Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf & Starhawk 01 - The Ladies of Mand

CHAPTER

— 1 —

w

f YHAT

HAT IN THE NAME OF THE COLD HELLS IS THIS?" SUN

Wolf held the scrap of unfolded paper between stubby fingers that were still

slightly stained with blood.

Starhawk, his tall, rawboned second-in-command, glanced up from cleaning the

grime of battle off the hilt of her sword and raised dark, level brows

inquiringly. Outside, torchlight reddened the windy night. The camp was

riotous with the noise of victory; the mercenaries of Wrynde and the troops of

the City of Kedwyr were uninhibitedly celebrating the final breaking of the

siege of Melplith.

"What's it look like?" she asked reasonably.

"It looks like a poxy proposition." He handed it to her, the amber light of

the oil lamp overhead falling over his body, naked to the waist and glittering

with a light curly rug of gold hair. Starhawk had been fighting under his

command for long enough to know that, if he had actually thought it nothing

more than a proposition, he would have put it in the fire without a word.

Sun Wolf, Commander of the Mercenaries, Camp of Kedwyr below the walls of

Melplith, from Sheera Galernas of Man-drigyn, greetings. I will be coming to

you in your tent tonight with a matter of interest to you. For my sake and

that of my cause, please be alone, and speak to no one of this. Sheera.

"Woman's handwriting," Starhawk commented, and ran her thumb consideringly

aiong the gilt edge of the expensive paper.

Sun Wolf looked at her sharply from beneath his curiously

2Barbara Hambly

tufted brows. "If she wasn't from Mandrigyn, I'd say it was the local madam

trying to drum up business."

Starhawk nodded in absent-minded agreement.

Outside the tent, the noise scaled up into a crescendo. Boozy catcalls mixed

with cries of encouragement and yells of "Kill him! Kill the bastard!" Between

the regular troops of the City of Kedwyr and the City's Outland Militia

Levies, a lively hatred existed, perhaps stronger than the feeling that either

body of warriors had toward the hapless citizen-soldiers of the besieged town

of Melplith. It was a conflict that the Wolf and his mercenaries had stayed

well clear of—the Wolf because he made it his policy never to get involved in

local politics, and his men because of a blood-chilling directive from their

captain on the subject. The noises of drunken murder did not concern him—

there wasn't a man in his troop who would have so much as stayed to watch.

"Mandrigyn," Starhawk said thoughtfully. "Altiokis conquered that city last

spring, didn't he?"

Sun Wolf nodded and settled himself into a fantastic camp chair made of

staghom bound with gold, looted from some tribal king in the far northeast.

Most of the big tent's furnishings had been plundered from somewhere or other.

The peacock hangings that separated it into two rooms had once adorned the

bedroom of a prince of the K'Chin Desert. The cups of translucent, jade-green

lacquer and gold had belonged to a merchant on the Bight Coast. The graceful

ebony table, its delicate inlays almost hidden under the bloody armor that had

been dumped upon it, had once graced the wine room of a gentlemanly noble of

the Middle Kingdoms, before his precious vintages had been swilled by the

invading armies of his enemies and he himself had been dispatched beyond such

concerns.

"The city went fast," Sun Wolf remarked, picking up a rag and setting to work

cleaning his own weapons. "Basically, it was the same situation as we had here

in Melplith—factional splits in the parliament, scandal involving the royal

family— they have a royal family there, or they did have, anyway— the city

weakened by internal fighting before Altiokis marched down the pass. I'm told

there were people there who welcomed him as a liberator."

Starhawk shrugged. "No weirder than some of the things the Trinitarian

heretics believe," she joked, deadpan, and he grinned. Like most northerners,

the Hawk held to the Old Faith against the more sophisticated theologies of

the Triple God.

THf LADIES OF MANDRIGYN 3

"The Wizard King's Citadel has been on Mandrigyn's back doorstep for a hundred

and fifty years," the, Wolf continued after a moment. "Last year they signed

some kind of treaty with him. ! could see it coming even then."

Starhawk shoved her sword back into its sheath and wiped her fingers on a rag.

Sun Wolf's talent for collecting and sorting information was uncanny, but it

was a skill that served him well. He had a knack for gathering rumors,

extrapolating political probabilities from crop prices and currency

fluctuations and the most trivial bits of information that made their way

north to his broken-down stronghold at the old administrative town of Wrynde.

Thus he and his men had been on the spot in the Gwarl Peninsula when the

fighting had broken out between the trading rivals of Kedwyr and Melplith.

Kedwyr had hired the Wolf and his troop at an astronomical sum.

It didn't always work that way—in her eight years as a mercenary in Sun Wolf's

troop, Starhawk had seen one or two spectacular pieces of mistiming—but on the

whole it had enabled the Wolf to maintain his troops in better-than-average

style, fighting in the summer and sitting out the violence of the winter

storms in the relative comfort of the half-ruined town of Wymde.

Like all mercenary troops. Sun Wolf's shifted from year to year in size and

composition, though they centered around a hard core that had been with him

for years. As far as Starhawk knew, Sun Wolf was the only mercenary captain

who operated a regular school of combat in the winter months. The school

itself was renowned throughout the West and the North for the excellence of

its fighters. Every winter, when the rains made war impossible, young men and

occasional young women made the perilous journey through the northern

wastelands that had once been the agricultural heart of the old Empire of

Gwenth to the ruined and isolated little town of Wyrnde, there to ask to be

taught the hard arts of war.

There were always wars to fight somewhere. Since the moribund Empire of Gwenth

had finally been riven apart by the conflict between the Three Gods and the

One, there had always been wars—over the small bits of good land among the

immense tracts of bad, over the trade with the East in silk and amber and

spices, over religion, or over nothing. Starhawk, whose early training had

given her a taste for such things, had once explained the theology behind the

Schism to the Wolf. Being a barbarian from the far north, he worshipped the

spirits

4Barbara Hambly

of his ancestors and would cheerfully take money from proponents of either

faith. An understanding of the situation had only amused him, as she knew it

would. Lately the wars had been over the rising of the Wizard King Altiokis,

who was expanding his own empire from the dark Citadel of Grimscarp, engulfing

the Thanes who ruled the countryside and such cities as Mandrigyn.

"Will you see this woman from Mandrigyn?" she asked.

"Probably." The noise of the fight outside peaked in a crazy climax of

yelling, punctuated by the heavy crack of the whips of the Kedwyr military

police. It was the fourth fight they'd heard since returning to the camp after

the sacking of the town was done; victory was headier than any booze ever

brewed.

Starhawk collected her gear—sword, dagger, mail shirt— preparatory to

returning to her own tent. Melplith stood on high ground, above its sheltered

bay—one of those arid regions whose chief crops of citrus and olives had

naturally turned its inhabitants to trade for their living. Chill winds now

blew up from the choppy waters of the bay, making the lampflame flicker in its

topaz glass and chilling her flesh through the damp cotton of her dark,

embroidered shirt.

"You think it's a job?"

"I think she'll offer me one."

"Will you take it?"

The Wolf glanced over at her briefly. His eyes, in this light, were pale gold,

tike the wines of the Middle Kingdoms, He was close to forty, and his tawny

hair was thinning, but there was no gray either in it or in the ragged

mustache that drooped like a clump of yellow-brown winter weeds from the

underside of a craggy and much-bent nose. The power and thickness of his chest

and shoulders made him seem taller than his six feet when he was standing up;

seated and at rest, he reminded her of a big, dusty lion. "Would you go

against Altiokis?" he asked her.

She hesitated, not speaking her true answer to that. She had heard stories of

the Wizard King since she was a tiny girl— bizarre, distorted tales of his

conquests, his sins, and his greed. Horrible tales were told of what happened

to those who had opposed him, over the timeless years of his uncanny

existence.

Her true answer, the one she did not say aloud, was: Yes. if you wanted me to.

What she said was, "Would you?"

He shook his head. "I'm a soldier," he said briefly. "I'm

THE LADIES OF MANDRIGYH 5

no wizard. I couldn't go against a wizard, and I wouldn't take my people

against one. There are two things that my father always told me, if I wanted

to live to grow old—don't fall in love and don't mess with magic."

"Three things," Starhawk corrected, with one of her rare, fleeting grins.

"Don't argue with fanatics."

"That comes under magic. Or arguing with drunks, I'm not sure which. I don't

understand how there could be one God or three Gods or five or more, but I do

know that I had ancestors, drunken, lecherous clowns that they were... Hello,

sweetpea."

The curtain that divided the tent parted, and Fawn came in, brushing the last

dampness from the heavy curls of her mink-brown hair. The pale green gauze of

her gown made her eyes seem greener, almost emerald. She.was Sun Wolf's latest

concubine, eighteen, and heartbreakingly beautiful. "Your bath's ready," she

said, coming behind the camp chair where he sat to kiss the thin spot in his

hair at the top of his head.

He took her hand where it lay on his shoulder and, with a curiously tender

gesture for so large and rough-looking a man, he pressed his lips to the white

skin of her wrist. "Thanks," he said. "Hawk, will you wait for a few minutes?

If this skirt wants to see me alone, would you take Fawn over to your tent for

a while?"

Starhawk nodded. She had seen a series of his girls come and go, all of them

beautiful, soft-spoken, pliant, and a little helpless. The camp tonight, after

the sacking of the town, was no place for a girl not raised to killing, even

if she was the mistress of a man like Sun Wolf.

"So you're receiving ladies alone in your tent now, are you?" Fawn chided

teasingly.

With a movement too swift to be either fought or fled, he was out of his

chair, catching her up, squeaking, in his arms as he rose. She wailed, "Stop

it! No! I'm sorry!" as he bore her off through the curtain into the other

room, her squeals scaling up into a desperate crescendo that ended in a

monumental and steamy splash.

Without a flicker of an eyelid, Starhawk shouldered her war gear, called out,

"I'll be back for you in an hour, Fawn," and departed; only when she was

outside did she allow herself a small, amused grin.

She returned in company with An, a young man who was Sun Wolf's other

lieutenant and who rather resembled an ad-otescent black bear. They bade the

Wolf a grave good evening.

6Barbara Humbly

collected the damp, subdued, and rather pink-cheeked Fawn, and made their way

across the camp. The wind had risen again, cold off the sea with the promise

of the winter's deadly storms; drifts of woodsmoke from the camp's fires blew

into their eyes. Above them, the fires in the city flared, fanned by the

renewed breezes, and a sulfurous glow outlined the black crenelations of the

walls. The night tasted raw, wild, and strange, still rank with blood and

broken by the wailing of women taken in the sacking of the town.

"Things settling down?" the Hawk asked.

Ari shrugged. "Some. The militia units are already drunk. Gradduck—that

tin-pot general who commanded the City Troops—is taking all the credit for

breaking the siege."

Starhawk feigned deep thought. "Oh, yes," she remembered at length. "The one

the Chief said couldn't lay seige to a pothouse."

"No, no," Ari protested, "it wasn't a pothouse—an outhouse ..."

Voices yelled Ari's name, calling him to judge an athletic competition that

was as indecent as it was ridiculous, and he laughed, waved to the women, and

vanished into the darkness. Starhawk and Fawn continued to walk, the wind-torn

torchlight banding their faces in lurid colors—the Hawk long-legged and

panther-graceful in her man's breeches and doublet, Fawn shy as her namesake

amid the brawling noise of the camp, keeping close to Starhawk's side. As they

left the noisier precincts around the wine issue, the girl asked, "Is it true

he's being asked to go against Altiokis?"

"He won1! do it," Starhawk said. "Any more than he'd work for him. He was

approached for that, too, years ago. He won't meddle with magic one way or the

other, and I can't say that I blame him. Altiokis is news of the worst

possible kind."

Fawn shivered in the smoky wind and drew the spiderweb silk of her shawl

tighter about her shoulders. "Were they all like that? Wizards, 1 mean? Is

that why they all—died out?"

In the feeble reflection of lamplight from the tents, her green eyes looked

huge and transparent. Damp tendrils of hair clung to her cheeks; she brushed

them aside, watching Starhawk worriedly. Like most people in the troop, she

was a little in awe of that steely and enigmatic woman.

Starhawk ducked under the door flap of her tent, and held it aside for Fawn to

pass. "1 don't know if that's why the wizards finally died out," she said.

"But I do know they weren't

THE LADIES OF MANDR/CVN 7

all evil like Altiokis. I knew a wizard once when I was a little girl. She

was—very good."

Fawn stared at her in surprise that came partly from astonishment that

Starhawk had ever been a little girl. In a way, it seemed inconceivable that

she had ever been anything but what she was now: a tail, leggy cheetah of a

woman, colorless as fine ivory—pale hair, pewter-gray eyes—save where the sun

had darkened the fine-grained, flawless skin of her face and throat to burnt

gold. Her light, cool voice was remarkably soft for a warrior's, though she

was said to have a store of invective that could raise blisters on tanned

oxhide. It was more believable of her that she had known a wizard than that

she had been a little girl.

"I—I thought they were all gone, long before we were born."

"No," the Hawk said. The lamplight sparkled off the brass buckles that studded

her sheepskin doublet as she fetched a skin of wine and two cups. Her tent was

small and, like her, neat and spare. She had packed away her gear earlier. The

only things remaining on the polished wood folding table were the

gold-and-shell winecups and a pack of greasy cards. Starhawk was generally

admitted to be a shark of poker—with her face, Fawn reflected, she could

hardly be anything else.

"I thought that, too," Starhawk continued, coming back as Fawn seated herself

on the edge of the narrow bed. "I didn't know Sister Wellwa was a wizard

for—oh, years."

"She was a nun?" Fawn asked, startled.

Starhawk weighed her answer for a moment, as if picking her words carefully.

Then she nodded. "The village where I grew up was built around the Convent of

St. Cherybi in the West. Sister Wellwa was the oldest nun there—I used to see

her every day, sweeping the paths outside with her broom made of sticks. As I

said, I didn't know then that she was a wizard."

"How did you find out?" Fawn asked. "Did she tell you?"

"No." Starhawk folded herself into her chair. Like everything else in the

tent, it was plain, bare, and easy to pack in a hurry. 'The countryside around

the village was very wild— I don't know if you're familiar with the West, but

it's a land of rock and thin forest, rising toward the sea cliffs. A hard

land. Dangerous, too. I'd gone into the woods to gather berries or something

silly like that—something I wasn't supposed to do. I was probably escaping

from my brothers. And—and there was a nuuwa."

Fawn shivered. She had seen nuxiwa, dead, or at a distance.

8Barbara Hambly

It was possible, Starhawk thought, watching her, that she had also seen their

victims.

"I ran," the Hawk continued unemotionally. "I was very young, I'd never seen

one before, and I thought that, since it didn't have any eyes, it couldn't

follow me. I must have thought at first that it was just an eyeless man. But

it came after me, groaning and slobbering, crashing through the woods. I never

looked back, but I could hear it behind me, getting closer as I came out of

the woods. I ran through the rocks up the hill toward the Convent, and Sister

Wellwa was outside, sweeping the path as she always was. And she—she raised

her hand— and it was as if fire exploded from her fingers, a ball of red and

blue fire that she flung at the nuuwa's head. Then she caught me up in her

arms, and we ran together through the door and shut and bolted it. Later we

found places where the nuuwa had tried to chew through the doorframe."

She was silent; if any of the horror of that memory stirred in her heart, it

did not show on her fine-boned, enigmatic face. It was Fawn who shuddered and

made a small, sickened noise in her throat.

"It was the only time 1 saw her do magic," Siarhawk continued after a moment.

"When I asked her about it later, she told me she had only grabbed me and

carried me inside."

Across the rim of the untasted cup. Fawn studied the older woman for a moment

more. Rumor in the camp had it that the Hawk had once been a nun herself,

before she had elected to leave the Convent and follow the Wolf. Though Fawn

had never believed it before, something in this story made her wonder if it

might be true. There were elements of asceticism and mysticism in Starhawk;

Fawn knew that she meditated daily, and the tent was certainly as barren as a

nun's cell. Though a cold-blooded and ruthless warrior, the Hawk was never

senselessly brutal—but then, few of the handful of women in Wolfs troop were.

It was on the tip of Fawn's tongue to ask her, but Starhawk was not a woman of

whom one asked questions without permission. Besides, Fawn could think of no

reason why anyone would have left the comforts of the Convent to follow the

brutal trail of war.

Instead she asked, "Why did she lie?"

"The Mother only knows. She was a very old lady then— she died a year or so

after, and I don't think anyone else in the Convent ever knew what she was."

THE LADIES OF MANDR1GYN 9

Fawn's tapering fingers toyed with the cup, the diamonds of her rings winking

like teardrops in the dim, golden light. Somewhere quite close, a drunken

chorus in another tent began to sing.

"All in the town of Kedwyr, A hundred years ago or more, There lived a lass

named Sella..."

"I have often wondered," Fawn said quietly, "about wizards. Why is Altiokis

the only wizard left in the world? Why hasn't he died, in all these years?

What happened to all the others?"

Starhawk shrugged. "The Mother only knows," she said again. As ever, her face

gave away nothing; if it was a question that had ever crossed her mind, she

did not show it. Instead she slapped the deck of cards before Fawn. "Bank?"

Fawn shuffled deftly despite her fashionably long, tinted fingernails. It was

one of the first things she had learned when she'd been sold to Sun Wolf two

years ago as a terrified virgin of sixteen—mostly in self-defense, since the

Wolf and Star-hawk were cutthroat card players.

Watching her, Starhawk reflected how out of place the girl looked here.

Fawn—whose name had certainly been something else before she 'd been kidnapped

en route from her father's home in the Middle Kingdoms to a finishing school

in Kwest Mralwe— had clearly been brought up in an atmosphere of taste and

elegance. The clothes and jewelry she picked for herself spoke of it.

Starhawk, though raised in an environment both countrified and austere, had

done enough looting in the course of eight years of sieges to understand the

difference between new-rich tawdri-ness and quality. Every line of Fawn spoke

of fastidious taste and careful breeding, as much at odds with the nunlike

barrenness of Starhawk's living quarters as she was with the rather barbaric

opulence of the Chief's.

What had she been? the Hawk wondered. A nobleman's daughter? A merchant's?

Those white hands, delicate amid their carefully chosen jewelry, had certainly

never handled anything harsher than a man's flesh in all her life. The

loveliest that money coidd buy, Starhawk thought, with a wry twinge of

bitterness for the girl's sake—whether she wanted to be bought or not.

Fawn laid the cards down, undealt. In repose, her face looked suddenly tired.

"What's going to become of him. Hawk?" she asked quietly.

10 Barbara Hambly

Starhawk shrugged, deliberately misunderstanding. "I can't see the Chief being

crazy enough to get mixed up in any affair having to do with magic," she

began, and Fawn shook her head impatiently.

"It isn't just this," she insisted. "If he goes on as he's doing, he's going

to slip up one day. He's the best, they say—but he's also forty. Is he going

to go on leading troops into battle and wintering in Wrynde, until one day

he's a little slow dodging some enemy's axe? If it isn't Altiokis, how long

will it be before it's something else?"

Starhawk looked away from those suddenly luminous eyes. Rather gruffly, she

said, "Oh, he'll probably conquer a city, make a fortune, and die stinking

rich at the age of ninety. The old bastard's welfare isn't worth your losing

sleep over."

Fawn laughed shakily at the picture presented, and they spoke of other things.

But on the whole, as she dealt the cards, Starhawk wished that the girl had

not touched that way upon her own buried forebodings.

Sun Wolf felt, rather than heard, the woman's soft tread outside his tent; he

was watching the entrance when the flap was moved aside. The woman came in

with the wild sea smell of the night.

With the lamps at his back, their light catching in his thinning, dust-colored

hair and framing his face in gold, he did look like a sun wolf, the big,

deadly, tawny hunter of the eastern steppes. The woman put back the hood from

her hair.

"Sheera Galernas?" he asked quietly.

"Captain Sun Wolf?"

He gestured her to take the other chair. She was younger than he had thought,

at most twenty-five. Her black hair curled thickly around a face that tapered

from wide, delicate cheekbones to a pointed chin. Her lips, full almost to the

corners of her mouth, were sensual and dark as the lees of wine. Her deep-set

eyes seemed wine-colored, too, their lids stained violet from sleepless

nights. She was tail for a woman and, as far as he could determine under the

muffling folds of her cloak, well set up.

For a moment neither spoke. Then she said, "You're different from what I had

thought."

"I can't apologize for that." He'd put on a shirt and breeches and a brown

velvet doublet. The hair on the backs of his arms caught the light as he

folded his strong, heavy hands.

THE LADIES OF MANDRIGYN U

She stirred in her chair, wary, watching him. He found himself wondering what

it would be like to bed her and if the experiment would be worth the trouble

it could cost. "I have a proposition for you," she said at last, meeting his

eyes with a kind of anger, defying him to look at her face instead of her

body.

"Most ladies who come to my tent do."

Her skin deepened to clay-red along the cheekbones and her nostrils flared a

little, like a horse scenting battle. But she only said, "What would you say

to ten thousand pieces of gold, to bring your troop and do a job for me in

Mandrigyn?"

He shrugged. "I'd say no."

She sat up, truly shocked. "For ten thousand gold pieces?" The sum was

enormous—five thousand would have bought the entire troop for a summer's

campaign and been thought generous. He wondered where she'd come up with it,

if in fact she intended to pay him. The size of the sum inclined him to doubt

it.

"I wouldn't go against Altiokis for fifty thousand," he said calmly. "And I

wouldn't tie up on a word-of-mouth proposition with a skirt from a conquered

city for a hundred, wizard or no wizard."

As he'd intended, it prodded her out of her calm. The flush in her face

deepened, for she was a woman to whom few men had ever said no. An edge of

ugly rage slid into her voice. "Are you afraid?"

"Madam," Sun Wolf said, "if it's a question of having my bowels pulled out

through my eye sockets, I'm afraid. There's no amount of money in the world

that would make me pick a quarrel with Altiokis."

"Or is it just that you'd prefer to deal with a man?"

She'd spat the words at him in spite, but he gave them due consideration;

after a moment, he replied, "As a matter of fact, yes," His hand forestalled

her intaken breath. "I know where women stand in Mandrigyn. I know they'd

never put one in public office and they'd never send one on a mission like

this. And if you're from Madrigyn, you know that."

She subsided, her breath coming fast and thick with anger, but she didn't deny

his words.

"So that means it's private," he went on. "Ten thousand gold pieces is one

hell of a lot of tin from a private party, especially from a city that's just

been taken and likely tapped

i2 Barbara Humbly

for indemnity for whatever wasn't carried off in the sack. And since 1 know

women are vengeful and sneaky..."

"Rot your eyes, you—" she exploded, and he held up his hand for silence again.

"They have reasons for fighting underhand the way they do, and 1 understand

them, but the fact remains that I don't trust a desperate woman. A woman will

do anything."

"You're right," she said quietly, her eyes burning with an eerie intensity

into his, her voice deadly calm. "We will do anything. But 1 don't think you

understand what it is to love your city, to be proud of it, ready to lay down

your life to defend it, if need be—and not be allowed to participate in its

government, not even be allowed by the canons of good manners to talk

politics. Holy Gods, we're not even permitted to walk about the streets

unveiled! To see the town torn apart by factionalism and conquered, with all

the men who did fight for it led away in chains while the wicked, the venal,

and the greedy sit in the seats of power...

"Do you know why no man came to you tonight?

"For decades—centuries—Altiokis has coveted Mandri-gyn. He has taken over the

lands of the old mountain Thanes and of the clans to the southeast of us; he

sits like a toad across the overland trade roads to the East. But he's

landlocked, and Mandrigyn is the key to the Megantic. We made trade

concessions to him, turned a blind eye to encroachments along the border,

signed treaties. You know that's never enough.

"His agents stirred up trouble and factions in the city, cast doubt on the

legitimacy of the rightful Prince, Tarrin of the House of Her, split the

parliament—and when we were exhausted with fighting one another, he and his

armies marched down Iron Pass. Tarrin led the whole force of the men of

Mandrigyn to meet them in battle, in the deeps of the Tchard Mountains. The

next day, Altiokis and his armies came into the city."

Her eyes focused suddenly, an amber gleam deep in their brown depths. "I know

Tarrin is still alive."

"How do you know?"

"Tarrin is my lover."

"I've had more women in my life," Sun Wolf said tiredly, "than I've had pairs

of boots, and 1 couldn't for the life of me tell you where one of them is

now."

"You'd know best about that," she sneered. "The men were all made slaves in

the mines beneath the Tchard Mountains—

THE LADIES Of MANDRIGYN 13

Altiokis has miles of mines; no one knows how deep, or how many armies of

slaves work there. The—girls—from the city sometimes go up there to—do

business—with the overseers. One of them saw Tarrin there." The expression of

her face changed, suffused, suddenly, with tender eagerness and the burning

anger of revenge. "He's alive."

"We'll skip over how this girl knew him," Sun Wolf said. He was gratified to

see that tender expression turn to one of fury. "I'll ask you this. You want

me and my men to rescue him from Altiokis' mines?"

Almost trembling with anger, Sheera took a grip on herself and said, "Yes. Not

Tarrin only, but all of the men of Mandrigyn."

"So they can go back down the mountain, retake the city, and live happily

forever after."

"Yes." She was leaning forward, her eyes blazing, her cloak fallen aside to

reveal the dark purple satin of her gown, pearled over like dew with opal

beads. "No man came to you because there was no man to come. The only males

left in Mandrigyn are old cripples, little boys, and slaves—and the

cake-mouthed, poxy cowards who would sell their children to feed Altiokis'

dogs, if the price were a little power. We raised the money among us—we, the

ladies of Mandrigyn. We'll pay you anything, anything you want. It's the only

hope for our city."

Her voice rose, strong as martial music, and Sun Wolf leaned back in his chair

and studied her thoughtfully. He took in the richness of the gown she wore and

the softness of those unworked hands. Supposing the city were taken without

sack— which would be to Altiokis' advantage if he wanted to continue using it

as a port. Sun Wolf was familiar with the soft-handed burghers who paid other

men to do their fighting, but he had never given much thought to the strength

or motivations of their wives. Maybe it was possible that they'd raised the

sum, he thought. Golden earrings, household funds, monies embezzled from

husbands too cowardly or too prudent to go to war. Possible, but not probable.

"Ten thousand gold pieces is the ransom of a king," he began.

"It is the ransom of a city's freedom!" she bit back at him.

Barbara Hambly - Sun Wolf & Starhawk 01 - The Ladies of Mand

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