The Reign Of Istar (25 page)

“Sun setting,” I guessed. “Right.” She raised four fingers, and I suggested that this coupled with the first gesture, meant four days passing. “Right again.” Her blue eyes
danced as she made the fists-and-clasp gesture I knew to mean FRIEND. “You know that one. How about this?”

She repeated Peverell's last gesture: slammed her right fist hard onto her level left
palm. Then she mimicked his expression: wide-eyed, drop-jawed surprise.

“What do you think that means, Hunter-Doune?” “I have no idea.” She moved her lips in a
secret little smile. “It's the whole point of what Pev said. I'll leave you to consider it.” I spent the night listening
to the wind sigh down the starred sky, thinking long and hard about Peverell's gestures. Might be, I thought, that
Peverell's fist-in-palm gesture meant an ambush. If so, perhaps he and Alyce were
anticipating Kell's surprise to find himself at last taken. And that in only another four
days. But nowhere in that interpretation did Peverell's friend-gesture fit.

Last, before I made ready to sleep, I remembered Alyce's secret smile.

Now I remembered this wasn't the first time I'd seen her smile like that. The first time
was in the Hart's Leap, right after she'd hunted around trying to find an oath for me to
swear. An oath that maybe I wouldn't have given if I'd known it was Dinn I had to help
break out of jail.

Cold and creeping came suspicion.

Might be, I thought, that there's another way to interpret Peverell's gestures and Alyce's
secret smile. Might be they were having a laugh over how surprised I'd be to find that the
oath she took on her father's sword signified nothing but a means to an end - the
minotaur's release from jail, the capture of the heretic Kell, and a third share of the
bounty instead of a quarter.

Four days. Friendship. And a violent, smashing gesture. Surprise.

Alyce - her considering looks, her soft eyes, her surprised pleasure when I let the nomads
go? What were those things? Bait, maybe. Four are better than three on the savannah -
until the three got where they needed to go.

Time to get out. Time to cut my losses and get out.

I stayed - for the sake of the gold, I told myself. What I didn't admit - didn't even know
then - was that I'd foolishly come too far down the road of fancy to turn back.

Alyce kept to herself after that night. Quiet and brooding, she spoke to Dinn only when
she had to, and spoke to me hardly at all. She had something on her mind, and if she talked to anyone
about it, that one was Peverell - who seemed to know about, and maybe even sympathize
with, whatever troubled her.

They conversed in his silent, graceful language of gesture, and so I had no idea why she'd
grown so suddenly distant.

*****

We left the savannah three days after we saw the nomad woman and her child. We made camp
that night in a blind canyon, a long slot of stone and tall, rising walls. No need to post
watch there. The only way into the canyon was in clear sight of our camp.

We'd no more than built a fire when Alyce looked around to find the kender missing.
“Dinn,” she said. “Where'd he go?”

The minotaur made the kender's fist-hitting-palm gesture.

“Damn! I TOLD him - ” She glanced at me, then took another tack. “Dinn, are you sure?”

Dinn shrugged. “I'm never really sure what he's trying to say, but that is my guess.”

Ah, she wasn't happy with that answer. Nor was she very happy when I asked her what the
gesture meant. Blue eyes glinting, she said, “It means that that kender's going to find
himself in some big trouble next time I see him.”

She said no more.

As we ate, the red moon cleared the high canyon walls, spilled light over the stone, made
the shadows a web of purple. Alyce, who'd displayed a wharfman's appetite at the Hart,
picked only absently at her food. When she tired of that, she bunched a rough woolen
blanket into a pillow and stretched out before the fire.

She lay silent, staring up at the narrow sky, the gleaming stars. The fire's flickering
glow made her pale cheeks flush rosy, her dark hair shine, but I only watched that from
the comer of my eye. Dinn, sitting in the night shadows and honing his daggers, had the
most of my attention. He worked with sure, even strokes and sometimes sparks leaped from
the steel and stone. When that happened, the minotaur would look up at me, his dark eyes gleaming, his large yellow teeth bared in something like a smile.

“Doune,” Alyce said after a while. “We're near Kell's hideout. Tomorrow, we'll be playing
a whole different game.”

I looked away from Dinn, not liking the sound of that. “What do you mean?”

She looked at me, her eyes neither soft and thoughtful, nor brittle and jeering. She
wasn't smiling. Her expression was unreadable.

“Doune,” she said. “Can I trust you?”

I answered evenly, though I didn't know where the question was leading. (And, no, it
didn't remind me of my own doubt. Doubt had haunted me for the past three days.)

“I swore I'd deal honestly with you, Alyce.” She nodded. “On your old friend's memory.” I
said nothing, remembering Peverell's fist-hitting-

palm gesture, repeated again tonight. Ambush for Kell, or betrayal for me? I didn't know,
and I waited to see where Alyce's questions would lead. Dinn put aside his daggers,
watched and waited, too. But he wasn't watching Alyce. He was watching me.

Alyce said, “Doune, you also said that bounty hunting is just business. Can we trust you
to stand by us, no matter what we find tomorrow?”

I laughed without humor. “Unless this Kell of yours has an army with him. Then you can
trust me to do what anyone with sense would do - cut my losses and run. Live to hunt
another day, eh? This is a strange time to be talking about that.”

She shrugged. “Not really. Tell me, Hunter-Doune, what would you do if - ”

A loud whistle - a sudden pattern of sharp notes, shrill enough to make the hair stir on
the back of my neck - broke the night silence.

“Goblins,” Dinn rumbled, reaching for his daggers.

I scanned the dark heights, saw nothing but shadows and the baleful eye of the red moon
gleaming. I listened hard for Peverell's whistle, but heard only the ghostly echo of night
wind trapped in the canyon. Then, darkness become solid, goblins lined the heights, black
against the moonlit sky. I counted a dozen. Although distance might fool the eye about
details, I knew that the least of them was taller than I and more muscular than even the minotaur. You might think that none of this
mattered much, that we could slip through the shadows and the dark, head for the mouth of the canyon and take
our chances running and hiding until we lost them in the dark and the mountains. We
couldn't.

A huge goblin stepped forward to the edge of the drop. It held something high, like a dark
cleric offering sacrifice. Alyce cursed softly. The goblin held the kender above its head,
had voiceless Peverell for a hostage and a shield.

Peverell writhed in the goblin's grip as if he wanted nothing more than to overbalance his
captor and send him plunging to a bone-shattered death. So furiously did he struggle that
I knew he'd not give a thought to his own bones until he was in midair himself. Yet he was
lightly built and had not one tenth of the goblin's strength. His struggling was worth
nothing but the goblin's annoyance.

Alyce gestured to Dinn, pointed to the canyon entrance. Wordless understanding passed
between them in just one look, as though a whole plan had been unfolded and discussed. The
minotaur didn't like it, whatever it was, but Alyce reached up, stroked his red-furred
shoulder.

“Don't worry, my friend. I'll be fine. Now, go. Go.”

He obeyed, as he always did, but in the fire's light I saw his eyes gleaming, all
reflected animal glare and as red as Lunitari hanging high in the sky above the canyon's
black walls. A dire warning, that look, and directed at me.

“Don't worry,” I said, sarcasm not even thinly veiled. “I'll be fine, too, Dinn.”

He exercised admirable restraint, did no more than feint a lunge at me as he passed by -
and I still have two eyes today because I kept as still as stone when one of his twisted
horns came close to my face. Alyce smiled in a cold, absent way.

“You shouldn't bait him like that, Doune. There might come a time when I'm not near to
restrain him.”

“Might come a time when I'd welcome that.”

She said nothing, likely recognizing bravado when she heard it. I looked over my shoulder
at the mouth of the canyon, yawning blackness with silvery stars hanging above. I turned
back to Alyce, saw her studying me.

“Is this where a bounty hunter decides to cut his losses and run, Hunter-Doune?”

I snorted. “Could I?”

“Go and try,” Alyce said flatly. With her sword's gleaming tip she pointed to the goblins.
They'd found a narrow path, a winding way down the black canyon walls. They went slowly,
being obliged to keep behind the one who was still shielding himself with Peverell. But
they came on steadily, and I saw that my first count was wrong. There were more than a
dozen of them; at least twice that. “There's no profit in this for you now, Hunter-Doune.”

None at all.

In that moment the silver moon, Paladine's son lagging behind Lunitari as he always does,
rose above the stony heights. By Solinari's light I saw Alyce's face in profile, as white
as marble. All her attention was on the kender caught in the goblin's dutches.

The big goblin flung the kender to the ground, laughed when he saw him hit the rough stone
and tumble the rest of the way to the canyon floor. Peverell lay where he fell, a pitiful
jumble of arms and legs. When I looked at Alyce, I saw one thin line of silver on her
cheek, moonlit tears.

“Are you with me, Hunter-Doune? Or will you leave me?”

She was not weighing me now, or taunting. She really didn't know how I would answer. By
the light of wise Paladine's son, I saw in her eyes the knowledge that with me or without,
she'd probably not get out of this canyon alive. I saw her wanting to believe that I would
not abandon her here.

I'd be a fool to stay, but that would be nothing new. I'd been a fool for the last three
days, should have gotten out when I knew I wasn't sure whether I trusted her. What had
made me stay?

It was a jeweled moment, one of those spaces in the soul when you understand that
something has happened to change you. Those moments have their sudden, unlooked- for
absurdities to send you laughing, if only silently. Once I'd asked the silver moon why I
cared what Alyce thought of me. A bit late in answering, was Solinari, but he answered me
now, softly, like a whisper in my heart.

WHAT A DAMNED ALL INCONVENIENT TIME TO FINALLY FIGURE OUT THAT I'VE FALLEN IN LOVE ...

Maybe Alyce heard the laughter in me. For one moment, swiftly fled, she smiled as though
she agreed.

I hefted my sword, took comfort in its trusty balance. “I swore to deal honestly with you,
Alyce. By my reckoning, that means sticking by you now.”

We stood braced, back-to-back, when the goblins entered the canyon.

*****

Night fighting is a hard thing, all shadows and moon- gleaming steel, all cold sweat and
heart leaping in your chest. When the odds are good, it's hard to tell friend from foe,
but that wasn't anything for us to worry about. The odds weren't good. There was only
Alyce and me, with never the slim breadth of a steel blade between us.

She used her blade like a sword dancer, whirling the steel so that the whistle of it
filled the canyon. Any goblin who got too close lost at least a limb. One lost his head.
That was all very fine and flashy, but I like the dependable parry and thrust. I spitted
the first two of the fanged goblins that came at me, was ready to take on a third when I
heard Dinn roaring somewhere near the canyon's mouth. I couldn't turn to see what cause he
had for bellowing, but I heard Alyce suck in her breath, a soft hissing counterpoint to
her sword's whistle.

The goblin who'd come to take the place of the one I killed feinted from the side, dove in
under my guard. He caught me around the neck and did what his fellows couldn't do -
separated Alyce and me as he threw me hard to the stony ground. I heard Alyce cursing
above me, saw the star-filled sky, felt the goblin's claws raking my face.

The goblin knew how to use his knees. In two thrusts he knocked the wind from me with a
knee to the belly - and nearly all the sense with a knee to the groin. I twisted onto my
side, hunched over the hurt. The goblin sank his fangs into the muscle between neck and
shoulder, gnawed as though he'd like to have chewed his way to my heart.

A dagger whistled past my head, its cold steel stinging my cheek, drawing blood. And the
goblin fell off me, the blade through its neck. I didn't stop to marvel over my luck.

I scrambled for my sword and saw Alyce ringed by three goblins - big as boulders,
gray-skinned, clawed, long fangs dripping. Her sword flashed, singing as it cut the air. I
ran to her. Limping and listing, still hunched over my pain, I didn't know what I could do for her. Still, I ran. Her fine silk blouse was splattered
with blood, and the silver moon's light showed me that it wasn't black goblin blood. It
was as red as rose petals, and it was hers.

Alyce cried me welcome. I severed a goblin's head with one chopping blow of my sword,
kicked the corpse aside, and Alyce and I were again back-to-back. The goblins came at us
howling, nightmares come to life. We were outnumbered, fighting only to kill as many as we
could before we fell.

Close by, I heard a piercing whistle - sharp and high and urgent. Peverell? No. It
couldn't be. Someone shouted “Kell!” as though it were a war cry, a call to arms.

I looked up, thinking, WHERE? Then, AS IF WE DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TROUBLE.

That moment's distraction cost me. I went down under the weight of two goblins, and Alyce,
kicking and hacking at my attackers, yelled, “To me! To me!” as though she were giving an
army a rallying point.