Two-Edged Blade

from Relli. “What are we doing still out in the field?” she hissed.

“Well,” Shallan said unhappily, taking a great deal of time over setting her feather. “You know we didn’t get paid enough. And we lost a lot of manpower and material—”

“And? So?” Kero had a feeling she knew what was coming up, and she wasn’t going to like it. “That’s what the reserves are for, Right?”

“Well—uh—” Shallan floundered.

Finally Relli came to her partner’s rescue. “We aren’t going to use the reserves,” she said tersely. “Ardana has a line on a job.”

That was what I was afraid of. “In winter.”

Shallan nodded. “In winter. It’s south of here—”

Kero just snorted. “I come from south of here. We’re going to be fighting in cold rain if we’re lucky. If we’re not—snow, up to our asses, for the next three months. And ice. I trained in weather like that, but most of the rest of you didn’t. Think what it’s going to do to the horses, if you won’t think of yourself!”

“It’s not that bad,” Relli said sturdily, though she wouldn’t look Kero in the face. “It’s in Seejay. Flat as your hand, and not more than a couple of inches of snow all winter. And it’s not supposed to be a hard job—it’s a merchant’s guild thing. Economic. One side or the other is going to get tired of paying, and we can go home. Frankly, it’s better to fight there in winter than summer—summer you’re like to cook in your armor.”

So instead we drown—provided we don’t die of exhaustion on a forced march down through Ruvan.

“So is this just a rumor, or have you got something more substantial?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure it’s going down,” Relli told her. “I got it from Willi.”

Since Willi was the Company accountant, it was a pretty fair bet that the bid was in. Kero sighed.

“I suppose it could always be worse—”

Three months later, she found herself wishing for that hip-deep snow.

She cleaned mud off her equipment and Shallan’s, scouring savagely at the rust underneath on Shallan’s scale-mail. Rain dribbled down on the roof of her tent, and down the inside of the shabby walls. Practically anything would have been better than the bog that was Seejay in winter.

A cold bog. One that froze overnight and thawed by midday, only to freeze again as soon as the sun set.

And they were the only Company that had been hired.

That should have told us something from the start, she told herself, for the thousandth time. We should have walked before we took this one.

Fighting beside them were the cheapest of free-lancers, one step up from prison scum; drunks and madmen, vicious alley rats who’d knife an ally quick as an enemy. No point in depending on them—and no turning your back on them. The sentries caught the bastards sneaking around camp every night and most days, and everyone had something missing.

Facing them were more prison-scum and a “company” of non-Guild conscripts; old men too damned stubborn to quit fighting, and bewildered farmers hauled in after the harvest.

That was the reason for holding this “war” in winter in the first place: it was after harvest and trading season. No money-making opportunities lost to combat, she thought cynically. As witness the little “bazaar” just outside camp. Everything they think a merc could want; from flea- ridden whores to watered wine.

This entire setup had Kero completely disgusted. Ardana’s “deal”—such as it was—had been for half pay and half resupply. First of all, she should have known never to trust them on that. Secondly, she should have gotten the resupply in advance.

The total had come to half their usual fee, which Ardana covered, stridently defensive, by pointing out that they were undermanned, and she couldn’t ask the full fee for what was effectively half a Company. Then the “re- supply” train had shown up—late—and there was nothing Ardana could say that would defend what came in with that.

We got tents, all right—old enough to have served the Sunhawks in Grandmother’s fighting days;