really give much details in the way you feel."

I blinked. "Well, I felt bad, I guess," I said.

"Just bad?" she said.

"Yeah, just bad," I countered. "I don't have any better words for it. I didn't really get to talk much about how I feel, you know. But as for fighting tactics and battle strategies, and what my friends did, and what my enemies did... all that I am very used to talking about."

Alicov shook her head in disbelief. "You know, there's so much you went through, I can't believe that you don't have any emotional response to it."

"Well, it made me feel bad, like I told you," I said, a little defensively. "I can't really explain it, and I think you and your reader would be able to guess at my feelings. It's easier for me to just say what happened and leave how I feel out of it."

Later on, when she got to the bit about finding Gela-jir under the corpses, she bit her fist.

"Come on, now, didn't that make you feel at least something?" she said.

"Of course it did, you dunce," I said angrily. "What commander doesn't feel regret at losing a good man? But he was dead and we were at war, and I didn't have time to listen into myself and find the poetry in my soul to commend his death to the epic muses."

She made a face. "If there was ever a weak spot in your narration, it's this. You lack empathy," she said.

"What's that?" I asked.

She put her hands on her hips and looked me in the eye. I was secretly impressed.

"It means your listener doesn't understand you," she said.

I scratched my head and my eyes went narrow as I pondered her words carefully. Then I put my face very close to hers and said: "What do you mean?"

She started to answer and then realized I was having fun with her. She lifted up her pen and flicked it in my face. Little spats of ink landed on my cheek and eyes. I roared and wiped it away, my fingers coming away black.

"Hah! That'll teach you to be dheety with me," she said. "Big clumsy brute."

I got the worst of it out of my eyes and then caught her by the wrist in a single fluid move. She squeaked once as she grabbed me back and then, with a crafty gleam in her eye, she came up close to me... and then sat down abruptly. We both toppled over, to my acute surprise and embarrassment. She went down beneath me, eyes wide and hair tousled on the furs.

"What in Hiteh's name..." I began.

Her breathing came heavily and there was a dangerous smile on her face.

"The plucky journalist looked up helplessly at her merciless captor, his rugged battle-hardened body firm against her yielding softness..." she said, eyes half-lidded.

"Stop that," I said.

"...he said," she said, "his voice wavering from the sight of her perfectly heart-shaped face, framed in the rich waves of her lustrous amber hair."

"No, seriously," I said, feeling the momentum start to slip away.

"How will our heroine escape the bloodthirsty murderous rage of this brutal warlord with no name, the mysterious Captain?" she mused. "The only thing she could do went against all her training, all her moral fiber... the ultimate sacrifice of her integrity." She fluttered her eyelids dramatically.

"Alicov, I'm really not used to...-," I said.

She grabbed my shoulder and adopted a tragic expression.

"Alas! She consents to that ultimate violation! She stoops to the depths from which there is no regaining her former purity! Never again can she hold her head up high amongst other journalists!"

"Wait, what depths, what stoop? I don't understand," I said, dismayed to find that my body was betraying me with an entirely inappropriate response.

"She begins to write in the first person singular... and what is more shameful still, she breaks the fourth wall - O, is there no limit to her debauchery!" she writhed against me in a parody of mortal struggle, her eyes closed and her mouth open.

At this point I must tell you, gentle listener, that I was entirely lost at sea. She was quite possibly the most unpredictable woman I'd ever met. Nothing in my military training had taught me how to deal with a problem like this. Also, I was developing a problem of my own.

"Right, well don't do it again. I will probably get up now," I said. "I also didn't understand a single word you just said."

"You don't have to," she said lazily. "We'll be just fine."

But I got up anyway and sat oddly for the rest of the ride.

It didn't help matters that the roads had gone from paved stone to cobbles either.





_

[HuManBing]

An Engagement at Bishopsgate

We talked a little more till sundown that day, and then Alicov peered out the front of the wagon and saw something that delighted her.

"We're at Bishopsgate!" she said. "This is one of the few bright spots in the journey!"

She got off the wagon and turned back to me. In the distance, the streets and buildings of a bustling suburb stretched away into the sunset.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked.

I made a few mumbled excuses, but she came back.

"They have a superb inn, and they usually reserve a suite with a bath for me each time I come through," she said. "Come with me, you'll like it."

So I did. The men of my company were already settling down with their wenches, and they gave me a knowing look as I followed Alicov to her inn.

The Seasons Inn was a three-storey affair, something far grander than any roadside inn I'd ever stayed at. Alicov seemed to know the owners by name, and she took a key at the bar and went up.

The room was large and - I couldn't help noticing - had a bed large enough for two.

"They'll get a bath ready for me, they know my creature comforts," she said. "Care for a meal while they draw it?"

We dropped our bags in the room - just a travel-worn knapsack for me, but several cases for her - and she asked me if I was going to take my sword with me to dinner.

"Why wouldn't I?" I asked.

"Well, I suppose it's your habit, but you're going to draw some funny looks," she said.

"In case you weren't aware, there's a war on," I said, without rancor.

"Yes, but that's far from here," she said. Then she relented and smiled. "All right, my rusty old warhorse, bring it if you want. Just make sure you keep it sheathed. And we'd better leave a generous coin for the serving wench to make sure they don't think we're barbarians."

The word barbarian stung me. She must have seen the look in my eyes because she came in close and gave me a kiss on the lips that took me by surprise. It also sparked a resurgence of my problem and I moved away halfway through, embarrassed.

"You poor thing," she said gently. "All the battles you've fought on the borders for our sakes, and yet when you come back to the heartlands, you're like a foreigner to us."

She took my wrist.

"We can play it this way: we'll flaunt you as my latest exotic discovery," she said. "A brooding captain, freshly back from the front lines."

She was right about one thing - I did draw looks. The other diners were comfortable people, soft in their bellies and plump-faced, and my appearance among them must have been like a pike in a pond of goldfish. I kept my face blank, and bit my tongue so I would say nothing. This was not a place where I could afford to lose my temper.

Alicov made it all right. She consulted with me deftly over the food and settled on roast rabbit and greens, and she ordered a bottle of her usual wine. The sudden largesse left me in awe - here was a woman who knew her way among cultured people, and who had steel coin to show for it.

The rabbit was delicious and I wolfed it down ravenously. Alicov watched me in amusement and ordered another, which I ate more slowly, out of politeness more than satiation. Perhaps sensing that others were looking, Alicov took out her papers and pen and turned the conversation to military matters once more.

Most of these were clarifications on what she'd asked before - battle plans, banner designs, the type of barding we proofed our horses with. But she also asked about the victory at the competition at Flex, and I warmed to my subject and gave her plenty of material to work with. I occasionally positioned plates, spoons, and those little brown-and-white shaker things around the table to demonstrate a point.

Before long, the eavesdroppers were watching me with a hint more respect than at the start, and this must have been really obvious because even I could notice it.

The wine came and Alicov poured a small amount for herself and handed me the rest.

"Try it, this is good stuff," she said.

I did, and it was quite unlike the hearty, intoxicating infusion that Old Casper brewed up at his vineyards. First of all, it was the color of straw. I tasted it and raised an eyebrow. It was sour and left a feeling of thirst, not slaking, on my tongue. It was also very weak.

"This is made from grapes?" I asked uncertainly.

"Yes, they remove the skins first, hence the lighter color," she said, pouring me another glass. "Have some more."

As I sipped, she flipped through her notes - pages upon pages of dense curving letters - and came upon a passage.

"All right, tell me more about the siege at Palt," she said. "You mentioned Malarchus' army shambled out to meet your host. Did you take part in that combat yourself?"

I nodded. "Damndest thing, too, I got my blade stuck in one chest and as I was wrenching it out, one of them bit me - here." I rolled back my sleeve and showed her the faint puckered half-moon of bite marks on my arm. "I thought I was done for, right there. I thought there was some sort of disease they carried, which would make me just like them. So I thought to myself, I'd better go down swinging." I drained my glass. "Luckily for me, there was no disease in the bite, so it was just as well. But after that I always went ahead in full armor."

"You lie," a man said to my right. I turned to him. He was a tall man with no beard but a ridiculous moustache that stretched from his nose to his ears. One of his eyes appeared at first to be twice the size of the other, but as he turned in his chair I saw it was just a trick of the light, helped by the fact that he wore a glass lens over his left eye.

"This talk of undead soldiers is nonsense," he said. "The soldiers of Palt and Roshan betrayed our king. And the generals talk of supernatural causes as a cover for their own incompetence."

I turned away from him and continued. "We couldn't use dry crops to repeat our lure-and-burn gambit at Parshelian Ridge, so we had to improvise. Hence the burning haybales on the chains."

"More falsehoods!" the man said. He swilled his glass and looked at me. "I'll have you know I've served in the King's Second Cavalry and I've never seen the tactic you describe. It's worse than some second-rate romance."

I turned to him. "I've served in the army since I was sixteen, and I've never heard of this King's Second Cavalry you describe. It's worse than some drunkard's delirium."

Alicov gave a sharp laugh at that but quickly caught herself. The other man bristled and stood up. He was wearing some ceremonial uniform, white with some frilly thing on the shoulders and numerous bits of metal on his chest. The room fell silent as he put his hand on a pommel near his waist.

I realized with a faint twinge of amusement that the slender reedlike thing was a sword.

"I won't have you defiling the sacred duty of our army with your scurrilous lies, you vagrant," he said. "Outside, or you eat your words."

I looked at Alicov, who shrugged. I put on my shortsword - the one sharpened only on one side, which I always slept with for protection.

"Delighted, arseface," I said.

The others crowded to the windows to watch, and the other man drew his sword. I took a good look at it. It was much longer than mine, but thin, and it looked like its sole purpose was as a piercing instrument.

I drew my shortsword - much broader and even squat by comparison - and settled on a tactic. He would have distance and speed on his side. I would have to rely on momentum.

He made a feint in to me and before I knew it, his flickering swordtip had gashed my swordhand, just beneath the first knuckle of my thumb. I fought the searing pain to the back of my mind and advanced with a cut, which he easy dodged back from.

He came back in again, and this time the pain came on my upper arm. Then instead of retreating as before, he sidestepped and stabbed me twice in the chest and once in the abdomen - shallow, needling hits that gave me a sharp pain that only increased as I swivelled to meet him.

"Who fights like this?" I mused aloud, more in disbelief than in anger. "Do you do this dance in ranks as well?"

He came forward a third time, and this time several things happened in quick succession. I circled around with my left arm and caught the blade between my fingers on the upswing and tucking it beneath my armpit on the downswing. I closed quickly around him to his left and then I brought the blunted edge of my sword upwards, with alarming force, into his testicles.

He jack-knifed and collapsed in the dirt, his immaculate uniform no longer so spotless.

I stepped back and something clattered to the ground. It was the upper third of his fencing blade - snapped off clean when I trapped in it my armpit.

"You do have speed and precision, which makes for a very pretty fight," I said to his prostrate form on the ground. "But I'd leave the actual warmaking to real soldiers."

I walked back inside and saw that I had not won any friends amongst the effete clientele. They gave me sour looks and some muttered to themselves and moved away from me.

Alicov was different, though. She positively beamed.

"By the gods, you really are the real thing, straight from the chillwards front," she said admiringly. "A drink for the conquering hero!"

I sat down heavily. The blood from my arm was making it hard to hold the slippery wineglass, and the bleeding from my chest was pooling into a wet warmth in my crotch. The bastard's fencing blade wasn't so useless after all.

"What do you say about that bath now?" I asked, grimacing. "I don't want to alarm you but all this blood is actually mine."

Alicov peeked down and nodded. "Yes actually we should probably get going." She left a stack of coin on the table. "Time to get you naked and in my bathtub."

The rest of the patrons stared at us as we left.

* ~ * ~ *

The bath was full and steam curled off it in tempting eddies. Alicov helped me get out of my leggings and shirt - my right hand was starting to feel its injuries and I couldn't untie drawstrings anymore.

She gasped when she saw me naked.

"By the gods," she said. "You have so many scars."

I looked down at myself, and over my shoulders. I was starting to feel lightheaded and woozy, possibly from the fight, but likely from the wine as well.

"Well, this is really nothing. You should see Prasti. He's got plenty more. The man never really learned to dodge, apparently."

"Do you have a story for each one?" she said, as I lowered myself into the bath.

At first I couldn't answer. The water was very warm and I gritted my teeth. Then I could talk.

"Maybe not every one. I tend to acquire them in groups, really."

The blood washed off quickly and the wounds stopped bleeding. I cautiously stuck a finger in one of the stabs - it was not deep.

"What kind of stupid blade was that idiot using, anyway?" I asked testily. "He couldn't even block a woodsman's axe with that thing."

Alicov came back with some soap and medicinals from her trunk.

"It's an épée," she said, distractedly. "The heaviest of the fencing blades. The entire body is fair target, unlike the foil and saber, and they usually go for the hand and forearm because that's the closest target area. Sit up for me, would you?"

She examined my wounds, which were leaking a clear ichor. She put a powder into them, which burned a bit but subsided quickly. "This should do for now. There's a salve I'll put on you later when you're out of the water."

She stood up and began untying her hair. It fell down to her waist in long, unruly curls. Then she began untying the laces in her stays at her waist. By degrees I realized she was going to get in with me.

The thought triggered a problem so intense that my wounds hurt me and I winced.

She dropped her skirts to the tiles and stepped out of them, then eased herself out of her bodice. Suddenly free, her pale breasts flowed out gently, like honey, and she looked up to see me watching in rapt amazement. She giggled and shook herself teasingly from side to side, and then lowered herself into the tub with me. A little bit of water spilled over the edge.

"Eureka," she said, with a playful smile. "Alicov discovers the measurement of volume through displacement."

"Eh?" I asked. The conversation, as often happened, was fast slipping out of my domain. But she put her finger to my lips and then kissed me there. It was a long, slow, messy kiss, and I found myself responding urgently to her mouth, her lips, the teasing flesh of her tongue.

She pulled back and shut her eyes, savoring the feel of it. Then she put her hands on my shoulders, raised herself slightly, and then - very slowly - lowered herself again back into the water. She relaxed with a sigh of utmost contentment.

It was my turn to gasp.

The conversation went rapidly downhill after that. To the best of my recollection, it went something like this, but I wouldn't understand it myself really, and I'm not sure it's even legal.

Me: Ah!
Her: Indeed.
Me: By the gods, that's good.
Her: It's just like the philosophers said.
Me: O.
Her: We have a secure place to stand...
Me: ...or sit...
Her: And you have a lever of sufficient length...
Me: Thank you.
Her: And here we are making the world move. Oh yes, do that. Mmm!
Me: [Sustained noise, fortissimo, untransliteratable. Water spills over sides of tub in deluge.]
Her: ...
Me: ...
Her: ...already?...

She looked at me, a mix of surprise and amusement in her eyes.

"Really?" she said, incredulous.

I looked away, ashamed.

"This is my first time," I mumbled.

Much to my surprise, her face melted swiftly from lust to compassion.

"Are you serious?" she said. "You're not having me on, are you?"

I tried to say something, but could only shake my head. She hugged me and gave me a bite on the shoulder.

"Look at you - you're adorable!" she exclaimed, laughing. "Well, we'll just give it a rest. I'm sure you'll be back in form later."

I adjusted myself slightly because the wounds were bothering me, and looked back at her again. My woe must have been evident in my features.

She gave me an encouraging little shiver of her hips and struck an academician's pose - albeit a rather wet-breasted one.

"It's just like the ancients said," she stated with mock solemnity. And then she declaimed several ancient eldritch syllables that I couldn't even begin to catch.

"What... what does that mean?" I asked, still a little out of breath.

She giggled. "It means although the candle burns brighter than the candlestick holder, the candlestick holder will still be there in a day's time."

"What does that even mean?"

"Oh, you'll see," she said. "Don't you worry."




_

[HuManBing]

Philepiscopylae

As it turned out, she made her point eloquently. In the bathtub, we grappled each other madly in a lovers' clinch a few more times, then when the water got too cold, she climbed on and I rose from the depths to stagger to the bed with her holding my shoulders and her heels digging into the base of my spine, laughing all the way.

There was a space between the headboard and the wall, as we and the guests in the next room over would discover over the course of the next few hours. Occasionally they thumped on the wall heartily and shouted their encouragement, but we were already too far gone to need it.

I quickly learned that she was just as fluent with the erotic sciences as she was with the esoteric ones - and though I was still new to both, I caught on much faster with the former. She moved with the speed of a mountain cat, too. One moment, she was beneath me, her fingernails weaving patterns over the patchwork of scars on my back and threading through my hair. The next, she had squirmed on top of me, her hands on my chest and an expression of transcendent pleasure on her face as she bounced away merrily. Occasionally, she leaned forward to press her lips against mine, but by degrees our teeth kept on grating as the intensity increased. She leaned back and flipped to the right, and suddenly we were on our sides, facing each other in the twisted sheets again as the bed creaked and groaned beneath us.

The latest of several ecstatic, debilitating surges racked my body and put my mind behind a dark haze for a while. The only thing that could penetrate my armor of exhaustion was the faint sound of her youthful giggling, coming as though from a great distance, and sounding extremely pleased with herself.

* ~ * ~ *

Even after I fell asleep she wouldn't leave me alone. My unquiet dreams spun between vistas of crumbling desolate wastelands, and wrestling matches with otters. At one point, I woke up with a start to find her rocking back and forth on me urgently, biting her hair to keep herself silent.

I began to suspect that Fate was punishing me for something.

* ~ * ~ *

In the morning, I fumed my way up to consciousness from a dream in which I was thrown from a wagon while taking a bath in tepid water. The sun was streaming through a crack in the curtains, and a shock of red in the bed next to me reassured me that I wasn't lying dead in some ditch somewhere - I was in a bed at the Seasons Inn at Bishopsgate, and the warm woman nestled up next to me was Alicov the writer.

I lifted up the covers and propped my head up on my elbow. She had turned her back to me, and I could count the faint ridges that her spine made in the smoothness of her skin. I peeked over her shoulder, her pale skin making for a startling contrast to her dark red hair. A pillow lay brightly illuminated in the sun, thrown there to shield her face below.

I reached over and lifted the pillow off her face, and watched as her eyes scrunched up and she raised a hand and muttered something. She rolled over towards me and was still again, her breasts gently rising and falling with her breathing.

In the shade, the whiteness of her face was still strangely radiant. She had an unusually steep arch to her eyebrows, making her look quizzical even when her eyes were closed. How often had I seen her raise them, either in disbelief as she heard something outrageous about my story, or ahead of a quip as she tipped her wineglass back.

Behind her lids, her eyes moved slightly, the emerald of her irises lost to view. Her nose was a sharp, delicate thing, almost too pointed amid the heart-shaped curves of her cheeks and jaw. She liked to run her nose across my face and neck, much like a kitten nuzzling her mother.

Her mouth was a small line in her face, an afterthought. When closed, it was nearly invisible. But as I was learning very quickly, it was seldom shut. Whether it was talking, asking questions, or simply laughing raucously, Alicov had a rare mastery of articulation that colored every phrase, every sound, to pass her lips. I wondered if all women of Hawkbluff were like her. Certainly no woman of Forg came close.

Her mouth was an articulate thing in love, too, I reminded myself. But I shied away from those thoughts, still aching from the rigors of the night before.

* ~ * ~ *

I did not particularly feel like getting up, and Alicov nestled her back up to me under the covers and said we could stay here at awhile longer at our own convenience, and make our own way back to Hawkbluff even if the convoy left.

"I wouldn't want to take any more of your generosity than I have to," I said. But she shook her head and smiled in her whimsical way.

"The owner here owes me," she said. "We put a glowing recommendation for the Seasons Inn into one of our travel chronicles, and their clientele increased fourfold. They let me have this room at a song."

Eventually, I broke my embrace and got up. I stood at the foot of the bed, picking my clothes out of the wreckage of the floor. I started to put on my shirt, but Alicov suddenly scooted over to me across the tangled bedsheets, her impish smile waist-high, and started causing trouble after her own fashion.

Matters progressed, and I was just on the verge of taking my shirt off again when there came a knock on the door, and Lotal's voice - cringingly polite - informing me that we should have our breakfast and go.

Quickly disengaging, I tried to button my shirt, but found it strangely impossible to match the buttons correctly. I gave up and answered the door. Lotal's eyes widened as he saw me. Then he tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress a smirk.

"Erm, we're ready to go, and the food is waiting for you," he said. "Also there's an angry man in a stupid uniform who keeps threatening to have us whipped. He walks funny."

I looked down at myself, only partially dressed, and mumbled something about taking a bath.

"No no no," he said. "It's good to smell like you've been with a woman. It'll make the rest of the lads respect you. Come on and throw on your pants and we'll go."

Alicov shuffled past me, clad only in a bedsheet.

"Oh, hello," she said in passing.

"Hi," he said distractedly. "So we should probably get your stuff packed right now, Captain. You raised a few eyebrows with your duel last night and I don't want to give them much time to make more trouble for us."

I nodded. By the gods, I'd done it again. But at least I hadn't killed anybody this time. With a final, hopeless attempt at my shirt, I turned back to survey the room. Lotal did so too, and whistled merrily. I ignored him.

"I've only got my knapsack, but she has plenty of papers," I said. "Let's pack those up and we'll put them in my wagon."

Lotal buckled down to his work as I got dressed, then between us we were able to manhandle the four chests down the stairs together. The rest of the lads were there and took them off our hands to put in the coach.

I went back up to Alicov and helped her lace up her stays.

"Thank you, my gentleman," she said happily. "Do we have time for my hair, do you think?"

"The longer we stay, the greater a chance of a fight," I said.

"So is that a good thing or a bad thing, my Captain?" she said. Then, squinting at herself in the mirror, "Oh, I'll leave it. I'll put it up in the wagon. Lead the way, soldier."

Back in the dining room, my men were finishing up their breakfast with some watered wine. They cheered and raised their glasses when they saw me, and Alicov blushed and held my elbow, whispering something to me that I couldn't catch.

The King's Second Cavalry wag was still there, too, and he appeared to have friends with him. There were about six of them, and their smaller numbers seemed the only thing keeping them from assaulting us. They still muttered oaths at us under their breaths.

"Your shirt is inside out," Prasti said helpfully.

I looked down. So it was. So that explained my problem with the buttons. I put down my knapsack and took it off, reversed it, and quickly put it back on.

That silenced the Second Cavalry, and I suspect they saw my scars. Still, it wouldn't do to overstay. I wolfed down the food and gulped down the wine, and then we got back into the convoy and headed to Hawkbluff.

Alicov stayed with me in the covered wagon, and we spent the rest of the day going over the battles in the history. But I must admit we were not nearly as sedulous as we'd been before, as the darkness of the wagon lent itself well to our latest pastime.

* ~ * ~ *

Two days later, the road began a notable incline, and at the end of the second day, we got to Hawkbluff.

Alicov stoppered her inkwell and packed it away, along with her pen, in her smallest chest. Then she turned back to me, businesslike once more.

"Well, I've been waiting for you to ask me where I live, and it seems like you're not going to do this on your own," she said. She handed me a card. "This is my business address, and you can leave messages for me there."

She gave me a pen and paper. "Where will you be?"

I shook my head.

"Firstly, I have to report to the Temple. I don't know what lodgings they will give me," I said. "And secondly-" I held up her card "-I can't read."

She stopped.

"Really?" she asked.

I shook my head again, my cheeks burning. This was worse than being a virgin. This was sheer boorishness. "I never learned," I said. "Too busy playing at soldiers, I guess."

She softened slightly and ran her hand down my cheek.

"Well, it's clear you have an excellent memory. If I tell you my address, will you do me the honor of remembering it? It's the only way we can keep in touch," she said, with a trace of sadness.

"Sure," I said.

"All right," she said. She held up her card and ran her finger along it as she read. "Hawkbluff Overlook, Twenty-three Falcon's Way, Alicov Book Publishing. Can you remember that?"

I closed my eyes and pushed it to the front of my mind, where it would stay until I called for it.

"Hawkbluff Overlook, Twenty-three Falcon's Way, Alicov Book Publishing," I said.

"Very good. Whenever you can, leave me a message there, and let me know how to get in touch with you," she said. "If the book does well, and I think it should, there's going to be a fair bit of money coming your way."

I took her hand.

"Won't you be there in person?" I said.

She shrugged. "I do a lot of traveling," she said. "I can't promise I'll be there." Then she smiled. "But on the bright side, if this book does as well as I hope, I'll be able to hire somebody else to hit the road for me. You never know."

I nodded. There was a strange feeling of loss already, and I knew I didn't want to leave her.

"I'll do as you ask," I said. "I hope to see you again."

She nodded. "I know," was all she said.

She had gotten all her things together and was about to leave, when she came back in a rush and gave me a lingering kiss.

Then she was gone.

* ~ * ~ *

"Lotal," I asked, later.

"Captain?"

"You remember one time you brought a girl to meet me in the training grounds?" I asked.

He furrowed his brow. "I did? That was dumb of me."

"It was at Terrek's in Forg. I think it was some time after we won the first competition."

He thought, and then shrugged. "I don't recall," he said.

We rode on in silence, and then I spoke.

"Well, you had a girl with you and I was very rude to you," I said. "I didn't understand what a man could possibly find worthwhile outside of training, especially in a woman, and I'm afraid to say that I made that very clear."

He seemed to remember then, because he nodded gravely, but stayed silent.

"I apologize for that. I should not have mocked something I did not understand," I said. "Now I think I know how you feel."

Lotal shrugged and laughed easily. "I honestly didn't remember about that until you reminded me, Captain," he said. "Think nothing of it."

"It had been bothering me for a while," I said.

"Yes, these things do," he said. "Y'know, I've noticed something about you. You have a very long memory. And while that might be a benefit in most cases, it also makes it hard to forget. And forgetfulness is a key shortcut to forgiveness."

I nodded, smiling. "Yes, I suppose that's true," I said.

"For instance, Alicov asked me how I met you," he said. "She was collecting information for that damn book of hers, always with the scribbling-scrabbling. I had to think for a bit and then I remembered you kicked my arse and stole my lunch at Parras' gemstone workshop."

"I hope you told her you were an unholy terror and that I was the first kid to stand up to you," I said dryly.

Lotal pretended not to hear me.

"And then she asked me why I wanted to serve you instead of kicking your arse and stealing your lunch in return," he said. "And to be honest, I don't know. It was a flipping good lunch, too. Two blood sausages. Two!" he said, raising his fingers for emphasis.

"Yeah, they sure were tasty," I said. "I think Prent would agree with me."

"That old god-botherer," Lotal said crankily. He made a face and then laughed.

"But the point is that it helps to forget. Not the big stuff, but the small things that only serve to complicate things," he said. "Right now, I'd follow you to the ends of the realm. That's all there is to it. I don't need to sit and fret over the fact that you looted two blood sausages."

"The same way that the average soldier doesn't need to know about the farmers at Parshelian Ridge," I said.

He thumped my shoulder.

"Egg-sack-lee," he said emphatically. "A person looking back on life is like a people looking into politics. They can only handle simple facts. Give them too much, and it overwhelms them."

"Well, Alicov gave me the address of her publishing company," I said. "I don't intend to forget it."

Lotal smiled. "Good!" he said. "And I think I speak for the rest of the men when I say this Alicov woman is the best thing that's happened to you in a long while."

"How's that?" I asked.

"Well, we now have proof that you don't lust for male flesh," he said.

He hooted and gibbered like a lunatic as I rode after him, throwing whatever I had to hand at his retreating back.








_

[HuManBing]

A New Aerie

Hawkbluff was once a fortress city, back when the first men came to this part of the continent, Hosk. It was easy to see why. It rested on a tall rise of sheer cliff-face, surrounded on three sides by a graceful circle of a river. The fourth side was a gentle slope downwards to the grasslands and pastures, towards the capital city of New Aurim. Although the city had outgrown the natural defenses of the old boundary, the wealthy elite still lived atop the rockface, and it was here that we turned our carts and horses.

Raptors and hawks circled the battlements high above us. I watched in amazement as they perched fearlessly among the balconies and atop roofs.

"There's a story," our guide told us in deeply accented Thenolite. "That in the founding days of this city, the jealous hordes of barbarians sent in a team of traitors dressed in the robes of nobility. Their disguises fooled the men at the gates, but they didn't fool the birds above, who have excellent vision. The birds dove down and pecked at the strangers, and the guards were alerted to their treachery. Now it is considered bad luck to harm any such birds."

I stared up at them, turning in their majestic eddies, and crying harshly to each other in the thin air.

"Why would anybody want to hurt them?" I mused, half to myself.

Prasti cursed as he wiped bird droppings from his neck.

"I could think of a few reasons..."

We made our way to the First Temple, so named for its importance to the faith, and also because it was where Bishop Trandamere himself first donned the robes of the Order.

* ~ * ~ *

There was a priest, Stalvan, who clearly did not want for food and drink. He folded his hands under his expansive belly and welcomed us to Hawkbluff. It turned out that we were to train the nobles' guards, and then to turn our hand to training the city's militia.

"The nobility talked of disbanding the militia," he said, "as the war is so distant and the prices of maintaining a standing army are so heavy."

I shook my head in disbelief.

"That is utter madness," I said. "They must have cobwebs in their brains."

Stalvan laughed. "I cannot vouch for the cobwebs, but it seems you and Bishop Trandamere are of one mind. The Temple has decided to help shoulder some of the cost of this city's defence, and we wanted to give training to our men. After all, peace is everybody's duty," he said piously.

They gave us a stable for our horses, though to judge from the lack of barding and equipment racks, it had never housed any warhorses. Then they gave us the upper level in a wing reserved for laymen who served the Temple. We found our way around the airy bare rooms, each with its own balcony to look out upon the magnificent view of the cliff.

"There is water from a well-tap at the end of the corridor, and a bath in the same room," Stalvan said. "Also, we in the Temple observe a separation between the sexes in our life, and we ask that you respect this in our lodgings. Within these walls, there are to be no women."

"No women. Right," I said, to cover up the crestfallen faces of my men.

"Your first rotation will be with the noble house of the Marquis of Oakensborough," Stalvan said. "I've sent word that you will be available in two days' time. In that time, I encourage you to explore our city and to enjoy its sights. The bursar has your stipend."

We went out and looked around first at the forge, to see what they had in the way of arms. Much to our delight, we did find some pieces that bore Old Carrustin's trademark - the riverbend beneath two castle towers. But it was far too expensive for us, and we walked away a little dejected.

"I wonder how Carrustin's doing now," Lellik-jir said. "He's getting on."

"Maybe he's found a woman just as old as him," Prasti said. "That would be nice."

"Maybe he's found two women half his age," Lotal shot back. "That would be even nicer."

"That would kill him," I said.

"Spoken like one who knows!" Prasti said, and the others laughed at my expense.

People looked at us when we spoke, our accents strange in this town. We also saw that few of the men wore swords, or those that did only wore small daggers or knives.

We found out why when we tried to enter a public house.

"I'm sorry, but you will have to leave your weapons at the door," the doorman told us.

"Are you sure? We really won't be any trouble," Lellik-jir said. Or more accurately, rumbled.

"There's actually a law against carrying weapons in the streets, if you didn't know," he said. "But I'm just a doorman, and outside of this pub you may do as you please. Inside, no weapons."

This concept staggered us.

"But, but," Lotal sputtered.

"That, that," said Prasti.

"Odd," I said.

We went back to the Temple, where there was no ban on our weapons, and ate a dinner of weak millet grain soup instead.

* ~ * ~ *

It wasn't till I lay down in the hard bed of the undercroft that I started to think about Alicov. I had just stretched out on my back and closed my eyes, when in a sudden flash of delirium she was on top of me, looking down at me and scratching my chest as she bounced up and down like a demon.

The moment I opened my eyes, she was gone.

"What in..." I said. I almost said 'Hiteh' but caught myself, remembering where I was. I looked around again and cleared my mind and closed my eyes again.

And there she was, a little bent forward this time, eyes closed and mouth slightly open, making noises of ragged lust that I had never heard from a woman before.

I shot my eyes open again. She was gone.

I blinked three times in quick succession. Each time, like a flicker, I caught a glimpse of Alicov, each time in a slightly different attitude of our couplings.

"This is going to be hard," I said to myself. "I can't sleep with my eyes open."

I groaned and threw a pillow in my face. Then I rolled onto my side. But that was no good either. Instead, my imagination put her there too, her hair billowing out from her cheek as she faced me and giggled, worming herself lasciviously against me. I turned to the other side and there she was again, this time with her back to me but still doing what it was she did best, peeking over her shoulder at me while biting her lower lip.

I tried lying down on my front but certain developments in response to the earlier visions made this very uncomfortable. I didn't even need to close my eyes to guess how Alicov's ghostly form would exploit that particular position.

"Damn it," I said angrily and got up. The sound of her ghostly laughter echoed in the distance. I paced awhile and then went to the end room and sluiced cold water over myself. This had the desired effect, and I went back to bed and lay down.

I closed my eyes and she appeared again. "You're all wet," she said. But that didn't put her off her rhythm one jot.

I thrust my face into the pillow and let out an angry roar of irritation. Then I got up and filled a bathtub full of cold water and sat down in it. The effect on me was immediate.

Shivering, I looked around cautiously. I was absolutely alone. Then I sank beneath the cold water and closed my eyes.

In a flash, Alicov appeared there with me, splashing away heartily. But this time, she stopped short after only two bounces and jumped up as if she was bitten. Water splashed off her wet hair and torso as she stepped on the tiles, shivering, and shot a dirty look back at me.

"You lunatic," she said, gasping spectrally. "This is too damn cold." Then she vanished into thin air, her shoulders held indignantly back.

I opened my eyes and looked around. The bathroom was empty, except for myself. Alicov's ghost had not even left a water trail behind her when she left.

I could live with this. With a grateful sigh I lay back and promptly fell asleep. I dreamed that Alicov crouched by the bathtub the whole time with a look of calculating, predatorial patience.

"Sooner or later, you're going to have to get out," she said, circling the tub.

* ~ * ~ *

The priests found me in the bathtub the next day and praised me for my spiritual mortification of the flesh.

"Eh?" I said.

"It is good to deny the flesh so that the spirit grows strong," the priest said. "You are well on your way to redemption."

"Oh. Right. Absolutely."

"We shall recommend you to Stalvan for your faith."

"Just what I always wanted," I said faintly.





_

[HuManBing]

The Talons of the Hawk

I sat in my room, polishing the last plate of armor in my uniform. It had weathered the journey here under a thin coating of wax and carefully stacked amid oilcloths, but all the same I had spent careful hours examining each piece and slotting it together with the pins and screws.

It was good to know that Carrustin's work was fetching a tidy sum here in the city, but this same mechanic made me cherish the arms and proof he had given me for free in Forg.

Lotal came by.

"Got any locking turns?" he asked.

I nodded to my chest of drawers, and he came to pick them up.

"Thanks, the men need these to clear off some of the dust from the joints," he said.

"Well, there's a horsehair brush in the canvas bag," I said.

Lotal skipped to. "Excellent, this'll be even better."

He came back in the doorway after I'd finished my armor and was gazing out the window.

"Say, what are we going to be called?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I crumbled another speck of meat from my dinner and threw it out the window. Several dozen feet below, a preybird swooped and caught it effortlessly.

"I mean, you used to call us the Sons of Forg," he said. "But for various reasons we probably don't have the rights to that name."

"True," I said. "But we're vagrants now. Free lances. Soldiers for hire."

Lotal sat down. "I like the idea of that. How about The Vagabonds?"

"Too scruffy," I said. "It's honest, but then nobody will hire us. Imagine the explaining that Trandamere would have to do if the nobles ask why Vagabonds are training his troops."

Lotal looked offended.

"Well then what would you suggest?" he asked. "We have to be named something."

"I dunno," I replied. "I rather like the idea of being nameless. A crack squad of elite troopers, without name or rank. A mysterious force on the battlefield that leaves none to tell of them."

"I like Oo-Me-Boh-Zoooooo...!" shouted Lellik-jir from down the hall.

"Shut up, fat head," Lotal snapped back at him. "Your mother fell when she was carrying you."

Prasti came up.

"How about... Distant Thunder?" he said, with a dramatic wave of the hand.

I threw another crumb of meat to the birds outside my window. This time it was pretty big and the hawk struggled to keep it. Soon, another hawk had settled next to it and was tearing at it.

"Worse and worse!" I said. "It suggests too much fiber in your diet."

"I like The Contemptibles," piped up Kash. "It's ironic. Like we're not a force to be reckoned with on the field, but we actually are once we get to know us. Sort of thing."

Lotal gave him a whack on the shoulder.

"You are an idiot," he said. "Vagabonds is far better AND it's ironic."

Lellik-jir wasn't done.

"I heard your mother was irony deficient," he said.

"Yours was mentally deficient," Lotal snapped back. "First two weeks she got the dog to wean you and she was sticking gnawed bones between her boobs."

"I like your mother's gnawed bones..." came the reply.

The hawks outside were fighting now, tearing at the meat with talons and beaks alike. There wasn't just two, either. I saw others coming up to swarm them. Hurriedly I broke off a smaller chunk of the meat and threw that out. The fight subsided after I threw more morsels to them.

"Look at them," I said. "Creatures of beauty."

"Creatures of Beauty!" Lotal crowed. "That's us exactly. We'll put that on our blazon tomorrow morning. Except Prasti can't stay."

"Hey!"

"Tell me what's wrong with Oo-Me-Boh-Zoooooo," Lellik-jir demanded. "In one word."

"Can't do that, I'm afraid," Lotal said. " 'It's crap' is two words, and 'It's utter crap' is three."

"The Talons of the Hawk," I said suddenly, turning to face them.

There was a silence.

"What do you think? Fancy swooping down across the fields in search of your prey?" I asked.

"The Talons of the Hawk," Lotal mused. "That is good. But where'd you come up with it?"

I sighed.

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, Oakensborough was a small suburb of the city, lying outside the defensive ring of the river. We made our way there, carrying our arms and a whole bunch of training spears with us.

It took us the whole morning to get across, and when we got there the welcome was less than warm.

"All right, all right... M'coming..." came the faint response after our third bout at the doorknocker.

The man who answered was greyish and old and smelled of garlic.

"Watcha want?" he asked.

"We are the Temple's military trainers," I said. "Sergeant Hawk and his company, the Talons."

The man looked at us. He frowned.

"You're not coming today, are you? I'll check," he said, and left.

Presently he was back. "They got their dates mixed up. Ya can come in, but the master is still getting his people in order."

We went inside to a waiting room, and waited. Thin sounds of music came wafting through the still air. That, and laughter. Female laughter.

"Obscenity in the milk of this," Lellik-jir said at length. "I didn't come all the way out here to wait while some marquis tumbles his women."

There were nods of assent all round.

"Let's kick open the doors and find out what he's up to," I said.

* ~ * ~ *

I had never encountered the word "orgy" before, which probably makes me one of a very small number of people to have seen one without knowing quite how to describe it succinctly. Which means I'll have to rely on a more long-winded explanation instead.

There was a lot of food, and not all of it was in eating vessels. There was also a lot of female clothing, and not all of it was on female bodies. Altogether, we saw a lavishly decorated room with musicians to one side, a large raised dais of cushions on the other, and a writhing mass of bodies in a shallow fanned pit in the middle, around which serving girls dashed periodically to refill glasses.

I went over to the gong and struck it with my sword.

Once I had their attention, I picked up the paper and feigned reading from it.

"We are the company of the Talons of the Hawk," I said. "We are here from the Temple to train the guards under the Marquis Oakensborough."

A corpulent man detached himself. Part of the female clothing we saw had ended up on him.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

"Training. Today. Now," I said, letting my anger hint through my voice.

"You've no right to barge in and disturb me in my businesses of state," he said. As an afterthought he removed a girdle from his upper arm.

"Intriguing," I said. "We'll go back and tell the Temple that your house is a weak point in the city's defences. I am sure they will happily post a garrison here."

"Wait," he said. "What do you want?"

I sighed.

"To do my job," I said clearly. "To train your guards."

He clapped his hands.

"These are my guards, and we were just discussing matters of state. Get up, girls, these men will train you." He winked at us.

My men looked at me. This was an obvious bribe.

The women got up uncertainly and stood before us in varying stages of undress. Some giggled, as if this was all a joke.

I felt my blood begin to boil. So be it - if the marquis would not give me men to train, I would train his women.

"Talons, line right!" I said.

My men lined up, shoulder to shoulder, facing the women. A single rank, ten deep, with myself and Lotal standing to one side.

"Women, line left - facing!" I shouted.

The women, with much giggling and idiotic rolling of the eyes, eventually lined up facing my men.

"Talons about! Women at ease, observing!"

Lotal handed out the training spears to my men, who had now turned about smartly to face away from the line of women. We would do this by the book.

"Line!" I shouted. They snapped to, shoulders high, eyes forward.

"Attention!" They stepped shut, clicking their heels.

"Marching by the left, twelve steps. Line - march!" In unison, they stepped forwards twelve steps, then a last one as they brought their trailing left foot level with their right.

"About turn!" A click as they turned back to face the women on their left feet, then another click as they stepped level with their right.

"Marching by the left, twelve steps. Line - march!" They marched back towards the women, who stared and laughed at my men as they came to a pace's distant and stopped smartly.

"Present arms!" My men held up the training spears smartly for the women to take.

"Talons, fall out!" They turned to me and marched to the side, standing at ease.

I walked out to the front of the women. I pointed out the two at the ends.

"You, and you. Step out in front. You will be the bannermen and will lead."

They looked at their friends and smiled. One even gave a mock salute as she came out. The other, naked from the waist down, wiggled her bottom at her friends impudently as she stepped up. I waited till they were in position, then handed them spears with small flags of the Temple on them.

"Guards of the marquis, you have observed the first maneuvers of the basic drill," I announced, scanning the women opposite me. I noticed one of them whisper to her neighbor and the two of them giggle at some private joke. I ignored them and continued. "You will be asked to repeat the drill you have seen. I will be watching for mistakes."

I saluted them and marched back to the side.

"Line!" I shouted.

Much as I expected, they looked around in disarray. The two women in front looked back at the ones they were supposed to be leading, and then at each other in confusion. I gave them a few seconds extra, and then barrelled on into the next order, regardless of their current status.

"Attention!"

One girl who had been paying attention stepped her feet shut - though she moved the wrong one. The others did a vague parody of braces, at eases, and incoherent other moves.

"Marching by the left, twelve steps. Line - march!"

This was a disaster, as you might expect. One girl's dress came off completely, tangling her legs and stopping the one behind her. Not a few lost count and stopped short or overran. None of them remembered how to correctly stop after the twelfth step.

The unclothed straggler giggled and tried to head back to the pit, but Lotal intercepted her and shook his head, with an upraised hand. There was something in his expression that made her turn back and huddle, naked and scared, in the rest of the group.

Not that the others were daunted in the least. They were laughing now, in that raucous, mocking way that women do - at themselves, at us, at the orders. At me.

"About turn!"

This time only a couple women bothered to obey. The others stood, giggling idiotically, shaking their heads or other parts of their body at us. One even bared her rump to us.

"Marching by the left, twelve steps. Line - march!"

This time nobody obeyed the order. One woman made her way to three steps, but looked around and saw nobody was following her. She stopped, confused, and then joined in the uproarious laughter. Nobody laughed louder than the fat marquis.

Lotal looked at me despairingly.

"This is bad," he whispered.

"I plan to have you whipped, six strokes," I said quietly. "You don't mind, do you?"

He looked at me oddly. "Well, if you order it, I must obey..."

I strode back out and waved the women back into line. I called my men to line up facing them, and then the women were able to line up properly again.

Then I had my men fall out. I ordered the two bannermen girls out again.

"Your guards have failed in the basic drill," I said calmly. "I am awarding a demerit and a flogging of six lashes each, to be shared by my bannerman Lotal." I turned back to my men.

"Prasti, Lellik-jir, Lotal. If you'll do the honors."

Too late, the bannermen girls realized I was deadly serious about this. Prasti and Lellik-jir brought them forwards to me and knelt them on the floor, stripping their shirts off to bare their backs.

Lotal marched out smartly and knelt in front of them. He took off his shirt, baring his back, and all the scars that had come to him through our battles - a sight that seemed to shock the women into silence. He looked directly forwards with no expression whatsoever - a fact that further unsettled the women in the ranks before him.

There was deadly silence in the hall as Prasti, Lellik-jir, and I flexed our rookie's whips - the lightest and most lenient in the barracksmaster's rack.

"You cannot be serious!" shouted the marquis in despair.

"Let it be known that the company of the Talons of the Hawk does not tolerate failure," I said, and raised my whip.

"One!" I called, and brought the whip down almost caressingly to the first girl's back. Near me, Prasti brought his whip down across the other girl, and massive Lellik-jir brought his down across Lotal's back.

There were three brief, flat cracks in quick succession, and then two piercing screams split the air. I looked down at the red stripe across her back. Her chest was heaving in front and a silvery line of spittle connected her chin to her shoulder.

Prasti's woman had fallen forwards, sobbing.

Lotal, though his punisher was clearly the most powerful, said nothing. His eyes were impassive, and when I looked at him, he raised his eyebrow at me, as if to say "such a triviality".

I reached out a hand and roughly grabbed the hair of the woman before me, and Prasti did the same, dragging her up to an upright position again.

"Two!" I called. Again, three flat strokes, so close together they almost sounded like a single long one.

By the third stroke, my girl had started weeping and babbling. By the last one, she had lost control of her fluids.

The women watched as two of their fellows writhed in pain on the floor. Lotal, by contrast, stood quietly and put on his shirt. He picked up the two fallen bannerspears, and then marched back towards the standing women. His face was placid and he carried a spear in each hand.

* ~ * ~ *

Afterwards, the rest of the girls carried their bannermen away, and a servant came with a mop to clear the blood and urine from the floor. As for Lotal, he seemed entirely unfazed by the punishment, as well he should be - six lashes with the rookie's whip was considered so trifling as to be used only on raw recruits.

Lotal strode back in front of the women, and picked out two more bannermen, handing the bannerspears to them. This time there was no laughing or joking, and they sprang to obedience considerably faster. He came back to me and saluted.

"I may not have been sufficiently clear before," I said. "My men will drill again. You will be asked to repeat their actions. Are there any questions?"

We drilled once more - the same twelve step, then turn, then back again. The spear transfer was done, and my men fell out. The two bannermen girls had been watching exceptionally closely.

"Let's try this again," I said levelly. "And remember - I will be watching for mistakes."

* ~ * ~ *

We made it back to the First Temple without incident, but with a strange sense of satisfaction.

"Nicely done, Captain Hawk," Lotal said. "That whipping taught them everything they needed to know."

I scratched my head. "You know, for a moment there I wasn't sure if the marquis wasn't going to throw us out on our arses. He certainly seemed ready to."

"He could certainly try!" Lotal said. "His women would have a hard time ejecting us from the premises."

"How's the whipping holding up?" I asked.

"Barely feel it," he said. "I'm thinking of putting some salt in it to make it look more impressive. Shame to let a good scar go to waste."

I smiled. These were all fine men - real salt of the earth, as they say. And though we were far from home, they had their leader, and we all had the Talons of the Hawk.

We got back to the Temple, and Stalvan asked me how it went.

"I can't vouch for his men, because we didn't see any," I said. "But he was there with a large volume of women, and we trained them pretty well. They even learned to wheel-left and wheel-right, which is getting onto high beginner's drills. We had to put two of them to the whip, you know. Discipline."

Stalvan's eyes widened.

"Maybe you'd better tell me the whole story," he said.

And I did. He laughed at the end of it.

"Well done, Captain! We've been trying to get that Oakensborough in line for the past decade, but he just seems interested squandering his fortune." He passed a hand through his thinning grey hair. "You know what I want to do? I want to send you back there in a week's time, after he gets word from me that his militia is in poor shape and that he's under investigation. How do you think that would go?"

"I'd be happy to," I said. "Nothing like whipping a straggler into shape to prick up performance."

He poured a glass of wine.

"Will you join me, Cob?" he said.

I held up a hand.

"Cob is my old name. That man I was is now dead. I am known simply as Captain Hawk now."

He nodded. "Excellent, you will be the hunting raptor of the Temple, rooting out corruption and excess wherever you go. Cheers!"




_

[HuManBing]

The Vocation

That night, something sat on my chest as I slept in unquiet eddies. It rocked back and forth like a mischievous child on a rocking horse until, unable to breathe, I jolted awake.

"Who's there?" I said to the darkness. My voice was a cowed whisper, issuing from exhausted lungs and a throat dry from gasping for breath.

I turned onto my other side after a few heartbeats, and tried to dispel the dream. My eyes were red and hot behind their lids as I settled back in to the pillow.

Something scraped on flagstones abruptly.

I sat up, legs drawn up, my left arm out front and my right hand already tight around my scabbard.

"Who's that?" I said, my voice louder now. With a flick of my right hand, I shot the scabbard off my sword and it wavered naked in the midnight murk before me.

I noted the wavering. I cursed myself for my fears.

The scraping had stopped. I strained my ears, and then slid slowly to my left, where the oil lamp stood on my bedside table. Maybe there were rats in the cloisters. I'd never seen any around, but my door was locked and so was the wing, and then the entire compound was locked too. More likely a rat than a human.

The hairs on my neck standing, I lit a spill with some firestones, and then blinked in the sudden flickering glow. I looked around my room. Nothing.

"Damn it," I said, rubbing my eyes, tired beyond description even though my heart raced. I'd be up for hours now. Serves me right, jumping at shadows like an old woman.

I sat there awhile, trying to woo sleep through the simple exercise of trying to stay awake. My eyes drooped from the effort. My head sank towards my breast. And I felt a strange sense of comfort as the darkness overcame the sputtering candle and enveloped me in the sudden smoky caress.

A warmth spread along my shoulders and I lay back against the headboard, tilting my head back. My tension faded and I slouched, letting the feeling bathe over me, spreading its tendrils in a phantom caress. It stretched down across my chest, across my stomach, filling my heart and lungs. Across my back, too, it dabbled in gentle pit-pats, reaching across my scars and the ridges of my spine, extending warm fingers across my skin.

Fingers... on my skin...

I gasped again and sat bolt upright, scrabbling at my chest. They were all over me now, like snakes or worms. Writhing away at my exposed flesh, sinking now like a vise grip. I fell sideways, trying to brush them from me, and they intensified their horrid wriggling, insinuating themselves into my ribs, about my armpits, even climbing up and reaching for my ears and chin.

When I overbalanced and hit the ground with an abrupt thud, they vanished. Melting away into the darkness like fish from a rippling disturbance.

I groaned. The fall had not been far, but it had been sudden, and I did not manage to land well. I was sure my elbows would be bruised.

"What's eating at you?" asked a wry voice.

I whirled around in the darkness. The voice still bounced around the corners of my mind. I hunched up in a crouch and thought to where my sword was. Somewhere in the bed. In the corner of my mind, a faint familiarity bounced around, seeking. I knew the voice.

"Searching for your blade... good man," it said. "Maybe you'll repay the cut I gave you last fall training."

Then I knew.

"Lotal?" I said. "What in Mislaxa's name are you doing here?" My mind racing, taking in all the hallmarks of betrayal. The lights out. Coming to me as I slept. Gods, he was just two rooms away from me. Was he here to assassinate me? Who sent him?

I reached out and swept the covers off the bed, then passed a hand across, recovering my blade. I backed towards the table and looked for the flint.

No flint.

"Not Lotal," came the reply. The voice a low rumble now, granite in its focus. I knew it too.

I drew my sword. "Lellik-jir, then. Lotal, you too. You are not authorized to be here and if you do not leave immediately you will face the consequences," I said. My heart was in my throat as I felt with my foot across the floor near the chest of drawers. Still no flint.

"You've been doing nasty things to unarmed women," the voice said. "Whippings. Abuse. Humiliation."

I strained, listening now not for the words nor the speaker's identity, but instead trying to find a direction. It was an old trick, which Lotal and I had tried several times in training. Finding an unseen assailant. Overwhelming them with a flurry of cuts before they could use their advantage.

"Do you think the Temple will stand for this much longer?" it asked.

I recognized the voice. Stalvan. The priest.

"Where the hell are you?" I demanded angrily. "What the hell are you all doing in my..."

I stopped.

My room was small. There was barely enough room for me to polish my armor in it. There was no way three men could be milling around unseen in the darkness, talking to me like this.

Whatever it was, something was terribly out of kilter.

I stopped. A faint story, told by Pastor Dartoraigh, flitted against the rising panic in my mind. A story of there being an unseen being that sat for every person - whispering advice and guidance and intuitions from the seat on the shoulder. Other stories about evil creatures that stole into one's ear and proceeded to give wicked orders from there.

Breathing heavily, I stood up slightly, and sheathed my blade. I swallowed and closed my eyes.

There was a numerous chittering in the darkness, and then silence again.

"Good. You always did learn quickly," it said, in a warm, bold voice of a woman. I started suddenly - it was my mother's voice. "Perhaps too quickly," it said gruffly, in Wilmar's arrogant growl.

"Are you..." I said. Then swallowed again, to get the tremor out of my voice. "Are you... my ghost?"

My words faded out into the soft bedroom darkness.

There was a sloughing breath in the void. Then a ragged exhalation.

I gripped my sword, my lips tight. What in Hiteh's name was this? Was I finally going mad?

"Captain," it said simply. A woman's voice: lilting, sorrowful, yearning. "You promised me you would come to me. Did you lie?"

I goggled.

"Alicov?" I asked. "Was it you all along?"

She gave no response for a brief spell of heartbeats. Then she sighed again. Her voice wavered when she spoke, as though she had been crying.

"I waited and waited. But you never came," she said. "Did you abandon me? Did you find another? Or - worst of all - did you simply forget?"

"No. No!" I shouted. "I'll come to you. I still have much to tell you." I tripped and stumbled into the side of the bed. My sword was heavy in my leaden hand, and I dropped it as I climbed onto my bed.

"Don't forget me," she said, sadly.

Then, with a mistlike breeze that rustled my curtains, I felt her leave. A gentle clatter, as of pebbles and grass in the wind, followed. Also, a low muttering or chittering.

My heart beat a furious tattoo against my ribs as I finally found my flint and lit the candle, blinking again as I looked around.

I was completely alone. The locks were still in place, locking me in with my visions.

* ~ * ~ *

Prasti saw me at the dining room.

"You look like a horse trampled you. Problems sleeping?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I keep nodding off."

I stopped him. "We don't have anything till next week, right?" I asked.

"So far as I know."

"Okay," I said. I picked up an apple.

"You okay, Hawk?" he asked. "You look a little pale."

I leaned heavily against the table.

"I had some... weird dream," I said, trying to recall. "I have to do something really important."

Prasti chucked my shoulder.

"If it's anything I can help with, let me know, eh?" he said.

I sat down, unable to remember. I fed some morsels to the preybirds outside the window, and put on my good clothes. I was overcome with an intense desire to see Alicov again. To hear her laugh, to feel her in my arms.

Reaching through my memory, I called for the single sentence she told me. It came readily to mind from my forebrain:

Hawkbluff Overlook, Twenty-three Falcon's Way, Alicov Book Publishers, in her clear and precise voice. I could even see her finger spelling out the letters on her card.

I took the card with me just in case, and stepped out, my paces bending towards the warehouses and tradesmen of the Overlook District, an unaccountable lightness in my step.





_

[HuManBing]

The Hawk's Lady

I got to her business, which was one of a row of houses that fronted onto the street. It was four storeys high, and the sign on the front of the building matched the writing on the card exactly.

I went in.

"May I help you?" asked an old man, peering at me above glass eyes. His face was round and a little jowly, but his eyes seemed bright enough and his fingers were very dextrous.

I looked around. "I'm here to... discuss a book," I said. "This is Alicov Book Publishers?"

"Publishing," he said, "but that only matters if you're a stick-in-the-mud. You're in the right place, friend." I cursed myself for getting the last bit wrong. It would not do to let slip my illiteracy this easily. I would need more work.

The man took out a ledger. "Are you an author, a reader, or a printer?" he asked. "And what's your name?"

I thought about this.

"I'm not sure about the other stuff," I said. "But I talked with Alicov about a book. She knows me as the Captain."

The man looked through the ledger and shook his head. "Master Alicov didn't leave any word about any Captain. Was there a working title?"

My spirits sank. "No. No, there wasn't. Alicov just interviewed me and then took the writing," I said.

Something struck me.

"Did you say 'Master Alicov'?" I asked.

The man nodded. "The Master is my employer," he said.

"Alicov is a woman, though," I said. "Surely?" I was pretty sure about this. I would definitely have noticed if she had been a man.

The man gave a wry smile. "I'm afraid there are certain things I cannot divulge. Rest assured that your confusion is not unique," he said.

He pushed the book at me, and a pencil.

"If you would care to leave your name, and your business address..." he said.

I paced about in confusion.

"I... I can't read or write," I said despondently. "She knows this. Are you sure she's not a woman?" I asked, with a trace of desperation. "I am fairly certain she is."

The man smiled sympathetically. "Not to worry. I can tell you that your eyes do not deceive you, but I cannot say any more," he said. He took the pencil and paper. "Master Alicov is not in, but may return later on this evening. Master Alicov is usually quite prompt with returning business visits, especially about books."

He wrote down a single word in the left margin.

"You said your name is just 'Captain', right?"

I nodded dumbly.

"Very good. Where can Master Alicov reach you?" he asked.

I gave him my address at the First Temple.

"I shall be on the grounds until five days hence," I said. "The Temple has put me to training nobles' guards and the next engagement will take me out of the grounds all day."

"Very good," he said.

"Ah... if you can, please let her... Master Alicov," I corrected myself, "...know, that women are not permitted to visit us in the undercroft. I may be able to meet Master Alicov outside at a third location to discuss the book."

I thought about this.

"Assuming 'she' is a woman," I said.

The man nodded.

"Do not lose faith," he said. "I assure you Alicov will receive your note. You might expect a response within a day."

I thanked him and left, my hands clenched behind my back.

* ~ * ~ *

I stopped at the Breezewall, a railed district on the cliffside's leewards face. The view was phenomenal, with a quilted patchwork of fields and crops stretching away, and towers and fortifications dotting the landscape around the river that coiled, snakelike, around the foundations of our city. As always, the raptors circled, accustomed to the presence of men, but still not yet fully tamed to their hands.

There was some steel in my pocket, and I wandered about aimlessly among the bazaars and shops. At one, a young child guided a tiny dog as it paced atop a rolling ball. At another, children ate a confection that changed shape and color on the turning wick.

I bought a fried cake from a roadside vendor and ate it, while looking at some miniature paintings, barely bigger than a sheet from Alicov's notebook. The detail was amazing, and I found myself looking at one that featured a mountain aerie, looking down among the fields and pastures below. A dark shadow across the right foreground hinted at a hawk standing guard.

"How much?" I asked. When I brought the price down to something I was willing to pay, I fingered over the coins from my pouch. They wrapped it in soft papers and tied it with string to give to me.

Perusing more stalls and pictures, I saw one that pierced me. This one was painted in rolling fields and gentle hills, nowhere near Hawkbluff. I picked it up and looked closer. It featured a stream in the middle distance, fields and low stone walls in the far distance. In the foreground there were the crooked fence posts of an old shepherd's fence, uneven with age.

I thought of Forg, and the fields where Prent and I used to play. All at once, I felt a surge of homesickness. I put the picture down and turned back into the impossibly blue afternoon sky. Prent had been the last person in Forg who had not betrayed me. Where was he now? He had been the one that had brought me to the Temple's safety, not once but several times.

As I circled in the shadow of the First Temple, all the while, I had a dizzy sense of falling, falling, into the cerulean majesty of the skies above.

* ~ * ~ *

Alicov's response was surprisingly fast. There was a note in my cloister by the evening, and I took it to the priest for them to translate.

Alicov Book Publishing would be delighted to discuss the matter with you over dinner. You may visit this evening or at your leisure tomorrow.

I thought about this. Alicov must have known I couldn't read. So why send a written note? This note also sounded quite unlike her - too serious. Then again, I thought with a twinge of amusement, the priests didn't need to know the lecherous truth behind her facade.

For a time, I thought about staying at my room. But then I realized I wouldn't get any sleep, either way.

I rose and went forth through the darkening streets again, to the Overlook District. The bazaar was closing, but I stopped by a flower stall on the way.

* ~ * ~ *

The building was still light, but the front door was locked. Inside, reading a book by a lantern, was Alicov - the same red-haired seductress I'd met on the road.

Though her hair was tied back severely from her face, my heart leapt to see her.

I savored the vision a second, and then knocked gently. She looked up and smiled and let me in.

"Captain," she said. "So good to see you again!"

"Hello," I said. "I brought you some flowers."

She took them from me and breathed deeply of their scent, and then turned her face to me, beaming.

"Thank you!" she said, and put them in a vase in the window. She closed her book where she had been reading it, and took the lantern.

"My apartment is on the third floor," she said. "Come up with me, and I can kiss you there like I want to."

This was an excellent proposal. I followed her up a narrow landing, where we ascended past a floor that appeared to be populated entirely by piles of paper, and then to her quarters.

The moment we stepped in through the door, we fell to a fit. I took her and kissed her, and she returned it with a ferocity that surprised even me. She kicked the door shut with her foot and held out her hand to steady the lantern, but the shadows still leapt and flickered alarmingly as we staggered across the room and landed in a couch.

Almost as quickly, she jumped up again and pushed me away.

"I'm sorry, there's something I have to... just one moment," she said. As I watched in bemusement, she opened the lantern top, and set the naked flame underneath a glass contraption. She reached into her bodice and took out two large eggs, and put them into the glass. She closed the door and adjusted the candle.

"I hatch eggs," she said to me, by way of explanation. "It's something to do."

Then she looked down, following my gaze to her bosom.

"Well, maybe you could help me with this," she said.

As I set to work, she carried the conversation.

"It's been a while," she gasped. "I wondered whether you'd come. How long has it been?"

"Too long," I said, and meant it.

"No, really, how long has it been?" she said, furrowing her brow. "Two days?"

"Maybe three," I said.

She raised her eyebrows. "Gosh, three days. It feels like a lot longer." She unbuttoned my shirt, and then we fell to kissing again.

"You're a confusing woman to find," I said, untying inexpertly. "This employee downstairs led me to think Alicov was a man."

Her stays finally came apart and I lifted her shirt. Underneath, she was most definitely a woman.

"Hah!" she laughed. "Yes, that's not by accident either." She prised off my belt, taking care to let the scabbard down gently. "Nobles and printers don't like to pay money to a woman. If they think I'm a man, they'll give me full price. Come here, you."

I did. She closed her eyes and bit my shoulder, then kissed my neck in little nipping motions that seared me straight down the length of my body. When I could talk again, I asked "Your secret's out with me, though. Hah?" I kissed her nose. "And I'm a writer."

"Well, writers are different. They don't owe me money - just product."

"I'll give you product."

"Please do," she said. Then she put the hem of her dress into her mouth and shrieked into fabric as I burrowed away in her skirts.

* ~ * ~ *

It took us a long time to get to the dinner table, and there we found some cold meats and a soup, tepid.

Alicov sipped and sighed.

"I'll put it in the warming tray," she said. She lifted them into a metal bowl and set it onto a contraption with water above a small fire set deep in a box.

"I'm sorry I made your dinner cold," I said.

She waved this away good-naturedly. "Oh, stuff," she said. "Remigerius is used to me reading late. That's why he got me the warming tray."

"I see," I said. Alicov turned an air vent in the side and the fire flared briefly and then dimmed.

She waved around her house, taking in the books, papers, paintings, and prints all lying around in glorious abandon.

"I have to be very careful with fire," she said. "No naked flames except under the hatchery. Everything else - contained, ideally in a lantern. You see there are so many papers scattered through here. Be careful around corners, too. There are a lot of buckets of water around and you'll likely trip if you're not careful."

I peeked around her nearest corner. "You're not joking," I said admiringly. There were buckets on the floor, filled to the brim. Buckets on the shelves. Also, buckets suspended over doors and from the roofs, with chains hanging down to hand level.

"Who's Remigerius?" I asked, trying to keep my tone level.

"You met him," Alicov called. "Wears glasses. Watches the shops while I'm out."

Ah, I thought. The gent who had taken down my notes downstairs.

"Is he an employee? Family member?"

Alicov came up to me with a bowl of soup.

"He's an employee, and he's also the cousin of an uncle," she said. "Not many people know that." She laid a spoon down by my side.

The soup was good and she sat down next to me with the meats. In the candlelight, she looked less pale - as if a glow of warmth and infinite kindness rose from within. The tilt of her head, far from being a droop of fatigue, seemed to me immediately delicate: a rose in the moonlight. She looked at me with eyes darkened in the shadows.

"I don't mean to pry," I said, after a pause. "I just feel like I know almost nothing about you."

"I could tell you my name," she said teasingly. "But you know the exchange for that."

"Yes..." I faded for a while. "I can't go through with the bargain, not yet. I've nothing to give you in exchange at this time."

"You understand that it's rather awkward for me to be sharing my bed with a man who doesn't have a name," she said archly.

"Well, take me to your bed and I'll tell you what I can."

"Is that a threat?"

"Absolutely."

"One second," she said, and poured a glass of wine for us both. She knocked hers back quickly, and poured another one, which she savored more slowly. I drank mine and blinked. This stuff was strong.

"All right," she said, after a startling third glass. "Let's get to bed. Easier to talk there."

She took me down a row of doors, each with locks and numerous jerry-rigged buckets, and decided on one. She was on the verge of unlocking it, then remembered something.

"Remigerius didn't clear the flowers," she said. "I forgot."

We came into what she called the Blue Room. One keyturn later, I peeked in. There were divans, vanity tables, and a curtained four-poster-bed. She put up a candle in a stone niche in the wall. The ceiling sloped slightly and she had put up stars, circles, and discs in some faint metallic paint.

"I couldn't afford an astrolabe," she said. "But this room comes close enough. It reminds me of my place in the Universe." She tapped a set of books on a reading table.

More and more it became a puzzle to me how she got here. It seemed she was a veritable storehouse of odd knowledge. Even given her literacy, that hardly explained how she became so knowledgeable. Nor did her odd profession explain this - she must have gotten the job because she already knew enough to do it properly.

Most oddly, I found it hard to pin down her age. Given my most recent confusion about her gender, it became obvious there was very little I actually could solidly say with any confidence about Alicov.

Not least of all her name. Master Alicov, owner of the Alicov Book Publishing company, a woman of limitless access to trivia, a stooped manservant-uncle-cousin who cleared her flowers from her rooms - or didn't on certain days, and large numbers of locked consecutive bedrooms, in which she stored vast numbers of books, guarded over by many vigilant buckets of water.

I watched her undress. This time, under the coolness of the sapphire false sky above us, it seemed a strangely chaste act. Like some woodland sprite, she seemed to grow purer with each article she removed: here was her hair, unbound as nature wove it. Next, her fawnlike legs, pale and twittering in the gloaming. She saw me looking, and instead of her usual coquettishness, she merely stood up tall to face me, her own gaze meeting my own without shame.

She slid into bed and gave out a sigh.

"Chilly sheets," she said. "This is the hardest part."

"Funny," I muttered, "I did reckon you preferred warm over cold."

"And how," she said.

The sheets were cool across my back and very soft. Somewhere, I encountered the bright caresses of comfort that were her legs, and she curled up like a large kitten against me. She raised herself onto an elbow and spent some time looking over me.

"So, let's start with your address," she said. "You live in a Temple cloister?"

"They call it the Undercroft," I said. "Don't ask me what that means."

"It's a cellar or a brick room underground," Alicov murmured.

I stopped.

"Odd, I have a beautiful view of the city from my windows though," I said. "It's nothing like a cellar."

Alicov closed her eyes and smiled. "Well, some of these buildings are carved from the mountain itself. And the only way to go is down. So what was a cellar later becomes the ground floor, and then an upper floor."

"Makes sense. And how about you? You have an apartment above the shop?"

She nodded proudly. "My own. I bought it, and I own it, and I rent from nobody. The only person in Hawkbluff who can kick me out of this place is Bishop Trandamere," she said. "Lock, stock, and barrel. Or in this case, bookcase."

I thought back to Flex, and the work I'd done for Sardricor, evicting people from tenements in the name of the property owner, Lady Varadis.

"It's wonderful to have that sort of freedom," I said. "Renting can be a form of servitude. Always living at the whim of another."

"That's why I'm so careful with the flames," she said. "My whole adult life is in these walls. My books, my papers, my livelihood. There's an underground cellar with a metal vault where I put proofs of all the writings I publish so even if the fire destroys everything, I still have those to start over with."

Something about her, the boldness and the fearlessness of her expression, made me pull her close and kiss her. She returned it gently. When that was over, she looked down at me.

"Tell me about how you live," she said. "What's the life of a soldier, away from the battlefront?"

I thought to my empty room, the mark of the Temple on the wall. The hawks outside the window. My frugal bed.

"Mostly, life away from the battlefront isn't life at all," I said. "It's waiting. It's watching the civilians around you take for granted what they enjoy, forgetting the hard work that went into winning it for them. It's looking back at what you've given, what you've taken, what you've left behind, and wondering if it was all worth it."

"How many men followed you in the field?" she asked.

"Maybe two hundred in the camps," I said. "In the field, sometimes upwards of two thousand. Nearer the end, I gave up the big armies. The men are mostly lightly trained or conscripts, and there's no leading that type. Give me a man who knows his blade and knows his leader, and who will never back down till he loses one or the other."

"And now?" she asked.

"Twelve," I said. "Including myself."

She turned in the sheets.

"How many women have followed you?" she asked.

"None," I said. "The battlefield is no place for a woman. People lose their humanity out there. They tear each other limb from limb, and move on to the next. And everybody relies on everybody else to give their utmost. If there's a weak link, everybody suffers."

She looked at me again.

"How about outside of the field," she asked. "How many women there?"

I frowned in puzzlement. "How do you mean?"

"How many women have meant as much to you as your trusted men here?"

I thought about this.

"My mother, Bela. My adoptive sister, Sootri. One time, my adoptive aunt, Anveran. But they are all gone now," I said slowly. "Anveran stopped talking after something happened to her in the war. She followed me to Flex, and died of the cold. Sootri rode my shoulders as my child ward in the same march to Flex. When peace returned, we went back to Forg."

I found the next part hard to tell.

"Sootri grew to love me as more than a brother. She took me to a cave that only we knew about, and I tried to make her happy. But it felt wrong and she must have hated me. Years later, when I was an outlaw, she told them I tried to force her," I said, staving off the grief from my voice. "I don't know what I could have done differently."

Alicov took this in stride. "How about your mother. How about Bela?" she asked.

"She told me she wished I was dead in a ditch," I said. "When I was an outlaw, the man she loved was sent to kill me. She had to choose. She chose him. I can't give her her wish, but this is the best I can do."

"And that's why you changed your name?"

I nodded.

She stroked my hair, a strange expression on her face.

"What was your name then?"

"Bela-jir, which means 'Of Bela', and then Ah-Cob, which means 'Master Cob'," I said. "And Bela said she wished I was dead, and all the people who had called me Cob had no more reason to do so." I sighed and shivered, then looked at her. "I owe my life to Bishop Trandamere. I wanted to die. I would have died, if not for him. He gave me a bull of pardon and brought me here. Anything I couldn't carry, I left behind in Forg. Since I wasn't fit to bear my names, I left those behind too."

"And what is your name now?" she asked softly.

"We are the company of the Talons of the Hawk," I said. "My men are pleased to be called the Talons. So I suppose that makes me the Hawk."

Alicov smiled, pleased.

"You are Captain Hawk, then. I finally have a name to call you."

"Yes."

She embraced me and kissed me, saying my new name over, as if getting used to the sound of it. We fell gently to another spell of lovemaking, amidst her silken sheets.

* ~ * ~ *

For a time I slept, and then woke and watched her sleeping. Then in the darkness she adjusted her nose to meet the pulse in my neck, and I knew she was awake and I put my arm around her shoulder.

We lay silent for a while and then she turned to me. She gave me a story too - like a gift.

"I have something to tell you," she said. She got up and went to the armoire, and rummaged around a bit. Then she brought out a white dress that featured a long train, and a wreath of flowers with a veil. A few dried petals, black with age, fluttered to the ground.

"My wedding gown," she said sadly. "I was twelve. I was still known as Alinestra Covelia, then."

"Alinestra Covelia," I repeated. There was a lyrical lightness in the name. "That's beautiful."

She held the virgin's vestments before her womanly nakedness. She was clearly too tall for the gown now. It must have been a while ago.

"I was betrothed to my cousin, Karas Markeides - last eligible scion of the Markeides family, at eighteen years old," she said. "I travelled with my parents from New Aurim to the old baronial lands near a town out setwards, I don't recall the name. Somebody at our home in New Aurim told the Verdinesh that we were due there, and Verdinesh sent mercenaries to intercept us."

Alicov - Alinestra - laid the wedding gown down on the bed.

"My cousin rushed to the hamlet where we were staying the night," she said. "There wasn't much time. They wed us, right there, in the humble inn, and my cousin took me upstairs and deflowered me in a rough bed. All the while he kept his eyes closed - and when he put his lips by my ear I could hear him praying for an heir. Always, for an heir. When we were done he brought me wine, saying it would help me forget, and then he kissed my hand and said he was sorry he couldn't be gentler. I was hurt and confused and very scared, but I think he really meant it. He'd never been anything but good to me before then."

"And afterwards?" I asked.

She shook her head and took a ragged breath.

"He strapped on his sword and rode up to the next village to meet the Verdinesh," she said. "He never came back. The Verdinesh came to our inn and fought my guards, except for three: Remigerius and his kin. Remigerius locked me in my room and stood guard with me inside."

She was weeping now, two streams of silvery light skittish under her eyes. But her voice was still level, and she spoke with a calm that belied a fierce self-control.

"And then strangers came and killed my men, and then they killed the Verdinesh men, and killed the two other guards, and put their bodies into the square and hung them," she said. "They killed the people who ran the inn. They killed the farmers and the ostler next door. And they brought fire and torch to every roof in the hamlet."

I went to her, carrying a sheet with me to wrap her.

"...and then...?" I asked.

"And then they left," she said simply. "They didn't want anything. They didn't care about my family's petty feuds. They just came to make a point. And they raised a black flag in the middle of the courtyard and rode away."

From behind, I wrapped the sheet around her shoulders and put my hands there, warming her. She raised a hand to touch mine, staring off, head erect.

"I was five years old when those men came to my town," I said. "They killed my real father before I knew him, and made my mother a widow. They were Malarchus' men. The sable banner."

She looked at me.

"They came to your town too?" she asked.

"Forg," I reminded her. "Who was the lord of your kinsman's town?"

She shook her head.

"What was its flag?" I asked.

"...three stripes..." she said, remembering. "Blue, white, green."

"Was it called Hasid?" I asked. I recalled Lotal, as a kid, marching around in the fields with the bloody tatter of Hasid's flag wrapped around his shoulders.

She brightened slightly in recognition. "That sounds right," she said. "We only had a few kin there, but it was originally where my people came from."

I continued massaging her shoulders, and steered her back to the bed. She rested her head on my chest and her arm lay bare on top of the sheets.

"We don't know what the Verdinesh house was like, after that attack. Maybe they were just as hard up as we were," she said. "I had to go into hiding immediately, in case I was carrying a little Markeides in my belly." She reached for a silver flask by the bedside and took a pull. "But the months passed and there was no baby, and so I could come back to the heartlands. But not to New Aurim. To Hawkbluff. There to continue my studies with Remigerius as a noble in exile. And finally, when the money ran dry in my eighteenth year, to go forth and become a working woman of the city."

She swept her arm out with a grandiloquent gesture. But she kept her face turned from me. I could hear the hint of bitterness in her voice despite the evident pride.

"Are they still after you?" I asked.

"We don't know," she said. "That's why I'm just Alicov now. It's not an uncommon name for men. Very rare for women. But..." she yawned. "It's been, what? Fourteen years? They haven't come after me yet. But it's worth remembering there is no Baron Markeides of Hasid anymore."

I patted her comfortingly in the small of her back, through the sheets.

"Maybe that is the reason why you are safe now," I said.

She hiccupped slightly, though it might have been a sob. Or equally, a curt laugh. "There's another reason I'm safe," she said sleepily. "I'm here with you."

I turned her back around and looked at her face. Still brightly bearing the tears, but with an inexpressible softness in her gaze - a gentle patch of red color high on each cheek. In a flash, I saw a vision, of two trees stunted as saplings by an early frost - but growing around each other, and in so doing, growing strong.

With a delicate motion, I gathered her in my arms and rested my forehead lightly on hers. Taking in the crimson and emerald, beneath a sea of azure.

"Yes, I'm here with you," I said.



_

[HuManBing]

Twisted Trees

I woke with a start. Faintly, a stealthy noise echoed in my consciousness.

Beside me, the bed empty. Tousled sheets. A faint light further down the hall.

I got up, slowly, in the pensive murk of the dawn's edge. I slid on my sandals.

Again, the sound. A choking. Or a death-rattle. Distressed gasping.

I swore at myself, all senses alert now. Something bubbled up from my fogged memories - something about Verdinesh killers, tracking Alicov from the shadows.

Where in Hiteh's name was my sword? I scrabbled for it. Then for my belt. Neither was here. Belatedly, I realized I must have left it outside, in her dining area.

Think, think, dammit.

A fireplace here. A poker. Firm in my hand. Yes, this would do. A mirror gave me a start, but then I looked at myself, bollock-naked in the gloom. No armor. Nothing to protect me from danger save my muscle and my scars.

Well, the scars would be up for it, I thought grimly, if only to make new friends. Misery loves company.

I snuck out the door, into the dimly-familiar corridor outside. A rustling curtain somewhere clacked against a wall, behind closed doors. To my right, the dining hall.

I craned with my ears. And then, the unmistakable, sickened gasp of a female throat fighting for air. The thumps of heels on tile. Death by smothering or garrotte.

I spun towards it. A door at the end of the hall, pounding closer in my vision as I lurched towards it and burst open, my hand raised behind my ear with the poker, ready to stave in her attacker.

* ~ * ~ *

"You weren't supposed to see this," Alicov said in a low moan, then retched again. She turned her head back to the night bucket and spat a thick strand.

"Allie, what's wrong?" I asked.

She gave out another puking noise and recovered. Holding her stomach with her arms. She took several deep breaths. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat.

"Bad liver," she said. "That's what the chirurgeon told me. When I was eighteen." She glopped her lips for a few seconds. "Said I should stop drinking. Hah. Hah! That was eight years ago and I'm still here. And he's dead. So I guess the joke's on him."

She laughed drily, then suddenly caught my gaze. She turned her face away from me.

"Please. Just. Go," she said, sounding very small all of a sudden.

I turned on my heel and went.

Outside in the dining hall, I made a fire in the warming tray and put a measure of water in. I went back along the hallway and tried doors until I found a linen closet. She had several towels.

In the bathroom, Alicov puked again, then gave a ragged sigh of misery. I picked up the pace.

I brought a basin of warm water, a hot soaked towel for her face, and dry large towel for her body.

"What... what are you doing here?" she asked.

I shushed her softly and rested her on my thigh. She closed her eyes, exhausted, as I cleaned her face and mouth gently.

"You shouldn't..." she said. But I shushed her and wrung out the towel and soaked it again. I started on her hair.

"We'll do fine just yet," I said. "You and me, Allie. We'll be fine."

Near the end, she started crying. Real, heaving sobs that shook her frame. Sometimes, she sounded like she was laughing - it was so violent.

"I'm so sorry, Hawk," she hissed as best as she could between her sobs, hiding her face from me. "I can't help it."

I gave her a quick towel-bath from the basin, the way my Company would do for a wounded fellow on the field, and then wrapped the bigger towel around her. She still trembled but she leaned against me, her damp hair lank against my cheek. Occasionally, she coughed, but she was no longer retching.

"Poor baby," I said, stroking her hair. "It'll be all right. All of it, all right."

I gathered her up in my arms easily and carried her back to the Blue Room, the hem of her towel trailing from her legs, and then I slid her back under the covers. I smoothed out her hair over her eyes. Her hand found my arm and she smiled wanly from the bed.

"Luminous man art thou," she recited softly, "whose coming brings light unto the world thou walk'st upon. And at whose going, all creation sighs anew, and bates its breath... awaiting the distant dawn."

I tweaked her nose playfully.

"I didn't understand a thing you just said, Allie," I said lightly. "Why don't you keep your highfalutin insults to yourself?"

Her smile warmed then, and she even chuckled. Then her eyes screwed shut and she cringed as another pain racked her.

"I'll get Remigerius," I said, and got up.

She coughed.

"Hokh... Hok... Hawk!" she called.

I stuck my head back around the door frame. She pointed at the floor.

"Your clothes," she said hoarsely.

"Oh. Right."

* ~ * ~ *

Remigerius lived on the fourth floor, in a converted loft. I brought him and he came down to Allie, brewing her a tea that brought relief from the pain, if not a cure. Then he motioned me outside.

"Captain, was it?" he asked, poking about the remains of our meal.

"Captain Hawk, of the company of the Talons of the Hawk," I said.

"Hawk, yes. How much did she drink last night?"

I searched my memory. "About... three glasses."

He held up an empty bottle. "Of this stuff?" he asked. I nodded. "Urrggh..." he exhaled and made a face. "This is bad."

He turned back to me.

"Did you talk with her at all?" he asked.

"About the book, you mean?"

"No, nitwit, not about the book, not about the birds, and not about the bees," he said testily. "I mean when you were busy shagging her in her own bed, did she tell you anything? About her home, her past? About me?" There was nothing gentlemanly about him now. I looked into his face and I saw a look I recognized. A dormant fighting spirit, suddenly alert and sniffing out the best route to survival. One that wouldn't hesitate to beat a path over my corpse.

I gulped and nodded. He didn't look that threatening, but I didn't want to make any assumptions. The oldest wolves are the wiliest.

He put down the wine bottle and adjusted his lenses. "I see," he said. "That complicates matters."

"Her secret is safe with me," I said. "I'm in a similar situation myself. Hence the confused name."

"Well, if you were working for them, you'd be a singularly inept assassin," he said.

He looked around. "You'd best be off," he said.

I looked back at the Blue Room, and turned back to him.

"No, I think I'll stay here and help," I said.

He produced a card from his pocket.

"Does the Temple know you're here, fornicating with a political exile?" he asked with careful deliberate menace.

"No," I said. "If they did, I'd have to tryst with Allie somewhere else, much less secure."

He sighed. "You're not the first man she's tried to charm and wassail into protecting her, you know. She's even been married, once," he said.

I nodded. "I don't care. She's an orphan of the war, and so am I - she lost a husband and family, and I lost a father. She needs somebody, and you can't be around forever," I said, uncaring if I offended him. "She has foresight enough to try to prepare for that, and there's nobody who could blame her for that."

He only grunted, clattering plates and dropping cutlery into a basin on a trolley.

He fixed me with a saturnine eye.

"Give me one good reason why I'm cleaning up after you, Hawk," he said.

I jumped up and helped him shift the plates. Then when he left me to go see to Allie in the room, I stayed where I was and cleaned them. He returned after a while.

"She's sleeping now," he said. "But the help isn't coming in today. I'm locking up here to get to the Temple for some medicine. Is your name any good there?"

I nodded. "Yes, they've seen me purifying by a cold water bath every night this past week," I said.

He grunted again and put on a hat to cover his baldness against the elements. I noticed he walked with a slight limp, though his arms seemed full of strength.

"Come along, then," he said. "Let's go and see if you can use your credentials to get her some decent medicines."



_

[HuManBing]

Regeneration

As it turned out, my word was better than I had expected. The priests saw me and I explained to them that an associate of mine in the publishing business needed some medicines.

Remigerius gave them the prognosis of Allie's condition, and they sent us down to the herbalist immediately.

"This man's chastity and self-denial is an inspiration to us all," said the priest as he mixed the ingredients with his mortar and pestle. "He's always in the cold water tub, mortifying the body in order to salve the soul."

Remigerius gave me a pointed look but I kept my face studiously blank and only smiled when the priest handed us a paper packet of the medicine.

"Make your associate take that every day before bed and watch closely for any discharge from the mouth," he said. "If it's clear, you're fine. If it's bilious, your friend may need further help."

He peered at my companion.

"Try to eliminate alcohol entirely," he said. "The liver isn't like your stomach - it doesn't complain even if you've overdone it. If your friend is feeling in pain now, then his liver may be in serious trouble. The only cure is to stay away from wines, beer, spirits - anything that would taint your body."

I thanked him and set off back to the Overlook District.

Remigerius raised his eyebrows at me.

"Sleeping in cold water?" he said. "You're made of sterner stuff than I thought."

It would have been a shame to waste his regard.

"Yeah," I said, stretching ever so slightly. "My company of men, we've been through much but who knows what is yet to come. We like to stay sharp."

Back upstairs, Remigerius set to, making the infusion for Allie to drink, and I went to the Blue Room. He raised no objection this time.

Allie was asleep, on her left side. Her right arm formed a nook, and her face lay in tousled profile as she breathed smoothly.

I looked around and poured out her waterglass, then filled it with the beaker. Something caught me and I stopped, sniffing. Then I tasted the beaker, and spat it out immediately. It was strong spirits.

Rearranging her bottles took some time. I carried out a few to Remigerius.

"We have to get these away from her," I said. "The priest said it was really serious."

He gave me a tired look. "I'm not arguing with you. But good luck - you'll need it, to make any headway with her."

I dumped them in a basin and went back to her. She was still resting, but had shifted in bed so she was facing up. She looked well enough. Her curls were still the deep, glossy red, and her face was peaceful.

Strange to think that her condition could be described as serious.

* ~ * ~ *

When she woke up, I handed her a glass of water, which she gulped down. She slowed after that and drank the second more slowly. Then I got her the mug of the medicine.

She made a face.

"That again," she said. "I used to call it The Smeg when I was younger."

"Go on, drink it down," I said. She did, though she gagged at first.

"I need something stronger," she said. "To kill the pain."

I shook my head. "The priests said..."

She cut me off. "They always do," she said evenly. "But right now I want a glass of wine."

I shook my head again. "It's not safe for you," I said. "The liver doesn't..."

"...it doesn't usually hurt until the condition is critical," she finished for me. "I've been told this so many times, Hawk. But you're not listening to me. This is what I want you to do. I want you to go outside and make me a drink of white wine mixed with an equal amount of water. You will bring this back to me here and I will drink it and my guts will settle."

I gestured behind me. "I threw them out, and Remigerius helped."

I watched her eyes go round.

"You what?" she asked, sharply.

"However, I got you something familiar that won't hurt," I said. "They brought in a cart from the orchards in the Breezewall. Fresh pressed grape juice."

She raised herself on her shoulders and read the label. Her voice came out oikish - like a villager's mumbled thick accent.

"Why-aye, look'ee, this here be the Gleneagles Orchard, like, where we press the grape accordin' to family tradition, right?" she said, in a most unexpected high-pitched rapid-fire dialect. "An'if ya doon't like it ye kin bloody wel' bugg'r'off. Or bugg'r yer mam, whichever you do be preferrin'. Group discounts fer bugg'rin' seniors, aye?"

"It does not say that," I said indignantly.

"Does too," she said. "It's got the accent and everything."

I peered at the bottle label and grimaced. "I'm... not very good at picking these things out."

"I don't blame you," she said, lying back down in the sheets. "You can't read."

That stung me. I got up.

"Hawk," she said. "I didn't mean it that way."

I picked up my hat and sat down to pull up my boots. She watched me, her fingertips beating out a tattoo on the headboard. When I was done, my voice was calm enough to talk to her evenly.

"Keep away from the wines and get well," I said. "You have an enviable life, and it's within your power to preserve it. Or waste it."

She nodded. "You have a keen mind, and you seem like you want to improve it," she said. "My comment about not reading really nettled you, didn't it?"

If there had been any trace of mockery in her voice, I would have strode out of the bedroom and never thrown a backwards glance. But the way she asked it was earnest, and her eyes were gentle.

I sighed and turned back to face her.

"Every day that goes past, I wish I'd paid more attention to the Temple lessons as a boy," I said.

"I can teach you to read."

"Don't joke," I said.

"I'm not. It's really not that difficult once you have enough practice. And as you already know, the benefits are profound," she said.

She looked at the grape juice.

"For instance, you could have left the bottle here with a note instead of putting your neck on the block and telling me in person," she said.

I laughed despite myself. "Writing as a way of telling them the bad news?"

"Exactly," she said. She scooted up. "Give me a hand. I'll take you to the Black Room. We can start now."

She arched an eyebrow.

"Our mutual pride permitting, of course."

* ~ * ~ *

The Black Room was a room with many more buckets of water inside, and not just because of the book piles. The first thing Allie did upon entering was to hobble over to the wall and dip a sponge in the water.

She wiped the wall surface clean of the chalky scribbles that had filled it.

"What did that say?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing. Just my personal poetry," she said. "I sleep in this room whenever I'm working on something creative - usually a poem or when I'm doing mockups of illustrations."

She took some chalk and made several deliberate, slow letters on the board.

"Kids pick this up really fast," she said. "You're going to take it slower. So we'll do a few shortcuts."

She rummaged through the books.

"This one - The King's Language and the Untutored Adult," she said.

We spent the next hour going over sounds. It took a real force of focus to remember all the little squiggles, and then I had to rack my brain to find the corresponding sound. But by degrees, they stuck, and it was with a sudden rush of delight that I found myself able to guess at words she had scribbled elsewhere on the walls.

"Sky," I read, excited with the keen sense of synaptic elation. "Sun! Cup, spoon, fork!"

"Kuh..."

I stopped.

"Kuh-niffy?"

"Knife," she said, giggling. "But don't let that bother you. You're catching on fast. What's this one?"

I stared. "Hawwyk," I said. Then shook my head. "Hawk. Hawk!" I said, smiling at her. "Write Allie," I said.

She did. Three little squiggles. A-L-I.

Then she wrote a load more after them, and I couldn't keep up.

"Alinestra Covelia," she read, sadly. Then she erased the last parts of each, shaking her head. "Alicov. Me."

I gave her a hug.

"Write it again," I said. "It's such a beautiful name... Alinestra Covelia."

"It's not safe," she protested.

"But we're here in the Black Room," I said in a conspiratorial whisper. "Nobody will know, and I won't tell."

She melted slightly and wrote it again. Then she underlined it for good measure.

"I like the way you say my name," she said. "I haven't heard anybody call me that in so long."

I started to distract her by kissing her neck, and she lifted her hair out of the way, when she suddenly remembered something and turned back.

"Oh, Hawk, you cannot call me anything except Alicov, outside of this apartment," she said. "No Allie, no Alinestra. Just Alicov, master of the publishing house. It's safest."

I nodded. "I would never put you in danger," I said.

A thought struck me.

"Although, some might say there are other things you can do to be safe," I said. "In my expert soldier's opinion."

She looked at me quizzically.

"Stop drinking, for one," I said.

She deflated and threw the chalk at me. Then a pillow.

"It's not a choice for me," she said. "It really isn't. It's a necessity. If I could stop, I would. But I can't and that's all there is to it. And you're not helping."

"You could choose," I said. "It's an addiction..."

"Addiction my arse!" she said hotly. "The world went to Hiteh on a hotplate when I was twelve and nothing was ever the same. They gave me wine to kill the pain. Well, they were right. It does kill the pain, for a while."

She pointed a finger at me.

"What about you? On the battlefield, you took lives. In the slums, you took lives. Even in the Temple encampment for refugees, you stabbed an old woman to death," she said. "Is that an addiction?"

I snorted. "No, you dunce, it was the way. If you've ever been a soldier you know it all comes down to who can force the world to their ends. Who can prevail over an enemy who wants your head. The cities and the gentry can bring some break from the killing... perhaps... or at least hide it under their robes and sleeves. But it all comes down to fighting to protect yourself, then your kin, then the rest of the world as you are able. And in that order."

She put her hands on her hips.

"So then," she said. "You have your reasons for killing people. The least you can do is spare me my reasons for drinking wine. At least I don't have to bury the bottles when I'm done."

"You keep on like that and you will make me really angry," I said.

"So what?" she shot back. "What's the worst you could do? Kill me? Rape me?" She laughed bitterly. "I'm not afraid of you because of this: the worst you could possibly, possibly do to me, is nothing compared to what I can do to myself. Take all the scars you've taken to your muscle and bones. Then imagine them under the skin: on my guts, in my chest, scalded on my womb with a brand. And the decent upright people of this aloof city wonder why I drink. And they wonder why you kill."

It was a disturbing thought. I looked at her. She was holding a bottle in her hand, retrieved from somewhere in this room, no doubt.

"And you can probably guess what my message to them is," she said.

She uncorked it and took a long, slow pull. Then corked it carefully and laid it back on top of the blackboard.

"You're not lying about that," I said. "You keep on like that and you will be dead long before your time."

Very slowly, she smiled.

"Well, all rancor aside, Hawk, you may take one compliment from me," she said. "I do not quail and tremble over your military exploits like the frightened citizenry and nobles. Your celebrity means nothing to me. So when I say I want you around, you can be sure it's not because of superficial reasons."

"What reasons, then?" I asked. I was uncertain whether she was trying to reconcile.

"Well, I can teach you the things you want to know: reading, writing, and practices of high culture," she said, counting off on her fingers. "And you can keep telling me your stories and I'll take them down for consumption by the masses. Also, you can keep me safe from Verdinesh."

She had only counted off two for me. She twiddled the third finger, thinking.

"Well, all right then," she said, softening. "You have an intriguing personality and history, too. There, you made me say it."

"Likewise," I said. "But one thing: Where does the naked bedroom exercise come in?" I asked.

"That's a practice of high culture. Honestly, don't you pay attention?"

I thought this over. She lived in a very comfortable way - at least to my eyes, accustomed to rustic Forg, no matter what the exiled noble demographic might say. Also, she could give me tuition in reading and writing. The only issue was the Verdinesh. They were an unknown - and she was still living under an alias to keep them off her track.

Then again, fourteen years was a long time in war. I had been thrown out of the lists at Flex only three years before. Two winters ago, I knelt before the headsman's axe in Flex, seemingly doomed.

And now I was training guards in Hawkbluff at the personal invitation of the Bishop himself.

"Why not?" I said. "It's not like I have any social engagements to break off. I'll look into the Verdinesh for you. I have a few contacts at the Temple and they may know where the records are."

She gave me a hug.

"You don't have to do that. It might put you in harm's way too," she said. I waved this away. "Well, be discreet," she said. "They don't need to know we exist."

I twitched her nose again reassuringly. Then her eyes changed and I stopped, looking at her.

"What?" I asked.

She gave me a wolfish grin.

"The wine's kicking in," she said. "And I've never done it in this bed."

"That makes two of us," was all I could say. Allie was clearly a woman of changeable whims.

She pulled me over.

"Let us broaden our minds," she whispered.

* ~ * ~ *

By the time we woke, it was afternoon, and I opened my eyes to look up at her. I was resting my cheek on her chest, and my right ear was full of the regular beat of her heart, and the slower swell of her breathing.

She looked down at me, brushing my hair from my face gently. Then she reached over to the wall with a piece of chalk and wrote HAWK and marked a single count under it.

She did not explain what that meant. I wondered about this faintly as we did it all once more and collapsed into an exhausted slumber and woke up later. This time, her head was on my chest - and her hair was in my mouth - and she wrote ALI and marked a count under it.

But I was tired and fell asleep afterwards, as she got out of bed and put on a light at the table, bending her magnificent head of curls over a manuscript.




_

[HuManBing]

The Booking Business

When I woke, it was late afternoon, and Allie was elsewhere. I stretched and climbed back into my clothes. It struck me that this was perhaps the fourth time I'd done so since arriving at her businessplace, the night before.

To my right, the underlined words of her name remained chalked into the wall. She had written a few other words under them too, but I couldn't parse them clearly. Then she had drawn a simple smiling face.

I brushed aside the rather heavy curtains and looked out the window into the setwards streaming sunlight. There were locks on the panes, and I couldn't open them. Apart from that, there was a breathtaking view of the crowded marketplace, in miniature, and the plains below.

I scratched my back and waited, and when I didn't hear Allie, I went outside. There was a new plate at her table, with half a loaf of bread under the cover, and a dollop of jam. A used knife lay there, and a few crumbs - a quick bite to eat for her before she left. The sight of it made me oddly elated.

I tore off a hunk of bread and stuffed it into my mouth, and then went downstairs, leaving the third floor door open behind me. I heard her reading a passage aloud and wondered if she had company. On the second floor, I checked myself in the mirror, then decided I was presentable and went on down.

She was seated at one of the workdesks in the ground floor, cooling her feet out of their sandals in a bucket of water more normally meant for fire safety. She read from a manuscript and stopped several times, going back and re-reading aloud.

"...the night is so lovely, it moves us to tears - and the Moon is a cloud-setted pearl... da-da-da... ah, here we were... "

She bit her lip and scribbled something out. Then she flipped back a few pages.

I stepped briskly onto the hardwood of her shopfloor, and she looked at me and smiled primly. I noticed she had tied her hair back severely again, and without the softening curls to frame her face, she had a strict, eagle-like look about her.

"Good afternoon," I said.

"And same to you, my good sir. Sleep well?"

"Very well, thank you," I said. I came to her desk and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Ah-ah-ah," she cautioned. "Tonight will be a work night. That means I can chat, but no other distractions."

I took my hands off her shoulders.

"Well," she said, reconsidering. "I've never found a backrub to be too much of a distraction. Given that it's a rest-day."

That made me raise my eyebrows as I rubbed through her tendons and muscles.

"You work on a rest-day?" I asked.

She nodded, still intent on her work. "Yessir, no rest for a business owner," she said. "If I rest every rest-day, then that adds up over the year. Nearly a hundred days, actually. My competitors would outstrip me in my product and all the writers and printers would go to them. Have to stay on top of the work."

I nodded, impressed.

"The Temple doesn't make me work on a rest-day," I said.

She chuckled. "Of course not," she said. "Who do you think invented the rest-day anyway? The Templars liked people to take a day off so they could spend it praying in Temple."

"And so I spent it in bed with you," I mused. "They probably wouldn't approve if they knew."

She shushed me sharply.

"We'll have no talk here of our naked bedroom exercise," she said. "Otherwise you'll get me thinking of other things apart from work, and I might not be able to resist."

"Right, but I could take you upstairs and I think you'd forgive me anyway," I said lightly.

"Yes, and then bar you from ever coming to the first floor," she said tartly. "Think of this as my chapel, and work as my religion. I must have purity of focus when I'm here, or it will all be for nothing."

She turned in her chair to face me - a surprising feat made possible only by the intricate mechanisms in the chair's base.

"Imagine, while I'm here, that I'm surrounded by writers and printers and other professionals," she said. "Or even better that Remigerius is here with us. Let that guide your tongue."

She turned back, and continued on her edits.

I cast about for a topic, somewhat at a loss.

"So... how's the medicine?" I asked. "They said we should monitor your discharge, whatever that means."

"They mean you should sit next to my mouth and go poking through anything I puke up," she said flatly. "The medicine is awful. I'm pretty good though, thanks for asking. And I haven't discharged anything and I probably won't, so you can tell them the situation is under control."

She grabbed a smaller sheet of paper and started writing furiously on it.

"This man has no sense of metre," she said, tiredly. "I understand he's being experimental, but this is a poem on commission, and the Aspadistris family is unlikely to appreciate the novelty when all they want is a nice wedding paean."

She underlined the note twice in angry lines.

"How about you?" she asked. "How are your men settling in, at the City Atop the Hill?"

"They're fine," I said. "They're staying at the Undercroft. Same as me."

She wrote a while, then something occurred to her.

"Didn't you say that they don't allow women at the Undercroft?" she asked.

"That's what I said, yep. No women."

"Well," she said distractedly. "You're lucky you found one who's got a place for you to stay the night. But what about your men?"

I didn't understand. "What do you mean?"

"What do they do for female companionship? I didn't see any female soldiers or camp attendants when you were on the road."

I thought about this.

"Well, they usually forage for themselves pretty well in that regard," I said. "They always seem to know where to find the wenches who look after visiting soldiers. And the Undercroft lets them out as long as they don't make trouble."

"You really don't know much about your men and their nocturnal diet, do you?" she said.

This line of questioning made me uncomfortable.

"The only brothel I'd ever been to was the one in Flex, like I told you. And the whole time I was there I stayed away from the women. I even had one cover for me so I could sneak out and visit the Temple to make sure my sister was all right," I said.

She snorted. "Well, you should probably make it your business to know where it is exactly that your men go on their nights," she said. "Because off the top of my head I can't think of any brothels even within a hawk's cry of the First Temple and the District. Bad for the whole 'Home of the Bishop's Temple' image, you know."

She finished up and closed the book.

"So they're probably going out to the Bridge District or the Lower Bazaar, where I know for a fact there are several whorehouses. And if they're out there, it's a long stagger back to the First Temple, especially if they're drunk," she said. "They could well end up sleeping on a doorstep. Robbed. Or worse."

"They should be safe enough, but I'll keep that in mind," I said. "How do you know all this? About the brothels?"

She tapped the manuscript. "Where do you think I have to send out, to pick up most of my drafts?" she asked. "If the writer's not in some leaky attic somewhere, he's usually in some vile basement den between a fat pair of thighs."

I wondered about this.

"Are you safe, doing this? Apart from the Verdinesh?"

She shrugged. "For the really bad places I can pay runners, but that can get expensive fast. Most of the time I have to do it myself. Sometimes I get Remigerius to come with me."

Allie bound the manuscript inside its protective portfolio, and then put it to one side. She picked up another one, and blew some dust off its cover. Then she made a face and put it back down. She looked at me with an expression of fatigue.

"I don't want to look at this," she said. "The writer's working on two dozen other things and he takes months to get back to me. Plus his writing is awful."

Her face changed when she looked at me.

"Actually..." she said. "Let's work on your manuscript. Now that you're here."

"I've been here the past day," I reminded her.

"Yes, but during the whole time we were..." she stopped herself, just short of remembering our orgiastic engagements. "Anyway. You're here, so we'd best get through as much of the story as we can," she said firmly. But she still stuck out her tongue at my impish delight.

"Why did you stop? No, I wanted to hear what you were going to say," I said merrily.

"Act your age. Which reminds me, how old are you?" she asked. "The narrative jumps around the years but doesn't keep a running tally."

"I think I'm nineteen," I said.

She snapped her pen. Then she looked at me.

"Nineteen?" she said. "That can't be right. Are you sure you've counted?"

I wanted to tell her that somebody else had counted for me recently, while I was talking to myself in a cold bath. But I felt that might unnecessarily complicate matters. Not to mention bring into question my reliability.

"Well, you were twelve when Malarchus' men came through. I was five then," I said. "How old are you now?"

"Twenty-six, so that's fourteen years, and five plus fourteen is nineteen," she said. "But you don't look nineteen. You look much older. I thought you were older than me."

I rolled back my sleeves and traced the scars. "Got some wrinkles in my skin to show for it, only these came by the blade."

She tilted her head. "Yes, your hair and beard make you look a lot older too. There's the scars as you say," she said. Then she reached out a hand and turned my head. This was no lover's caress. She was sizing me up like a cow at a fair.

"You know what? It's your eyes," she said. She turned my head the other way. "It is, you know. There's something in them that looks a lot older."

"Probably the nose, too," I said. "It's been broken many, many times." She opened my mouth and looked in.

"You're missing some teeth, too, near the corner of your mouth," she said, peering in. "Looks like you lost a premolar, a canine, and an incisor."

I said I didn't know what the names were but there was that time they caught me stealing corn, and beat the crap out of me. I'd lost a few teeth then.

"So, okay, we'll accept you're nineteen," she said. Then she shook her head in disbelief. "You've seen two wars and nearly died countless times. You've liberated one city, razed one, and personally killed Malarchus. You've also almost been executed, and helped raise a daughter."

"Sister," I corrected. "But yes, that's about the size of it."

"What was I doing at nineteen... let's see," she said, abstractedly. "I had just started working as a bookbinder at the printer's house. That was before they realized I had a good grasp of writing."

I put my hands on her back and massaged her again.

"Then they discovered quite by accident that I could read, and read very well too," she said. "One of the older women dropped a stack of the booklets, before they were bound, and the rest were terrified that the book would end up bound in the wrong order. Then I sat down and arranged a dozen books in the right order, in the time it took them to get a model book out."

She chuckled.

"When they found out I could read Old Thenolian, they put me in charge of the religious texts," she said. "That printer was a good business, but they didn't pay women the same as they paid men. I left as soon as I could when I took up with a poet. He was my first lover, and he would write poems and paint them on little cards to sell at the market."

"What happened to him?" I asked.

"Remigerius drove him off, didn't he, the rotter," she said. Then she laughed. "It was probably best for me, too. The man drank like a fish, and he stayed here with his friends who were all drunks too. At one time he had three other women living with us. It took me a long time to see he was just using me for free room and board."

I was silent. It seemed to me that my struggles were born of necessity and desperation. Given a different life, I would have been better off and safe - and utterly unremarkable - without war to make a warrior of me.

But Allie was different. She was a polished gem - a rarefied mind schooled through hardships and privilege alike. What boundless vistas of knowledge and learning she had. All mixed in with a businesswoman's sharp nous. She had lost her entire family, but built up her life to nobility again through sheer diligence.

She must have felt the tenderness in my touch, because she reached up and patted my hand fondly.

"I hope you don't mind me talking about other men in my past," she said. "It's not like I planned it this way."

"No, I'm glad you can tell me," I said. "Just like I've never told anybody about Sootri, except you and my priest friend, Prent. I do have a question for you, though."

"Yes?"

"This is just a professional question, because we're in a professional place," I said. "I'm not trying to get you into bed. At least not primarily."

"Okay...?"

"Say I take care of the Verdinesh," I said. "Say I go to the Temple and I resolve that situation. What happens to you then? And what happens to me?"

She chewed her lip. "If you can get proof they're truly harmless to me and don't want me dead?" she said.

"Or I take them out of the picture," I said. "It wouldn't be the first time I've erased an inconvenient person."

She shook her head. "Hawk, we're not in a battlefield. There will be repercussions. You can't live like an outlaw in the woods here, where none of the peasants owes you any affection," she said.

"I know, I know," I said. "But just imagining that Verdinesh stop bothering you. What will you do then?"

She thought about this.

"I'd go out to Hasid and try to locate my family," she said. "Just to see if they're all right. Then I'd provide for them if they needed anything."

I waited. "And...?" I asked.

She looked at me. "And what?" she said.

I swallowed. "And what would captain Hawk do?" I asked.

"Well, assuming he's not behind bars, or headless on the block, or vainly trying to mobilize a peasant army in the face of crushing indifference... would Captain Hawk be interested in staying with Alicov?" she asked.

"I mean, would you leave here? Go back to Hasid? Become a Markeides again?" I asked.

She sighed.

"Until three years ago, I'd say yes, like a shot," she said sadly. "But now I realize the family pretty much collapsed. We lost every male Markeides from New Aurim in that raid. I don't even know where the bones were buried. If I found somebody had survived, what would they be now? Penniless, probably. And it might be that my little bookstore is the best living that we have."

Allie put the tip of her pen in the mild space below her lip and above her chin.

"Maybe I'd go there. Maybe they'd come here," she said. "It all depends. But this place his grown on me, and I'm not about to forsake it so I can become some dusty old maid-in-waiting for some forgotten lord in Hasid."

"Would you have any use for me once the Verdinesh don't trouble you anymore?" I asked.

She tapped her stylus against her teeth.

"That depends," she said. "In your hypothetical, have we finished the book? That's a duty of professional craft."

"Yes, that's done," I said.

"And you'll be done doing whatever it is the Temple wants you to?" she said.

"Maybe. Say that I'm free," I said.

"And you'll be how old?"

"Still seven years younger than you," I said, with a wry look.

She hemmed at this.

"And will you still be interested in learning to read and write?"

"Assume I'm already schooled," I said. "And it's just down to you and me."

She looked at me. "If you can keep from killing people and fighting when it's not needed, then sure," she said.

"And if you can control your drinking," I said.

She held up her hands.

"Hold up there, that's a different story," she said. "We'd be talking no more Verdinesh and no more war before that happens."

"Same here," I said. "With the fighting and the killing. ASsume it."

She put the pages down and whirled a graceful little line through the air with her fingers.

"So... we just magic away the war, and finish the book, and get rid of the Verdinesh, and say your Temple job leaves you still here," she said. "Just like that. And you want me to tell you if I'll still want you around?"

"That's about the size of it," I said.

She looked wistful.

"Well, now, if that's all it takes..." she looked at me, but softened. "Why not," she said gently, extending a hand to me.

* ~ * ~ *

I went back to the Undercroft, as I had to. Lotal and most of the others had indeed gone out to scope out rumors of a promising tavern further down the mountainside. But Gram was there, helping the Templars out with labeling everything we had brought with us to Hawkbluff.

"Hallo, Captain," he said. "Where've you been?"

"There's a publisher wants to publish a book of my war stories," I said. "Might bring in some coin for us. Maybe get you one of them newfangled winching bows you've been so eager to get."

Gram waved his hand. "It's all right, really. You don't have to spend any steel on me, Captain."

"I really should talk about this to the Company," I said. "About our money and what to do with it once we start making it."

I looked at him.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Just a catalog," he said. "I'm helping them keep track of our possessions so they know they can replace breakages. Word is the next noble wants us to entertain him with a bit of archery."

I nodded. "Very well, hopefully it'll turn out better than last time's debacle."

Gram smiled broadly. "That wasn't a debacle, that was a triumph. You should have seen the noble's face!"

"I did," I said drily. "He won't be forgetting this in a while. The problem for us is if he can't bring himself to forgive."

* ~ * ~ *

The men came back all right, and I made them show me where they would be. I split them up into two groups of five each, and made them keep track of their fellows each time they left.

The last few days before the second military training engagement, I went to the Templars and asked about a noble house, the Verdinesh. The Temple had land records, marriage bans, birth records, and death dates in their chronicles, and if I could find anybody able to help me read, I would be able to get access.

I squinted at the text, which no longer resembled squiggles and now stood out legibly as distinct - albeit still nonsensical - letters.

I stopped by Allie's store one day and found her in. She was busy supervising her handful of staff, and although she was pleased to see me, we didn't have much time to talk. I hung close until I got a quiet moment, and I handed her some paper and a pen.

"Write out Verdinesh so I know how to spell it," I said.

She looked at me.

"I'm just going through the Temple records," I said. "I'm being discreet."

She quirked her lip to the side, and stuck her tongue in her cheek, as if knowing I was up to no good. But she picked up a blank pocketbook and wrote the name down in it. She handed it to me.

"Don't get us in trouble," she said.

I took it back to the records hall and compared it against the names in the pilgrimmage book. It took me half a day to find a name that matched it.

I grabbed Gram and brought him to the hall.

"Read this line for me," I said.

He squinted at it.

"It's... Raseyan Verdinesh, stonemason. Passing through to Hasid," he said. "From New Aurim. Left two coins of steel as charity."

I memorized the name. Raseyan Verdinesh.

"What are you doing?" he said.

"Nothing," I muttered, and copied the name down. "I may have to go to New Aurim sometime before the winter."

"The capital?" he asked. "What business do you have there?"

I wrote it down in my schoolboy's scrawl in my pocketbook.

"Unfinished business," I said.

* ~ * ~ *

The archery drill was straightforward. We trained them to line up in two rows, one with the shield and the other behind, loosing arrows over the top. I taught them the rudiments of getting off a shot from horseback, guiding the horse with your knees. Then we trained them to do some standard spearman's marching. The usual drill.

One of them asked us for a sparring fight. I let Lotal take this one, and his left-hand grip confused them. He beat them lightly, and they retired in good grace. It was refreshing to see students free of ego.

When we were done, the nobleman came down to us beaming.

"Splendid," he said. "It has been so long since we've had any decent sport here. It's a pity the fighting's so far away."

Unable to say anything else, we merely bowed and accepted his praise, featherbrained though it was. It would have been churlish to contradict him.

* ~ * ~ *

In the early autumn the Temple held a Loveday, so named because nobles came out and gave charitably for the poor, and also where they settled their dealings in an open court presided by the priests. The Temple would, after it all, come to a mediation and would once again restore the agape, or neighborly love, between the two sides. This was followed by three weeks of fasting during the day, introspection, and forgiveness.

The preparations for this affair meant my men were suddenly at loose ends for three weeks. Being trained in the art of conflict and war, the arrival of the Loveday meant we were not in particularly high demand.

I requested, and got, a courier commission from the Temple, to travel with their merchants to New Aurim. Gram came with me, being a decent reader and more importantly being quiet with the truth.

We travelled on a wagon and the trip took us three days. New Aurim spread out, a glorious riverside metropolis, to welcome us.



_

[HuManBing]

The Capital

From the setwards road, the city of New Aurim sprawled on rising grounds. From a distance it was possible to look from afar and see the miles upon miles to which it stretched, no end in sight. The Temple's humble cart trundled on, vying for road space with gaudy chariots and decorated sedan chairs. Then we passed under a massive gate in the outer wall, and into the hubbub of the capital of Thenol.

The last time I had seen anybody from here, it had been in my thirteenth year, in the competition of the lists at Flex. That time, Prasti, Lotal, Lindo, and I had eliminated them from the competition early. The thought of it brought a smile to my face.

Gram picked up a city brochure for a small coin from the guards. He read the leaflet back and front, and then came and sat next to me. He read to me the brief history of the city's founding.

New Aurim was the first settlement that men founded since the fall of the last great empire. The empire had been towards the risewards horizon, and chillwards too, where there were once fertile fields and valleys. Then, several centuries ago, a disaster had struck the empire and a few straggling columns of humans had made their way here. They stopped at this row of grassy hills and made their rest here, naming the city after the old empire that had been blotted from the face of the world: Aurim.

We first stopped at the Temple - a newer and larger affair than the one at Hawkbluff. But this building seemed less solidly built, I noted. The one at Hawkbluff had been chiselled into the very rock of the mountainside itself. In the capital, by contrast, there were effete spires and steeples atop pretty buttresses and archways, but all throroughly useless for defence in times of war.

Still, they had good rooms, I'll give them that. I showed them the papers signed by Bishop Tradamere, and they gave us a room to ourselves. Granted, I had to share it with Gram, but it was well appointed beyond anything that the Hawkbluff rooms had to offer. We set up and unpacked our few possessions - mostly our shortswords, which was the only arms we were now permitted to carry, and that only because of special dispensation from the Bishop.

Gram and I rested the first night and spent the following day making our way around the city with a Templar as our nominal guide - we would have access to various places as his bodyguards. We saw from afar the walled gates of the Inner City - the vast palace occupied by the distant King Caropalix III, scion of the family that first settled here. Closer in to the wall, we made our way through elegant fountains and courtyards of the various noble houses. None bore the name "Verdinesh".

Afterwards, we made our way to the Courts of Equity and heard a few cases. The process was thoroughly baffling to me. At a tall stand, a man with an inordinate amount of hair on his face and head stood, and various black-robed men scrabbled before him, paying him the utmost of deference. It was almost as though he were a priest - although he lacked the Temple's vestments. But once the men had to speak to each other, all civility disappeared. They slung odd language to each other, too, words that escaped Gram's limited knowledge as well as my own.

"It's Old Thenolian," the priest told us. "They like to use old words to embellish their sound and fury."

They appeared to be arguing over a matter of land.

"These cases can last for years," the priest said.

I was aghast. "Why don't they settle it by the sword?" I asked. "Shorter that way, and let the gods sort it all out."

The priest shook his head. "Somebody has to die or be injured then. This way is at the very least non-lethal," he said. "Though sometimes not by much."

Gram looked up from another pamphlet he had bought.

"They say there all the old cases are still used as guidances," he said. "Which means however this one comes out, if in future there's another one just like it, the magistrate will decide it the same way."

The priest held up a hand. "Times change. Sometimes what is good for our forefathers is not good for us. They will overturn precedents at times."

"And what are those people doing there?" I asked.

"They are the jury," he explained. "The judge can decide the law, but he does not decide the facts. If the parties disagree on the facts, then the court appoints twelve common folk drawn from the public to determine the facts."

"Why not let the judge do that?" I asked. "He's supposed to know all there is about law."

The priest sighed. "Well, after a certain number of cases, and years of hearing and seeing the worst grievances that people are capable of, it can get somewhat dehumanizing. Judges are naturally skeptical people. They tend to be less willing to give reasonable doubt a chance when it comes to a party's intent or motives," he said. "There must always be twelve common men, of sound mind and civic duty, to pass judgment on their accused peer when there is an issue of fact at stake."

"Doesn't that mean that you're letting the masses decide guilt or innocent?" I asked. "Maybe I could put on a popular show and get them to vote me innocent."

"Yes, here's a famous story about that," Gram said. "It says something about Flavia the Fair."

The priest cleared his throat unobtrusively and backed out of earshot.

Gram looked at him. "What did I say? Anyway, Flavia the Fair was accused of some sort of offense against the gods," he said. "She had a long list of men who loved her, and who stood up to defend her name in court. One man was able to trap the accuser with a sentence about beauty being a gift of the gods. At that point, he took off Flavia's robes and bared her body. The jury saw how beautifully the gods had shaped her, and being unable to deny that she had won favor with the gods, they acquitted her."

"That's utterly preposterous," I said angrily. "It means if you're beautiful you can get away with anything."

"Well, they've changed the rules now," Gram said. "I suppose that's what the priest meant when he said 'overturning precedents'."

We watched a while longer. The men in robes continued to mouth off below.

"Let's go," I said. "We have work to do."

* ~ * ~ *

There were convoys leading between Hawkbluff and Aurim every day or so, but we had permission to stay up to the full three weeks. I got familiar with the Temple's library and sat through many tomes, looking for any mention of Verdinesh within the past year.

When that failed, I looked back five years. Nothing.

Gram came up to me and dumped an armful of chronicles on the table.

"Master Hawk," he said. "What are we doing this for?"

"There is a family named Verdinesh that Alicov Publishing wants to research," I said. "But don't spread that around. Don't tell any of the other lads either. No girlfriends, no priests, nothing until it's published. It's going into a book and if word gets out, Alicov may lose profits. Which means we lose our commission. And also Alicov will take it out on me and I'll take it out on you horrible lot."

"Ahhh, I see," he said. "What was the name again?"

"Verdinesh." I showed him the page in my pocketbook.

"Right," he said.

We parsed through the books together. By degrees, we came to occupy opposite ends of the same table in the Temple record halls, there from morning until night. Gram kept his end scrupulously tidy. But I'm afraid I kept mine less so: spreading books and pens and inkwells around like a recent convert to literacy.

A priest came down and saw this, and he left quietly. He returned with an odd contraption, made of folding wood on hinges. He showed me how to use it: with it, a person could place a stand across a chair, and then place the book in the stand, leaving his hands free to write notes without having to hold the book, or rest the book on a table and strain his neck.

It worked so well I went out to the market and bought one for Gram. I also got one for myself.

It wasn't until two weeks into the endeavor that we found a reference. It was a notice of abandonment for an estate within the Outer Wall of the city, but outside the Nobles District. Verdinesh was listed as the last known owner. It was a small tract of land that had some outstanding squatters on it.

Then as we worked backwards we found more such lands. A parcel of woodland here, with decent hunting game. A tract of riverside land, with good fishing, gone to seed.

"These don't make sense," Gram said. "Why abandon things like these over the course of six years? If you move out, why retreat and retreat and retreat some more like this?"

"Maybe it's only listed in the order they were found," I said. "If the family left town suddenly, it might not register in the records until much later. Especially if the squatters and vagrants don't want anybody to know."

We looked back for abandonments and found they abruptly stopped at about fourteen years ago. Before that time, the abandonment record was empty. And the book on taxes, tithes, musters, and other land uses was full.

"So something happened fourteen years ago to drive them off their lands," Gram said. "And look at this. This is a case of land misuse brought by a reeve on their lands. Thirteen years ago. Seems like they were plundering their own lands. Pulling up harvests, pulling down structures and packing them. The reeve lodged an objection with the authorities on the grounds that the land would be worthless and he suspected bad faith."

I already had an idea about what the event was.

"Go back further. See if you can find 'Markeides'," I said.

Gram went slower this time, as I didn't have any spelling for that name. But he found it, equally silent from ten years ago to present.

"Same deal," he said. "Pulled up sticks and left in a hurry. Here it says to Hasid. How about that?"

"See if you can find any record of an equity case between them," I said.

This took the best part of a day to find, but we did.

"Markeides produced evidence tending to prove that their first-branch female member, Alyssa Markeides, did engage with for the duration of two years, and conceive a child of the seed of, Prince Delrist Raimos," he read. "Said child, grown to be known as Karas, was found by the court of equity to be of prior inheritance to the Prince's willed estates of the Thortmich Heights, to whit, an orchard, a forest, riparian rights to the stream, and hunting grounds, as to be made available to him upon his wedding to a suitable family."

"When was this?" I asked, perking up.

"Fourteen years ago. It says here that the court ordered Karas to be produced as a witness. They sent for him from Hasid," he said. "Apparently he stood to inherit some good real estate."

I stroked my chin. Fourteen years was a long time by my standards, but for a family with a grudge it might be inconsequential.

"Anything in the record about him being married?" I asked.

Gram shook his head. "If he never got here, and the records show nothing of him, then all his records would be in the archives at Hasid," he said.

I started to realize the immense fragility of our records. When Malarchus burned the town of Roshan, he cleared all the buildings. But he also wiped out centuries of records, irreplaceable. For the first time I started to understand Alicov's passion about books. They would last and endure to tell our stories, even when we were long returned to the earth.

"How many Verdinesh members are identified by name?" I asked.

He pored over. "I have all the papers here," he said. "Give me a day or two to record every one. May I have your pocketbook?"

* ~ * ~ *

AS it turned out, there were a dozen or so. Malchior Verdinesh was the scion of the family, with a military record to his name. He had two brothers, Beldrish and Kastorim, but the youngest died and we found his death record from before this happened. Malchior had four sons across two wives, and Beldrish had three. Of the daughters there was little records but a few names came out: Kadia, Snyrjana, Petja. Way down the family ranking - the forgotten last son of a last daughter - was a familiar name: Raseyan Verdinesh, the stonemason who had passed through Hawkbluff years ago, leaving two steel coins as charity.

The taxes were kept by a different ministry, and we couldn't go there. But I found several publisher's houses and made my rounds.

"Do you remember printing anything with these names on it?" I asked. They shook their heads. Only one house had records, and I paid them a coin to go through those, skipping ahead to fourteen years ago. There was nothing.

Somewhat disheartened, Gram and I shouldered our bags and went to the parcels of land and found shantytowns of less fortunate people there. The scene reminded me distinctly of Flex's worse districts.

The name Verdinesh did not rouse much recognition, but in one orchard gone to weeds, an old man did know enough to order his sons onto us. They were poor fighters, and it was over very quickly without much injury to either side - beyond the strict minimum.

We kept our blades sheathed this time, cracking a few skulls with our gloved hands and depositing them in an unruly pile. Then we asked him again, less politely.

"They slaughtered all their immovable stock and packed up the rest," he said. "They were going setwards to set up a new home there."

"And you know this - how?" I asked.

He looked down. "I was their reeve," he said. "They kept my family here to serve the land, and it pained me to see them waste it like that."

"Tell me what you know and I'll refrain from having the Temple take stock of this parcel on behalf of the king," I said.

Geshon - that was his name - said the family had been fighting over several pieces of land against Markeides. One of their daughters had married a junior prince, and that seemed to seal their ownership. However, it turned out that a senior prince had admitted on his deathbed to an affair with a Markeides woman, and there had been a son. The senior prince's will gave over several specific lands to this son upon his marriage so that his family would not suffer.

"They had no right to it!" he said fiercely. "They were only inheritors by luck and happenstance, because some slut spread her legs for a prince."

Gram flicked him a coin.

"Thank you for your help," he said, turning back to leave. We passed by the man's unconscious sons.

We went back to the cloisters. Our fighting spirit wakened by the tussle in the orchard, Gram and I spent most of our time sparring until the next convoy left.

* ~ * ~ *

_

[HuManBing]

Hearthside Scenes

We returned to Hawkbluff, and I trained with my men to present a good halberdier routine for another noble who recruited many horsemen for the King's Cavalry. That went well, and we were recommended by the noble to meet with some of the king's ministers. The meeting churned through the bureaucracy as we circulated among the noble houses.

After about another two weeks of back-and-forthing with Alicov's travels, we found some free time together and met at her place again. She was all businesslike at first but I noticed she kept on sneaking sidelong glances at me. Eventually her face broke into a broad smile.

"It's good to see you back," she said. "I just got back from Selbinwood."

This was a small hamlet near a forest, where the relevant author lived to be away from the bustle of the city.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"New Aurim, the capital," I said. "Got you something."

I handed her the book stand for chairs. She laughed.

"This is perfect!" she said. "Now I can read my manuscripts in a comfy chair instead of that hardwood swiveller."

She gave me a resounding kiss on the lips.

"I also found out some history," I said, then summarized what Gram and I had found in the Temple records in New Aurim. "Seems like Karas Markeides had some royal blood in him."

I handed her the notebook, where Gram had taken down family trees.

"Gram did this, but we can trust him," I said. "He won't tell anybody."

She looked through it.

"I never knew," she said. "My parents never told me anything like this."

"And there's more. They moved their holdings all to Hasid," I said. "They left behind magnificent orchards and croplands just weeding up with squatters. That suggests they're in trouble with the law at New Aurim. I'll find out more, but I think the law is on our side."

Allie looked conflicted. She chewed her lip, her hair gathered in a bundle beside her ear.

"Still, keep it quiet," she said. "These are desperate people, Hawk. I don't have much, compared to what my family did, but I have something, and I worked hard for it. Don't bring ruin to my door."

I patted her back as I held her.

"I won't," I said. "Times may have changed. They sounded pretty scared. We'll know for sure when I get some results at Hasid."

She scooped the eggs out of her bosom and put them in the hatchery again, as Remigerius brought in our dinner. She looked at me over the dishes. Her lips, normally narrow already, were compressed into a thin line. She tapped a finger against her glass.

"You know," she said, leaning in, "I keep my bedrooms individually locked for a reason. I switch randomly between rooms every night. And it's not paranoia so much as the way I was raised. Even as children we moved around so it wouldn't be so easy for the Verdinesh. I hope you understand we have to take this seriously."

"Which room do you plan to sleep in tonight?" I asked.

"I haven't decided yet."

I smiled and put my hand over hers.

"Does it make any difference that I'm with you tonight?" I asked.

She thought about this.

"I did say you made me feel safe, didn't I?" she said, wrily.

"Excellent. Let's sleep in the Black Room. You can teach me more words before we doze off," I said.

She finished off her glass - just a single wine, this time.

"All right," she said.

* ~ * ~ *

In the morning, amidst twisted bedsheets and ensnared in the delightful lock of her legs, I woke up to find her bosom pillowing my head. She was humming a tune distractedly as she looked up at the ceiling.

"You're up," she said brightly. "One for you."

She reached over and made a mark on the wall, under my name. Further along the wall, there were the words she had taught me the night before. Cat ... Priest ... Book ... Square ...

"What's that?" I asked, tilting my head towards the chalkmark.

She stroked my hair. "Every time we wake up, we see who's on top. They get a chalkmark."

"That's a silly game," I said. "I could climb on top of you now and you wouldn't be able to breathe."

"Who said it was a game?" she shot back. "This is research. Data collation. Sampling frames. Behold the scientific method."

I wanted to say something but my head was in a good place of its own and I just closed my eyes. I turned my head and mumbled something vague into the glorious gorge and valley of her heartbeat.

"What?" she said.

"I said, I am a fully satisfied man now and I can die in a happy place, having done all I wanted to do," I said, indistinctly.

"That tickles. You should shave," she said.

I burbled away madly, scraping my whiskers with wild abandon around her smooth round softnesses, until she screamed and threw me out of bed.

* ~ * ~ *

It was already cold in the air in late fall when the eggs hatched. I came to the business and found Allie bent solicitously over the hatchery, feeding worms into chirping mouths.

"What happened?" I asked. "Did the egg fairy suddenly come over and wave her wand?"

Allie shook her head. "No, these little ones hatched off-season," she said. "In the wild, they probably wouldn't survive."

I squinted at them. They were extremely small and wet and ugly. They looked like the gangly-legged reptiles you occasionally see darting through the forests.

"What are they? What type?"

She put away the worms in a bag and wiped her hands clean.

"They're all songbirds," she said. "Without parents to teach them, they'll never learn how to fly. And they won't be good for much in eating insects either. So the only use you'd get from them would be their singing. And even for that, you'd have to give them plenty of exposure to learn the songs from the wild ones."

She smiled.

"They say there's a type of bird in warmer climes that can talk like a man," she said. "They grow to be as old as a grandfather too."

"You're making this up."

"No, I'm not," she said, abstractedly. "They're bright green with colors around the eyes. And plumes and stuff."

I slapped her rump. She gave out a shout of false indignation and then looked at me more closely.

"Speaking of colors around the eyes..." she said.

I raised my hand to my head unconsciously.

"Lotal and I were training," I said. "He got a few good thwacks in. You should have seen him crow about it."

"Do you normally take hits from him?" she asked. "I thought you were good."

"No, that's the thing. Normally I'm too quick for him," I said. "But this time... I dunno. He was better."

Allie huffed. "One of these days I'm going to have to watch you boys at your fun and games. See what all the fuss is about."

I didn't mention to her that there was a belief, commonly held in the barracks, that what a woman takes from a man during the physical act of love left him weaker as a warrior. A draining of precious bodily fluids.

* ~ * ~ *

As it turned out, she got her wish. We opened up the front courtyard of the First Temple to the public one restday morning, and the priests allowed visitors to come and speak with us and shake hands and watch us train. I took up a blunted training sword against Lotal and Prasti both, demonstrating the importance of mobility in defence. The crowd clapped and cheered as I wrong-footed them time and again, at one point even lurching Lotal to collide with Prasti.

Lellik-jir was a good model to use for the joint-lock techniques. Somebody as large as him, it made for a compelling show of the drills when somebody as small as Kash could get him on the floor and pin him there by standing on his elbow. Lellik-jir's titanic struggles were all to no avail as Kash applied pressure and kept the bigger man on the ground.

Allie came down to watch us some time after lunch, when the showboating was mostly over and we had all fallen to sparring in earnest. She brought dainty treats of wrapped meat for my men, and the lads gratefully accepted the spiced and flavorful morsels. She had a pad with her and some brushes, and she set up her colors in the corner and began sketching as we sparred.

It did not escape my attention that several of my men cast wondering glances in her direction. A few looked at me admiringly.

In a match against Lotal, I gave him an advantage when I overextended and he pipped me in the shoulder with his blunted sword. Laughing at my elementary error, he pushed his unkempt mop of hair from his eyes.

"Come now, Captain, that's too generous! A bit lacking in sword-arm endurance, eh?"

Prasti called over from the sidelines.

"He's been leaving it in a distant scabbard in his spare time."

They started laughing at that, but then stopped as they realized Allie was right there with us.

She didn't even look up from her sketching.

"There's nothing wrong with his endurance," she said, with a haughty arch of her fine eyebrows. "You should see how he draws and sheathes, draws and sheathes, all night long."

That drew loud laughter. I stuck my oar in.

"Easy now, lads. You can't believe half the stories that come out of her mouth," I said. "Tell them about the little armored thing."

She looked at me, quizzically, and then brightened.

"Oh, the nine-banded armadillo," she said, clapping her hands. "It's about yay big, and yay long, and it's got a manhood that's two-thirds as long as its whole body. It's true, I saw a zoological sage."

This caused an uproar. "Two thirds?!" "Impossible!" "How big is the female?"

Then Lellik-jir started patting himself as if making a new discovery.

"By the gods, I'm a nine-banded armadillo!" he said merrily.

Allie looked at him in concern. "You're only three inches tall?" she said, consolingly.

The boys all fell about laughing at that. Prasti thumped Lellik-jir's back until they were crying.

It must have been her childhood, never far from the bodyguards and their coarse banter. Allie took a shine to the rude humor and ready guffaws of the training ground well, and by the end of the day, the lads looked upon her not as a distant noblewoman patron but as a down-to-earth big sister. And I suppose despite our fearsome scars and our bloodstained training gear, she saw right through our arms and armor and saw us as the band of snickering little brothers that we were.

She told them about the candiru fish, which disturbed them so much that they had to stop training and sit down for a while. She also told them about how leeches were used to calm the blood, how maggots could be used to help stop gangrene, and how two herbs - one for sleep and another for the amorous arts - had such similar leaves that medicine men often confused the two and their insomniac customers (far from getting any sleep) would stay up all night instead.

"You know so much," Gram said admiringly. "How old are you?"

Lotal shushed him, saying it was rude to ask a lady's age, but Allie waved it away.

"I'm twenty-six years old," she said clearly, as she put the finishing touches on her sketch of Lotal and Kash training.

Several of the men looked impressed at that. Kash piped up.

"Do you have any children?" he asked. "My mama had her first grandkid when she was twenty-six."

Allie shook her head. "No time. Military epic novels don't write themselves," she said. "Besides, I'm busy trying to find ways of making you lot look good for the covers."

She turned the watercolors around. We hemmed in and stared in admiration.

"Nice one of Lellik-jir," Prasti said. "You even disguised the huge blob on his neck." Lellik-jir cuffed him.

Gram thought of something.

"Um, Alicov?" he said. "I was with this woman..." -here the other men snickered and laughed- "...and she said that after twenty, the body gets old and can't stand up to it anymore and it gets worse and dull and really bad. Is that true?"

"Twenty?" Allie said wonderingly. "You're talking about what men and women do together, right?"

Gram fidgeted.

"Well, yeah. She said once you reach twenty, your body is less sensitive and your blood doesn't flow so smooth and you basically... have to stop doing it," he said, embarrassed by her frank expression and open interest.

"Twenty," she said musingly. "Huh."

She straightened out her skirts and stroked her chin in contemplation.

"Well, the most I've ever had in quick succession was fourteen, and by then my farmyard area was practically deadened," she said. "So if you somehow make it to twenty in a row then, yes, I'd imagine there might be some decreased performance."

* ~ * ~ *

Over dinner, with Allie at my side, they mentioned Terrek and how his wife had left him.

"What?!" I said, surprised. "Terrek had a wife?" It was hard to imagine the tough old bastard with a woman.

The other men nodded sadly.

"You were away, in Flex," Lotal said. "Terrek married a girl in Forg but she left him not long after the first winter. He moved all his things out of her home and back to the barracks."

I pondered this.

"Poor guy," I said.

"Well, he took it stoically, as you might imagine," Lotal said. "Stiff upper lip, professional soldier as always. The only time he even cracked a bit was when she came to tumble him that one last time."

I started again. "What was this?"

Prasti grinned. "We were in barracks. Terrek was up in his sergeant's quarters. Then his wife, soon to be his no-longer-wife, comes to the barracks and wants to get cozy with him one last time. Not thinking about the risks involved, she got into bed with him."

I stared. "...and?" I asked. Beside me, Allie's eyes were wide too, and she was hanging on the tale.

"Well, he thought somebody was coming to kill him, like maybe an assassin or something," he said. "So the sword was out and right next to her neck in a heartbeat."

I looked at Allie. Then back at Prasti.

"Was she all right?"

Prasti chuckled. "Yep, she got a scare though and woke up half the camp with her screaming. We laughed her out of the camp. And serves her right too, for kicking him out and then coming to tempt him that way."

Allie shook her head.

"He missed a prime chance there," she said.

Lotal nodded. "Aye. She was a fine piece, that lass," he said.

"I don't mean the tumbling," Allie corrected him. "Your sergeant should have done this, instead... He should have let her climb into bed beside him and get in the mood and all ready for love - and then he should have lifted his leg up and given off the biggest, baddest, smelliest fart known to mankind."

This rendered all the boys helpless on the floor, wriggling in fits of idiotic braying guffaws. I wiped away tears as I held my stomach in unstoppable peals.

A Temple manservant came to ask if we wanted any more dinner, but we were too far gone to pay him much heed. He stood awhile, his face blank, as we writhed in laughter around the prim bastion of noble depravity that was Master Alicov in the middle.

* ~ * ~ *

It was dark and the torches on the courtyard wall sconces swam in my vision. Kash was busy retching into a well bucket and Lotal was untying his drawstrings to take a leak.

"That's a good idea," I said, and sidled over to him and joined him. Lellik-jir, Prasti, and a few others staggered over and did the same.

"High ho," Lotal said. "Aaaaaaah..."

I heard quick footsteps, tripping lightly and some girlish giggling.

Lotal looked up. "What the...?"

Allie skipped merrily along the wall above us, looking over the edge at our dangling nakedness as we drained our bladders.

"Hello boys, don't mind me," she said, with an engaging smile.

Some of the men took this poorly.

"Hey! What joo think yer doin?" "Stop that!" "Canna a man take a peash, in pish?"

She came to a stop above me and Lotal. He was too drunk to care who saw his wrinkly fruit package, and I was unconcerned about Allie seeing mine for completely separate reasons.

Lotal looked up at her, and then down at his manhood.

He furrowed his brow and then looked at me.

"How high can you get it?" he asked.

He gave his stream a few test flicks.

"I'll give you some space," Allie said, graciously backing away from the target area.

Lotal frowned in concentration. "Hang on..." he said. Then he stepped back, flicked with his fingers, and arced magnificently.

I whistled. "Pretty high," I said. "Bet I could do better though."

Lotal made a waving motion with his hand. "Be my guest."

I stepped back and carefully studied the wall. At this point there was a half-finished mural of some civic scene. Priests adjudging the law or some such. Lotal's liquid addition steamed happily off the wall. This would be challenging.

"Hey... oop!" I said, scything my waste water through the air. We bent closer to examine it.

"So close, yet so far," Lotal said.

"What?! That's clearly higher."

"Nice try, I don't think so," he said. "The brickwork inclines so you can't go by that alone."

Allie stepped down lightly from the wall and joined us.

"I could do better," she said.

We looked at her.

"You're talking about the painting, right?" Lotal asked.

"Nope, I mean I could beat you two in a height-peeing contest," Allie said.

Lotal looked at me.

"How much has your woman had to drink?" he said. "If I hear her right, she's saying...-"

"-...she can do better than us," I finished for him. "In a height-peeing contest."

Allie nodded. "The boy can be taught," she said proudly.

Lotal belched slightly.

"This I gotta see. Show me how you're going to beat a man at a height-peeing competition," he said.

Allie stepped back and started to tie her hair. "Go get me a bucket of well water. I will also need you to hold my hair out of my face," she told me. I nodded, intrigued, and got the water for her.

She took about four paces away from the wall and then unlaced her dress and stepped out of her skirts. She circled with her arms slightly, shaking them out and doing the same with her feet. It was starting to get quite cold and her breasts stood up in the chill air.

"Wow," Kash said weakly, looking over his shoulder as he hunched over the bucket. "She really is a redhead." Somebody shushed him.

Then, her mouth a thin compressed line in her pale face, she took several quick steps towards the wall and went head over heels, planting both hands on the flagstones. Her feet smacked the wall high above her head and held flat, soles to the brickwork, as her arms staggered slightly under her weight.

She gasped slightly under the exertion, but that was nothing compared to my men, who were gasping for the simple reason of never having quite seen anybody do this before.

"Hawk, my hair," she said. I regained my senses and reached down, holding her mane of hair up against her back.

That done, she relaxed her legs slightly until her pelvis was right against the wall, and straightened her arms.

By the time Lotal realized what was going on, there was no need to even measure. She had us beat by at least half a foot of elevation.

She kicked back down and looked back at the wall in triumph. Some of my men regarded her with a frozen mixture of awe, respect, and blank unthinking terror.

"Technique - one. Equipment - zero," she said, splashing herself with water.

* ~ * ~ *

The ceiling was a beautiful painted arch of the stars in the heavens, overlaid with outlines of mythical creatures and people and gods formed from the constellations. Lying on my back on an uncomfortable surface as Allie set her pace above me, I lazily wondered which of these religious icons was going to condemn me. At the current rate, it would probably be harder to find some god that wasn't going to send me to hell.

"Hurry up," I said. "We're going to get in trouble." She silenced me with a lustful kiss and continued in her rhythm. I lay back, craning my head so I could see to the side and watch the passageway where the monks sometimes appeared.

She was very distracting. She had forgotten to chew her hair and her gasps were quite audible. I put my hand up to her mouth and she suddenly bit down hard on my fingers. I opened my mouth in pain but caught myself before I screamed. She let me go, bleeding from the knuckles, and caught her lip between her teeth to mute her screams as we picked up the pace. Even so, she gave out some ragged sobs of pleasure that echoed alarmingly as we finished together.

"Fourteen... honestly..." I said, impressed. "Who on earth was the guy?"

"Why do you say 'the' ?" she asked.

"Why do I say 'guy' ?" I mused.

"Why do you say 'was' ?" she asked.

I reached down and picked up a fallen candle from the floor and put it back on the altar.

"We're definitely going to hell for this," I said. The massive idol of Mislaxa looked onwards, her face clear and bright as always. But Allie was not supposed to be inside the buildings of the First Temple, and she was really not supposed to be here inside the First Temple's main hall, and she was absolutely not supposed to be noisily seducing the Temple's celebratedly chaste army commander in front of the most holy altar while the priests were asleep, and knocking relics over in the throes of passion.

Allie straightened herself out and made a mock bow in front of the statue, her gloriously tousled hair an eloquent testament to our excesses.

"I'll name my tenth son after your brother," she said in a teasing way, echoing an old prayer for fertility.

I bundled her back to the courtyard and we were soon staggering back to her place, despite her protests that we should broaden our minds in my Undercroft dormitory. Once we were out of the shadow of the temple, the prayer she made came back to me.

"You ever thought about kids?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not since my cousin did what he had to do," she said levelly. "Why?"

I was quiet for a bit as we passed a patrol. Then I said, "We've certainly been putting in the practice, haven't we? How do we know if it's not for real?"

She looked at me and held up one finger, to mean wait and see.

Back at her place, she put on a light and added water to the warming tray. She brought out some packets of dried herbs.

"Apricot kernels," she said. "Smartweed. Wild carrot." She spread them out and poured herself a cup of hot water. "Weapons that wicked women use to keep their wombs empty."

I picked up the last - Wild carrot. There was something familiar about its smell. Something... homely.

"My mother made tea of this," I said, the memories finding their anchors. "Bela had her tea each time Wilmar came back from his mine shift."

"There you go then," Allie said. "That's why you never had a little brother or sister. Of Bela's, anyway."

I fingered the packet uncertainly and then put it down gently.

"The mysteries of women and the source of life," I said.

Allie shrugged and put the medicines away.

"Some women just don't conceive easily," she said. "I was probably old enough to have children when my cousin did what he did. With my first lover I was far from careful about taking this medicine, but I still remained childless. My body just doesn't take well to babies, I suppose."

I put my arm around her shoulder.

"Does that bother you?" I asked gently.

She shrugged. "No," she said. "Not yet, anyway. I've got too much to worry about already. Maybe later."

I shook my head. City girls, quite different from the girls at Forg.

She peeked in at the little birds, still and quiet now in their woodchips and leaves.

"These'll do for the present," she said. "Plus they say you shouldn't drink when you're expecting."

I looked anxiously across at her. There had been some tension in her voice. But she looked at me and smiled, waving it away.

"Some sacrifices I'm not ready to make, yet," she said.

She turned out the light and we went upstairs to sleep.



_

[HuManBing]

A Book About Hawk

A priest came to speak to me. Word was spreading of our reputation and the Temple thought it was time to do this on a larger scale, opening up a training grounds on the plaza opposite the First Temple. We could have the lords' militias come to us rather than the other way round.

This was done, and we trained men in rows in front of the Temple's elegant spires and towers.

In the midwinter, Stalvan came to me with ideas for a book. Something about the trials and tribulations of being a mercenary, converted to the Temple after a life of violence.

"Oh, I'm already doing that," I said. "They're going to publish it with Alicov Book Publishing."

Stalvan seemed taken aback.

"Interesting," he said. "How did you meet Alicov's representative?"

I told him about a journalist in the convoy down from Flex.

"They're doing something about this," I said. "I think they're writing a book or something."

Stalvan stroked his stubble.

"Find out if there's somebody I can talk to at that publishing house, and put me in touch with them," he said. "The Temple may be willing to release some funds for this."

* ~ * ~ *

I fell into a routine, of training with my men most mornings, and then taking the evening off to be with Allie. When she could, she taught me to read, and slowly my abilities improved.

One day, she brought me one of the circulars that she'd saved on the table.

"Read this," she said, pointing at an article.

I peered at it, trying to make out the words.

"I... still... remember... my... first... sword..." I said, haltingly.

Realization dawned.

"This is my story!" I said, unable to repress a smile. I read onwards, hungrily now, skimming the words I knew and skipping the ones I didn't.

"Wow," I said. "I've never written a book before."

She sat down beside me. "This is just the columnist run," she said. "We'll release it in serials over a few months, and then when it's all done, we'll look to see whether the public interest is enough to justify a book release. I think it'll be popular enough, but it's good to build up to these things in the form of a serial. Tease the audience."

I held the paper before me. It was a cheap, lightweight print, but I handled it like I would any religious codex. This was a record - of me and my deeds. I saw ahead in my mind's eye, to a day when I would die and return to the ground... and then after a time, everybody who had ever known of me would die too. It was mute, lifeless monuments like these that preserved the memory of all we had fought for and accomplished.

Allie laughed.

"It's funny, you're really pleased with that," she said. "I forget how exciting it is to see yourself in print the first time."

She went back to the table and fetched her tea. "I keep copies of everything I publish in the vault downstairs," she said. "You can have that copy."

"Read the last paragraph to me," I said. "How far does it go?"

She looked at it.

"It ends after Wilmar takes your sword away from you," she said. "So there's still quite a ways to go. We'll see when the next issue comes out, in a few days' time."

I thought back. Yes, that sounded like the earliest thing I told her, chronologically.

"How long will it take?" I asked doubtfully.

Allie sat down again and explained it to me. The story was still being tweaked, she said, but the majority of it was done. There were a few things the publisher wanted to verify about the battles, but right now the major parts were already set and ready to print. Over the course of four or five months, they would print the story in installments, and then end it roundabout summer next year. By that time, depending on reader interest, the books will be ready and that would see to the publication and our profits.

I told her about Stalvan's interest, and she gave me a card to take to him.

"Right now, we could really do with some funding from the Temple," she said. "We don't make any money on the circulars, but they're a necessary step in order for us to release the books. And we do make money on the books."

A thought struck me.

"How will you end it?" I asked. "I'm not dead yet."

She nodded. "We can end it on a good note - of the soldier who came to Hawkbluff and found his calling there serving the city and the Temple. Instead of war, your profession is peace. I'm sure your patron, Bishop Trandamere, would appreciate that."

I shifted uneasily.

"But that's not the whole story," I said. "My men still wish to go back to battle. It's what we do. It's why we're famous."

Allie waved it away. "We can certainly write it in, that's no problem. Show the public that you are here and settled, but with uncertainties about your future," she said. "You've made your peace with the gods - now you are prepared to fight for peace among men."

I looked at her, bright and alert beside me, craning over to see the paper. On impulse, I leaned in and kissed her neck.

"Oh!" she gasped, eyes wide, and then pulled back. "Naughty. You're not to behave like that when I'm working."

"I think that's what you forgot to mention," I said. "Wouldn't your readers like to know about this beautiful lady I met in Hawkbluff?"

She toyed with my hair, a sad smile on her face.

"The Temple would definitely not approve of that," she said. "Also we still haven't solved the problem of the Verdinesh yet. I won't publish anything about myself until I know I'm safe."

She looked at me a few moments longer, and then leaned in and kissed me.

"Sweet of you to want to include that, though," she murmured into my ear. "Wouldn't I want everybody to know it, if I could?"

I turned back to the paper with a pencil in my hand, ready to make my own edits. I wrote NEKKID BEJRUM EXERSYZ on a scrap of paper and handed it to her.

She shook her head, giggling, and got up to put away the plates.

* ~ * ~ *

After they opened the Temple's training grounds, business picked up. In every militia body, there were at least one or two career soldiers who wanted to hone their art, and these ones came and sought us out. We found several who were veterans of older conflicts, and I personally sat with them and talked long after training was over, discussing their strategies and tactics.

There was a great sense of equals among these old veterans. I did not pretend to lead them, nor did they assume to condescend to me. It seemed that many kindred spirits, like my own, had been forged in the fires of battle at a young age, and finding that they adapted well to those situations, they chafed under peace when there was still so much left worth fighting for in distant lands.

One of them, Calomines, wanted to spar my men and test his spearwork. We were amenable, and he came every week to test his strength against us. After a month or so, as the winter came, he brought his old friends and we wrestled and sparred warmth into our muscles.

Calomines had a training hall of his own, but nothing so grand as what the Temple had for us. We sometimes brought our vittles to his training hall and set to there, enjoying the chance to engage a fellow career warrior, shield to shield.

It was deep winter when Calomines told us of his master's sentence.

"They found out who it was who had been stealing the master's wine," he said. "There's been a series of death sentences handed out. They want you to handle the last rites."

I looked at him.

"Me?" I asked.

"Aye. Master's been taking an interest in our swordplay, though if you ask me, he's more fancy than actual fightin' spirit. Anyhow, he fancies seeing you take on the condemned. A test of the gods' favor, as it were."

I thought about this.

"The Temple would not approve of this," I said. "They believe in juries and courts, not trial by steel."

Calomines nodded.

"I'll keep it secret, of course," he said.

I strapped on my sandals.

"Let's go."

* ~ * ~ *

The condemned had each been given a sword, a jerkin, and a piddling targe. The first one - a scared boy of not more than fourteen years, staggered out, eyes wide. The tiny shield strapped to his wrist that was barely big enough to shield his forearm.

The air was smoky around me as my men - Lotal, Prasti, Gram, and Lellik-jir - looked on. Shouts and hollers of the betting men filled the barn.

I turned to Lotal.

"This is hardly fair," I said. "I'm wearing my mail and shield."

Lotal shushed me. "Don't think of this as an engagement of arms," he said. "It's just an execution. You're the headsman and it wouldn't do to put you in harm's way."

I looked back at the boy.

"Very well," I said. Then I raised my shield and blade to signal I was ready.

Calomines dropped his spear, and it began as I charged the enemy in a flash, effortlessly turning his blade aside with my shield, and burying my sword up to the hilt into his sternum.

He dropped like a stuck pig to all fours. I let the sword go and stepped back to avoid the spray of blood. As his struggles subsided, I kicked him onto his back with my foot and tugged my sword out of his chest, wiping it on his hair as he stirred his last. A white eyeball stared up at me from the crimson mess of his face.

The other men cheered wildly, probably from the sight of the blood. My company did so, more out of politeness. There was little of actual swordsmanship in this.

"Next up," shouted Calomines.

This next one was an elderly man, ill-fitting in his leather and whose sword hand wobbled with some palsy. I held up my hand and motioned Lotal over.

"Help me get this mail off," I said.

"But Hawk, it's risky," he said. "All it takes is a lucky stab..."

"Take it off," I said. "This is completely pointless. I need some exercise, not dumbpractice."

Lotal stepped to, unfastening pins and unbuckling straps, until I stood before the man in my light jerkin.

I gave my sword a heartening whirl and faced him, and Calomines dropped his spear again.

This time, I took things at my own pace. I stepped forward at a casual saunter, sword up and out, as the man held his feeble stance and his rheumy eyes followed me. An grimace of utmost despair graced his lined face, as if in question.

I took a quick three-step forward, sword up, then around, and then down. He fumbled crazily to block me, and I feinted over his sword-arm shoulder and then darted across his open side, taking my sword safely back. There was a crunch as my shield hit him heavily on the off-arm, forcing him into a stagger backwards. He sat down heavily, his sword clattering away.

I put my sword into my sheath, and walked up to him, as he cowered on the straw floor.

I held out my hand, which he took slowly, and then hauled him up to his feet.

He patted himself off, and then looked up and saw that my sword was drawn again, my manner settled once more in a fighter's stance. His eyes opened fearfully, and he scrabbled back to his sword.

I waited until he had it out again, then my front toes clenched as I burst towards him, chopping down at the hilt and blade. I knocked it to the side and then ran my sword down his, connecting with his fingers at the bottom. As he was still opening his mouth to scream, I let the momentum of the charge carry me up against him, and my left side swivelled through. The scream smothered in his throat as I brought the shield's leading edge into his jaw with a crack that even the audience could hear.

He went down, coughing, and then onto his side. I stood above him, my sword out, no mistaking my stance for the sporting mercy I'd shown earlier. He saw this and scrabbled on all fours onward, crawling three halting steps towards his fallen weapon before I plunged my sword into his back.

I'd chosen a good place to stab him. I felt the cracking separation of vertebrae, followed by the deep, sucking pull of his viscera as the blade vanished entirely into his torso. He froze, his body trembling violently, his bloody mouth open and his eyes slowly unfocussing like a rabid animal. At length, the ghost that sustained him expired, and he fell onto his front in the dust.

I wrenched the sword out from him and wiped it on his hair.

I shook my head as I headed back to Calomines.

"This is pointless," I said. "These people are all civilians."

"They are criminals," he said.

"Yes, but not violent criminals," I said. "I know it's been some time since I saw a battlefield, but I'm not a raw recruit. Come back to me when you want a fight, not an execution."

He saw me sheathe my blade and looked around uneasily.

"There are still four more to go," he said. "I can't let my paying audience go until they're all dealt with."

I clicked my fingers for Lotal.

"You want to finish this for me?" I asked. "This is getting boring."

He whistled. "I thought you'd never ask, Captain!"

I handed him the shield and proof and sat at the side as he took his sword to the cowering prisoners.

* ~ * ~ *

Calomines came to me afterwards with a pouch of coin - my pay, he said, for the good show. I waved it away, and he gave it to Lotal instead.

"We should be on in a month or so," he said. "Lord Vesilgras is about to pronounce judgment on an accused highway robber and it does not look good for him. He says he wants to see him suffer."

"...then put him on the bloody rack and be done with it," I muttered under my breath. We left the training hall and went back to the Temple, after washing up.

* ~ * ~ *

For most of winter, this far leewards, trade continued as usual. Gram and I went on our trips out to the capital, and we even attended an opera performance - though I found the warbling of the main actors to be terribly dull and the plot incomprehensible. On these trips, we diverted occasionally to the Verdinesh holdings, checking out whatever leads we could find to their fate. Everywhere we looked, it was the same. They had left fourteen years ago, and never come back.

Near the end, we got a commission to protect a Templar convoy up to Flex. The trip would take us a week, and we would have a week to rest, and then another week back. I brought Gram along and we made plans to slip away from Flex to visit Hasid.

Things had deteriorated on the warfront, as well. Roshan and Palt had long fallen out of King Caropalix's power. Instead, the sable banner flew above them, and Malarchus committed who-knew-what atrocities to the townsfolk there. There were reports of occasional clashes with General Taric's force, but it seemed this time Malarchus' army would not be dislodged so easily.

That meant that Hasid was one of the frontier cities, now.

The men back at barracks wanted to come along with us, but there were some training engagements that the company had taken on, and Lotal had to oversee them. As it was, they held a beerfest for us before we left, in the hopes that Gram and I would get to see some battle again and prove ourselves. It also served a dual purpose: if we ran into anything that proved too much for us, at least we'd have this last chance to enjoy the drinking with our fellows.

Alicov was invited, but she did not show - not least because I never told her. The drinking would likely have incapacitated her for the whole day, and then I'd feel terrible about leaving her.

"A toast for the sallying hero!" Prasti shouted, and then took on massive Lellik-jir in a drinking game.

Lotal sidled up to me at the bench.

"Hawk," he slurred. "Hawk, me old boy."

I chucked his shoulder fondly. "What is it?"

Lotal focussed on me uncertainly.

"You... I... we... share everything, right?" he said. "What's mine ish yours, and what's yourn is mine."

I nodded. "Sure, men of the company."

He held up a finger.

"That's it!" he said. "Egg-sack-lee. Men of the company."

He drained his mug and came back.

"That woman you have. Alicov," he said. "She's such a fine one, Hawk. Not a man doesn't desire her in the camp."

I nodded, more or less politely.

"She's sure a beauty," Lotal said, winsomely. "Such a pretty face, too."

I waited, unsure where he was going with this.

"Hawk," he said. "Can I tumble her? Just once? Please?"

I looked at his eyes and saw that he was serious.

This made things awkward.

I stroked my chin and thought about this. Best to play it off as a joke, perhaps.

"I'm touched that you're asking me," I said. "But you really need to ask her. Because if she says no, there's nothing I can say that will make it all right."

Lotal laughed.

"Ain't that true? No way to force open a flower."

I drained my mug.

"But you wanna be careful when you're asking her," I said. "She doesn't really say the term 'tumble'."

"What's she say then?"

"She calls it 'naked bedroom exercise'," I said.

Lotal's eyes went wide.

"Naked bedroom exercise?!" he said. "Damn, Hawk, you've made her weird already." He turned away. "Never mind. Don't want her anymore."

* ~ * ~ *

_