Dragonlance Tales - The Reign Of Istar Part 20

She was round in all the best places, and there wasn't much need to guess about that. The cut of her blouse showed more than the silver-and-sapphire necklace she wore.

I tried a question. "How do you know my name?"

"Who hasn't heard of Hunter-Doune?" She grinned, as c.o.c.ky as a scamp bent on mischief. "You're a legend where I come from."

Light from an oil lamp gleamed on the steel between us, hers high, mine low and useless. She gestured to the kender.

"Peverell," she said, "relieve him of his weapons."

The kender did what kender love to do. He got my dagger, found the small knife I always kept sheathed in my boot, lifted the sword from my hand before I knew he'd reached for it. He also took the bounty notices I'd gotten at the den and the fee I'd collected not an hour ago. He would have taken the teeth from my head if his companion hadn't called him off.

"Now, Hunter-Doune," the swordswoman said, "come join Peverell and me for a drink and a bite, eh?" She sheathed her weapon. "It could be to your profit."

I eyed Peverell, back at the table and happily sorting through his take. "Hasn't been so far," I said.

"I suppose you're right. Pev! Give Doune his purse."

The kender screwed up his face in protest, but he emptied the gold coins onto the table, then tossed the purse to me.

"AND the gold," the woman said firmly.

Long eyes bright, the kender c.o.c.ked his head.

Something needing no words pa.s.sed between the two and - for a wonder - Peverell scooped up the coins, came and gave them all to me. I took the gold, pursed it, and stashed it in my deepest pocket, watching him trot back to the table.

He was uncannily quiet for one of his kind. I smiled sourly.

"Someone cut out his tongue?"

"No," she said, "someone slit it. Works out the same. A bounty hunter who took him and couldn't stand the chatter.

Didn't keep him, though. Kender are hard to hold. But I expect you know that. Now," she said, cold and no longer pretending courtesy. "Do you want to know where the heretic Kell is hiding, or is that little bit of gold enough to keep you happy?"

Chance brought us platters piled high with mutton and cabbage and potatoes, a jug of wine for me, and a great pitcher of ale for the others. Fair pleased with himself, old Chance was, and acting like I should thank him.

Outside the window, high up in the sky, I saw the two moons - the red and the silver - s.h.i.+ning brightly. Chance had barred the door, lighted only the few lamps we needed to see what we were eating. The swords-woman told me that her name was Alyce. She said she was a mercenary's daughter, that since her father's death she'd taken up the family trade, hired her sword to merchant caravans needingto make their way through the goblin-haunted pa.s.ses of the mountains ringing the Plains of Istar.

Now some might think that mercenary work is a strange way for a woman to keep herself in sapphire necklaces, but I had no reason to doubt that Alyce was capable of the work she claimed to do. She'd gotten up behind me quickly enough, and that fine jeweled sword was no stranger to her hand, but, for all that, I'd heard no reason to believe that she knew more about Kell's whereabouts than anyone else.

"Well," she said, tucking into a second helping of mutton with a wharf man's appet.i.te. "There's not much I can do to convince you that I know where Kell's hiding - except to say that a friend of mine tracked him to his lair not longer that two weeks ago."

"But this friend didn't kill or capture him?"

She laughed, and the kender clapped his hands in delight, his brown eyes kindling with merriment.

"My friend's not foolish enough to go out alone after a man who's supposed to have done all Kell is accused of."

She smiled slyly. "If Kell were an easy take, surely some bounty hunter would have s.n.a.t.c.hed him by now, eh? Pev and I were supposed to meet our friend here, go after him together, but our friend is ... not available."

I snorted. "Not available to make himself rich?"

"He's been jailed." Alyce downed her ale, all business now. She nodded to Chance, who quickly refilled the pitcher. "The barman says you know the jail well - having helped fill it up often enough over the years. Help me break out my friend and you can come along."

"You want me to arrange a jailbreak? Sorry. I put 'em IN jail - I don't break 'em out."

"Exactly," she said, "that's why you're the perfect choice. You'd have it done before anyone even suspected what was going on."

I thought about that for a while, and she - impatient - leaned across the table, her blue eyes alight.

"A quarter share, Doune I Help me get my friend out of jail and we'll be on our way to claiming a bounty so great that no place you could stash the treasure will be empty."

Well, she wasn't much exaggerating about the bounty, and I was always tracking the gold. But I was also careful.

"Supposing I do this jailbreak? What's to keep you and your friend from getting rid of me and going after the bounty yourselves?"

Alyce's eyes grew sharp and cold. She drew her sword and I reached for where mine should have been. She made no threat, only laid the jeweled weapon flat on the table between us.

"This is my father's sword," she said, ignoring my own gesture. "I have never sworn an oath on this steel that I didn't mean to keep."

I believed her. Maybe it was the way her voice sounded, low and freighted with fierce pride. Or maybe it was the look in her eyes, straight on and unflinching, like the light gleaming along the blade's keen edge. Out of the comer of my eye I saw Peverell idly tracing some old calculation Toukere or I had carved in the oaken table-top.

I'M HONEST WHEN I WANT TO BE, DOUNE, MY.

FRIEND. AND WHEN A MAN RECKONS THE SPLITWITH HIS PARTNER, HE'D BEST WANT TO BE.

HONEST OR HE'LL DESERVE TO BE DEAD.

Toukere had had the same straight-on look in his eyes as Alyce did now when he'd said that. By that look - its absence or its presence - I'd always judged a man's nature.

Or a woman's. I guess I reckoned on it this time, too.

"Who's this partner of yours?" I asked. "A lover?" She tossed her head, and her short, dark hair swung and bounced. "Dinn's a friend. Sometimes he acts like a hotheaded fool, but I love him dearly. He comes from people who have only one word for both loyalty and honor. Hard enemies, these people, and good friends. My father earned his friends.h.i.+p, and Dinn says that I inherited it." Her voice dropped low. "On his soul and my father's sword I swear that I'll deal honestly with you, Doune."

It was a powerful oath. I knew none like it to offer her.

She asked if I had a father; I told her I must have at one time. A mother? Dead, I said. No sister or wife, she supposed. I told her she supposed right, and none of the women I knew had the kind of soul I'd care to swear an oath on. She looked at me with a mocking, exaggerated expression of pity.

"Well," I growled, "I don't expect they're swearing any oaths on my soul either."

The kender whistled a rising note, like a question, to catch Alyce's attention. When he had it, he hit his two fists against each other, then clasped both hands together. Alyce shrugged with the air of someone who has come to the bottom of the coffer and expects to find nothing but dust.

To me she said: "I don't suppose people in your line of work have many friends."

"Not many," I said flatly, "and the one who was closest to me is a long time dead."

"Was he a good friend?"

A good companion, an honest partner, and one who made his escape from Istar in such a way as to leave plenty of witnesses to the fact that I'd had nothing to do with it.

"Yes," I said quietly. "He was a good friend."

She thought about that for a long moment, her blue eyes no longer bright and jeering, but soft and very serious.

"Swear by your friend's memory, Hunter-Doune. Swear that you'll deal honestly with me." Then I couldn't see her eyes at all for the veil of her dark lashes. Only her lips moving in a secret little smile. "It'll be well worth your while."

That's all I needed to hear. I placed my hand over hers and took an oath on a friend's memory.

Good thing she waited until I'd sworn before she told me that her partner was the minotaur I'd brought to Istar's jail only hours ago. Good thing for her, but not so good for Peverell. The mute little kender laughed so hard that he fell out of his chair. And not so good for me. I'd been two days in the minotaur's company and I suspected he'd not readily agree to become my partner in the hunt for Kell. But I was sworn now, and by Touk's memory.

Too, there was all that gold to consider.

***** Peverell was hot to pick every lock on every door in the jail. When I told him that we wouldn't get in that way, he showed me how deeply he resented this slight to his thievish abilities. Mute he might be, but he'd raised the skills of obscene and insulting gesture to high art. Alyce calmed him, and from there the night's work was no more than the usual game: Get some weapons for the minotaur, some mounts for Alyce and me - no sense getting horses for Peverell or Dinn; Alice said that neither would ride if you paid 'em - then bribe the right guard and pay off the right cleric. The bribe and the payoff were huge, took all the ninety gold pieces I'd earned on the minotaur and a lot more besides. Alyce had to part with her beautiful sapphire necklace.

"I consider it an investment," she said. She c.o.c.ked a thumb at my empty purse and grinned coolly. "You should, too."

I did. A quarter share of Kell's bounty would make the gold I'd paid in bribery seem like the pittance in a beggar's cup.

I was right about Dinn. He joyfully would have given up all hope of freedom for even the slimmest chance of killing me. But Alyce managed him, and it was something to see her go toe-to-toe with that brute, harrying him in hissing whispers like an angry fishwife.

"Use your head, Dinn," she said. And she insisted - often - that he remember why they were here. She demanded - just as often - that he carry through with what he'd promised.

The kender, over his fit of the sulks, came up close to the tall, red-furred minotaur, gestured elaborately. Dinn growled and shook his horns at Peverell, sullenly asking Alyce to translate.

"He's saying just what you know is true, Dinn. We NEED you!"

That made some difference, caused the minotaur to subside. "Arr, well," he growled, glaring at me. "Let's do it then."

"Thank you, my friend." Alyce patted his rough-furred shoulder and rose up on tiptoe to kiss that ugly snout (which made him growl and HARRUMPH and shuffle his feet).

I kept one eye on Dinn, for all that everyone seemed happy and friendly together. I'd been the one to shame him by dragging him chained and hobbled into Istar. Minotaurs usually like to erase the memory of shame by killing anyone who knows about it.

An unwelcoming place, the savannah; hot and dry and without landmarks. This is the land of the nomad clans, and there are no borders to cross; nothing to warn you that you're in some clan's territory, for the nomads have no individual territories. Always moving, settling nowhere, the long-braids consider the whole savannah theirs. They have a hard greeting for visitors - a flint-tipped arrow, a lance's stony head.

We went carefully, Alyce and I riding; Dinn loping ahead, a tall, homed outrunner tracking steadily west to theblue-hazed mountains. Sometimes Peverell trotted beside him, unseen but for the parting of the high gra.s.s as he went, the wake of a small, mute kender. More often, he stayed by Alyce. Like all kender, he loved to talk, and she had more patience for his silent language - and clearly a greater understanding of it - than the minotaur did.

I was used to riding alone since Toukere and I had parted ways, and I was used to quiet. But soon I found myself liking the sound of Alyce's voice: low because of the danger, thrilling when she was keen on her subject, gentle when she was thinking aloud. Alyce did a lot of thinking out loud, about politics and history and G.o.ds.

"I'll tell you something, Hunter-Doune," she said, one blazing noonday when the savannah ran rippling under a hot wind. "I've always heard that G.o.ds are about balance, good and neutral and evil all lending their weight in the measure against chaos. I think it's politics that makes heretics, not wrong thinking. Which, if you believe what you hear, is just what this outlaw, Kell, thinks." She glanced at me out of the comer of her eyes. "If you believe what you hear."

She seemed to know a lot about Kell, and I wondered if she'd conceived some romantic fancy for the outlaw. I asked her about this, in a joking way. Peverell, trotting beside us, looked up at me, signing swiftly, laughing silently.

"What'd he say?" I asked.

"Kender nonsense," she said stiffly. "I have no fancies about Kell. A good hunter should know what she's hunting, how the prey thinks, what it will defend, where it goes to hide, where it is vulnerable." She smiled, as though to herself and over private thoughts. "Don't you agree, Hunter-Doune?"

I said I was a bounty hunter, not a boar hunter.

"So you are." She laughed, mocking again. "And a good one who wastes no time thinking about the heretics you hunt. Right?"

"No sense in it. They're nothing more than the promise of gold, payable on delivery." I slipped her a sideways grin.

"Thanks to politics."

Again Peverell gestured, his whole bright face a question; this time Alyce translated.

"He wants to know whether heretics are people to you."

I shook my head. "They're profit."

The kender signed again, and Alyce looked at me for a long moment, her eyes all soft and gravely thoughtful, as if she were weighing the balance of me on a scale.

"Empty enough for the wind to howl through, aren't you, Hunter-Doune?"

"Did he say that?"

"No. I did. How'd you get so empty?"

"Tricks of the trade." I s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably to another tack. "Why are you worrying about how I feel? I don't see that YOU'RE holding a whole lot of mercy for Kell."

She looked away, out across the golden, s.h.i.+fting savannah. "My feelings for Kell are ... personal," she said.

"I'm not a bounty hunter by trade."

"Oh? What'd he do, steal the pennies off your dead father's eyes?" She winced, and I was sorry I'd said it. I'd come close to some truth, one that hurt.

"Come on, Alyce," I said, and surprised myself to hear how gently I'd spoken. "Don't worry about me and my feelings. They haven't got all that much to do with you anyway, eh?"

The old, taunting light, brittle and bright, came back to her eyes. "Not much," she said, and she laughed.

I thought the laughter was forced.

That's the way we talked during those long, hot days on the savannah. Sometimes she mocked, as she'd done in the Hart; sometimes she was serious, and I liked that best. Soon I began to wish that the kender would stay with Dinn. I was getting to like Alyce's company, the nearness of her, her voice, even her thoughtful, considering silence.

There were possibilities in her silence. At night, as I slept - Alyce wrapped in rough woolen blankets with a tall fire between us - those possibilities changed into dreams in which the minotaur and the kender had no roles to play.

But the kender was with us more often than not, and so we three were together - Alyce, Peverell, and me - when, at the end of our third day of travel, the sun set in a blaze of red and ahead of us Dinn spotted the nomad woman and her child.

My horse danced skittishly, sidled away from the minotaur's horns. Dinn smiled thinly when he saw that, tossed his head so that a horn came dangerously close to the horse's shoulder ... and my leg. He pointed to the tall gra.s.s where it parted counter to the wind's direction.

"Two," he said to Alyce. "Long-braids."

The nomad woman ran swiftly, though she went hunched over, burdened by the weight of the small boy clinging to her back. The boy's head bounced limply in rhythm to her swift, ground-covering stride. His sun- browned leg was streaked with blood. The woman's course would take her right across our path.