Secondly, it provided the Southrons with a gathering place for their annual intertribal assembly. That annual assembly, which took place in the autumn, was a great event for barbarian society. Its official purpose was to elect the Chief of Chiefs and settle whatever intertribal quarrels could be settled short of warfare. But it also provided them with a combination fair, trading mart, wife-seeking market, athletic contests, jousts, carnivals-and, of course, the most important time in the year for buying exotic goods brought from the civilized lands to the north.
Marange nestled against the eastern bank of the Blood River. Beyond the city's limits-insofar as it could be said to have any definite "limits"-stretched a rolling plain which provided a suitable meeting ground for the assembled barbarian tribes. During the assembly, that plain was well-nigh covered with the tents and huts erected by the tribesmen. Those temporary dwellings ranged in size and splendor from holes dug in the ground and covered with branches to the gigantic pavilions erected by the tribal chiefs.
The city itself had a similar cacophony. There was no real government ruling the place. Technically, Marange was neutral territory not allied to any tribe, and thus came under the official and direct jurisdiction of the Chief of Chiefs. But, in the real world, a Chief of Chiefs was a largely ceremonial post. The Chief of Chiefs had no residence separate from his own tribe. And, once the assembly was over, the Chief of Chiefs would depart the area and spend the rest of the year living in whatever portion of the southern continent his tribe happened to lay claim over.
As a result, the Chief of Chiefs paid no attention to Marange. For all practical purposes, the only order and authority which existed in the city was whatever its own inhabitants provided. And since they, in turn, were hardly any less tribal in their own way than the Southrons, no one had ever really tried to exercise authority over the city as a whole. Each group of outcasts tended to congregate in its own quarter. What "order" existed was whatever they saw fit to provide-and then, only for their own.
Needless to say, this posed a perilous situation for an uninformed visitor. "Dangerous as Marange" was a saying which could be found in all the major languages of the north and the Islands.
For most visitors, however, the danger was not too great. That was for the simple reason that most visitors were northern and Islander merchants, and each of those groups had their own well-established quarters in the city. The northerners-mostly Emeralds-directly north of the harbor area; the Islanders-mostly from Vase-directly east. A merchant doing business in Marange quickly learned to establish a firm relationship with the resident "traders' associations," which would provide him both with secure lodgings and an armed escort whenever he found it necessary to take his goods inland to the fairs themselves.
Anyone else took their chances. Emeralds might try to find a refuge in the "Emerald Quarter," located in the city's southern portion. But even for an Emerald, that was chancy. The Emeralds who lived there were either half-breeds or criminals or, usually, both-and despite the vigor with which they defended their "Emerald" status, seemed no less inclined to rob and murder an Emerald than anyone else.
Outcasts from the Islands had a similar quarter, located more or less in what could be called, more or less, Marange's "downtown."
There were also, scattered here and there and intermingled with various tribal groups, portions of the city inhabited by people from the Vanbert Confederacy. These areas were even more dangerous, however. The inhabitants were not so much criminals, in the professional sense of that term which could be applied to the Emerald or Islander exiles, as they were people so destitute and desperate that they had fled the Confederacy for the shaky refuge of Marange. Runaway slaves, for the most part.
Finally-so Sharlz Thicelt discovered with a little investigation as soon as they arrived and moored at one of the piers-there was a new sector in the city. Located next to the familiar "Emerald Quarter," it was being called the "New Emerald Quarter." The distinction was apparently not a subtle one. It seemed that shortly after their arrival, one of the "new Emeralds" was robbed and murdered by a gang of Emerald criminals-and the rest of the "new Emeralds" had immediately responded by massacring every member of that gang, some dozen or so others who happened to have the misfortune to be in the area, and had then for good measure burned down a goodly chunk of the old Emerald Quarter in order to create a no-man's-land between it and the new complex of residences they were erecting on the southern outskirts of the city. Which, Thicelt was told, resembled a Confederate army camp more than anything else.
"That's our boys," announced Jessep with satisfaction, upon being told the news. "Are you ready, girl?"
Helga nodded. Not more than five minutes later, she was being escorted to her destination through the streets of Marange by Jessep's hundred as well as Trae's unit of arquebusiers-all of them scowling at every resident of the city they came upon. They were a most ferocious looking crew, and even the crowded streets and alleys of Marange opened up before them.
Needless to say, neither Helga herself nor any of the other women nestled in the center of this column were molested along the way. The only man who did have the temerity to ogle them found himself lying bloody-faced on the street seconds later.
One of Trae's men did for that. The arquebusiers had discovered early on that a gun-butt, reversed, made an excellent club in close quarters. Trae had to restrain the man from shooting his victim; and only managed to do so by appealing to the need to conserve ammunition. Helga's escort was practically bristling, like a very large dog will when he encounters strange mutts.
When they finally arrived at the New Emerald Quarter, Helga saw that it did indeed resemble a Confederate army camp. "Resembled," in fact, was too weak a term. For all practical purposes, at least in terms of its design and construction, it was a Confederate camp-and one of the "permanent" ones, too, not one of the hastily-erected field camps which the army would use for a single night.
"Good construction," grunted Jessep approvingly. "Too heavy on the wood-extravagant, that, not to mention a bit crude. But-"
Helga chuckled. "Half of the country around here is one great big forest. So why not use heavy logs? Easier than planing boards, when you get down to it."
Jessep didn't argue the point. Clear enough, the veteran would feel happier himself once they got within those reassuring walls.
Doing so took a bit of effort. The soldiers guarding the gates were none too keen to allow a large group of armed strangers into their compound-the more so once they got a look at Trae's arquebuses. They were quite familiar with the devices, obviously. Helga could see at least four arquebuses trained on them from watchtowers along the wall.
Trae was doing the negotiations instead of Jessep, since he was far more fluent in the Emerald language. His task wasn't made any easier by the fact that Helga insisted he keep her own identity a secret. Whether that was necessary or not was pure guesswork on her part. But she and her father had kept her carefully secluded since her return, especially once they realized that she was pregnant with Adrian Gellert's child. The likelihood that someone from Marange would think to take that information to the Vanbert capital, more than two thousand perilous miles away, on the off chance that someone would be willing to pay for it, was unlikely. But if a stray remark happened to reach one of the northern merchants who was returning to civilization anyway…