Rem extricated his sword from a tangle of guts and kicked the corpse away in time to throw another bandit forward, off his back and over his head, and under the prancing hoofs of the zeeba in front, which finished him.
The rest of the fight was already over. Dead brigands lay strewn along the road, and a couple hung undecoratively from the wagons. Three or four more had made off alive, scrambling through the thick fur of the summer hills, the last of them dragging some of the worthy merchant’s goods along with him.
“That one,” Rem called. “Bring him down.”
The man with the best eye for it flung a spear, and the bandit fell dead in the grass. His associates did not bother to look back, and were soon from sight.
In the old days, even two years ago, this road was clear enough of such adventures. But since piratical Free Zakoris had come to crowd the sea-lanes between Dorthar, Ommos and Lan, few ships risked the harbor of Amlan, preferring land-trips to and from the ports of Elyr in the south. Thus, the trade road to the capital had ceased to be the well-patrolled and lawful stretch it had been. Every rare cargo that ran the Zakorian gauntlet, stood a fair risk from the hungry robbers of Lan.
Having himself been a bandit, once, Rem was not ill-educated in their ways and means. Hiring out as an escort for such dainties as now remained safe and unspoiled in the wagons, he had built some sort of financial security for himself. Twenty men were in his pay, courageous and intelligent. He could have taken on more if he had needed them. Not so many, maybe, as the fifty who would have followed him in Karmiss, under the Lord Kesarh’s banner of the Salamander. But, as things had stood, it would have been stupid to go back. Kesarh had had no need of him, in any case. Six years ago there had been a breath of plague in Istris, and the Prince-King Emel, though mightily protected, had evinced plague symptoms and shortly died. Less than three months later Kesarh Am Xai was crowned as King. He took two queens with him to the throne, one a Shansarian princess of Suthamun’s house, and one a Vis woman.
But all that was another world. The news came late here, and the emotions the news engendered were low-voiced as distant harps.
Eight years in all had gone by, eight years, and these months of the heat and of Zastis. The child, if she lived, would be less than nine years old. But he had no reason to suppose she lived. Although he had hunted her, and the girl, Berinda, intermittently up and down this land, for all the eight years and the months after, from the north to Lanelyr and back, he had found no trace.
And even though he continued at the savage trade he had chosen in the beginning just because it would take him all over Lan and so enable him to hunt for them, now he no longer understood why he did so. Habit only, probably. For she was dead, of course. Somewhere the winds swilled through her little baby’s bones, and her supernatural adult soul was exiled, riding them.
There had been none of the mind-visions, either, during these eight years. One blessing.
Sometimes he wondered about Lyki, and if she lived on with the rope merchant, or had taken up with some other. Even Doriyos sometimes moved across Rem’s thoughts like a blown leaf.
He did not let himself think very often of Kesarh.
“Rem, this pig has gold buckles. Do you want them?”
“No. Split anything like that between yourselves.”
They did so, rifling the cadavers before heaping them at the roadside. You left such markers in Lan. Someone went and got the haul the running bandit had taken, or tried to take, up the hill.
Then they rattled off along the road again, adhering to discipline and saving their boasting and drinking until they reached the city.
The King and Queen lived in Amlan, in a painted palace of five tiered towers. Every few months they would come out on the steps, each carried in an ivory chair as if incapable of walking, and under parasols, in a welter of guards and nobles, to dispense justice to any who asked for it. This custom, which was also prevalent it seemed in Vathcri, Vardath and Tarabann, amused Rem. While liking it, his soldier’s intellect saw all the dangers inherent. One could foresee a murder on that stair, below those red and blue pillars. And it would be a pity for them to be cut down. Brother and sister, in the tradition of Lan, they were young and handsome, both of them, to a fault.
The inn was a good one, just two streets away from the Palace Square. When he walked in there were yellow lights whirling through the air, a troupe of jugglers spinning flames and bells, and somersaulting between.
Rem settled in the dark corner the inn had left for him, drinking Lannic wine, and waiting for his meal to come. The merchant’s agent was to meet him here. The wagons had been sent to the warehouses, and already the tale would be abroad in the dusk, the ambush and the wily bravery of Rem of Karmiss. There should be a bonus in all that. He was glad enough for the men to share it. For himself—he looked into the somber wine and pondered, as he only occasionally allowed himself to ponder, why he built as he did, why he wasted as he did, the worthlessness, and the lack of roads to any other thing. But there was nothing in him, he knew, to merit special attention either from the nonexistent gods, or from himself.
When he looked up, two men were coming in at the door. They paused to admire the jugglers, and suddenly a kind of rippling went over the inn’s inhabitants, the sort that denoted someone of importance.
Mildly curious. Rem looked more intently. He did not know the older man. He was Lannic Vis, and well into his middle years, but strong, a fighter at one time it would appear, and exceptionally well-coordinated, something that could show even standing still. He was, too, smartly if not at all extravagantly dressed, yet, unlike most of Amlan’s male population, he wore his hair very long, in the old way. Rem had been in and out of Amlan many times, and had come to recognize most of the court by sight. They were frequently about, and the city was not over-large. This man, however, struck no memory, filled no niche.
One of the jugglers at that moment cartwheeled out of the melee and landed in a sweeping bow before the newcomer. Who laughed, and brushed him aside with a generous coin. The man began to walk into the room, glancing round. Here and there a cup was raised, and he acknowledged it quietly. The other walked with him, grinning, proud and poised and self-conscious.
This one was only a boy, not yet nineteen, if so close. Rem started to look at him and did not look away. He was mixed-blood, his skin tanned but not Vis, his hair crow-black. The eyes were light, bronze going toward topaz. Beautiful, like the rest.
All at once the two of them were at Rem’s table. The older man spoke.
“Good evening. Should we disturb your dinner if we sat down?”
Rem in the shadow, the light behind him beyond his pillar, stared hard. He was about to say some noncommittal thing when the inn tore down the middle like a fruit peel.
There was the man, still, but almost thirty years younger. The boy was gone. All around was dust and broiling daylight.
“I beg your pardon,” Rem said stiffly, “you seem to know me, but I—”
“Yannul the Lan. We served together, you and I.”
The inn was there again. Rem swallowed. It had been fast.
“What’s the matter?” the man said to him. He looked slightly concerned, as with a stranger.
“Your name is—” Rem cleared his throat, “Yannul.”
“I’d like to deny it, but I see you know me.”
“Yannul of Lan, one of the hero Raldnor’s captains.”
Yannul, taking this as an invitation, sat. The boy sat, too.
“Once,” said Yannul.
“You’re said to be in Dorthar.”