'I still wouldn't have been in any danger,' Tarma replied with a little more force than she intended. 'My people are dead, and no demon could bring them back to life. They've gone on elsewhere and he could never touch them. And without them -- ' she made a tiny, tired shrug, ' -- without them, what use is my voice -- or for that matter, the most glorious face and body, and all the power in the universe?'
'I thought he had you for a moment -- '
'So did he. He was trying to break my bond with the Star-Eyed. What he didn't know was all he was arousing was my disgust. I'd die before I'd give in to something that uses people as casually as that thing did.'
Kethry got her belt and sheath off Warrl and slung Need in her accustomed place on her hip. Tarma suppressed the urge to giggle, despite pain and weariness. Kethry, in the sorceress' robes she usually wore, and belted with a blade looked odd enough. Kethry, dressed in three spangles and a scrap of cloth and wearing the sword looked totally absurd.
Nevertheless Tarma copied her example. 'Well, that damn goatsticker of yours got us into another one we won't get paid for,' she said in more normal tones, fastening the buckle so that her sword hung properly on her back. 'Bloody Hell! If you count in the ale we had to pour and the bribes we had to pay, we lost money on this one.'
'Don't be so certain of that, she'enedra.' Kethry's face was exhausted and bloodstreaked, one of her eyes was blackened and swelling shut and she had livid bruises all over her body. On top of that she was covered in dust, and filthy, sweat-lank locks of hair were straggling into her face. But despite all of that, her eyes still held a certain amusement. 'In case you hadn't noticed, these little costumes of ours are real gold and gems. We happen to be wearing a small fortune in jewelry.'
'Warrior's Truth!' Tarma looked a good deal more closely at her scanty attire, and discovered her partner was right. She grinned with real satisfaction. 'I guess I owe that damn blade of yours an apology.'
'Only,' Kethry grinned back, 'If we get back into our own clothing before dawn.'
'Why dawn?'
'Because that's when the rightful owners of these trinkets are likely to wake up. I don't think they'd let us keep them when we're found here if they know we have them.'
'Good point -- but why should we want anyone to know we're responsible for this mess?'
'Because when the rest of the population scrapes up enough nerve to find out what happened, we're going to be heroines -- or at least we will until they find out how many of their fathers and brothers and husbands were trapped here tonight. By then, we'll be long gone. Even if they don't reward us -- and they might, for delivering the town from a demon -- our reputation has just been made!'
Tarma's jaw dropped as she realized the truth of that. 'Shek,' she said. 'Turn me into a sheep! You're right!' She threw back her head and laughed into the morning sky. 'Now all we need is the fortune and a king's blessing!'
'Don't laugh, oathkin,' Kethry replied with a grin. 'We just might get those, and sooner than you think. After all, aren't we demon-slayers?'
Eight
Someone wrote a song about it -- but that was later. Much later -- when the dust and dirt were gone from the legend. When the sweat and blood were only memories, and the pain was less than that. And when the dead were all but forgotten except to their own.
'Deep into the stony hills Miles from keep or hold, A troupe of guards comes riding With a lady and her gold. Riding in the center, Shrouded in her cloak of fur Companioned by a maiden And a toothless, aged cur.'
'And every packtrain we've sent out for the past two months has vanished without a trace -- and without survivors,' the silk merchant Grumio concluded, twisting an old iron ring on one finger. 'Yet the decoy trains were allowed to reach their destinations unmolested. It's uncanny -- and if it goes on much longer, we'll be ruined.'
In the silence that followed his words, he studied the odd pair of mercenaries before him. He knew very well that they knew he was doing so. Eventually there would be no secrets in this room -- eventually. But he would parcel his out as if they were bits of his heart -- and he knew they would do the same. It was all part of the bargaining process.
Neither of the two women seemed in any great hurry to reply to his speech. The crackle of the fire behind him in this tiny private eating room sounded unnaturally loud in the absence of conversation. Equally loud were the steady whisking of a whetstone on blade-edge, and the muted murmur of voices from the common room of the inn beyond their closed door.
The whetstone was being wielded by the swordswoman, Tarma by name, who was keeping to her self- appointed task with an indifference to Grumio's words that might -- or might not -- be feigned. She sat across the table from him, straddling her bench in a position that left him mostly with a view of her back and the back of her head. What little he might have been able to see of her face was screened by her unruly shock of coarse black hair. He was just as glad of that; there was something about her cold, expressionless, hawklike face with its wintry blue eyes that sent shivers up his spine. 'The eyes of a killer,' whispered one part of him. 'Or a fanatic.'
