him; an owl flew past him, out late or early, with a cry like who-cooks-for-you.
“What’s that called?” he asked Robre.
The native guide blinked at him in astonishment. “You don’t have ’em? That’s a barred owl-come out in daylight more ’n most of their kind.”
“That’s the point of traveling,” he said. “To see things you haven’t got at home. Now, to business.”
He sat in a folding canvas chair, Ranjit Singh on one side and Robre on the other. A table before him bore a register book, pen, ink bottle, and a pile of little leather bags cinched tight with thongs around their store of Imperial silver rupees. The natives here, he’d noticed, were fascinated and impressed by writing; very conveniently, they were also quite familiar with the concept of coined money as a store of value. Stamped silver came up in trade from the city-states farther south, although the Seven Tribes minted none themselves. He’d been in places where everything was pure barter, and the simplest transaction took forever.
“Step up,” he said, in the local tongue, then sighed as they crowded around, yelling; the concept of standing quietly in line was not part of the local worldview.
About two dozen men had applied for the eight wrangler-muleteer-guard-roustabout positions; Robre knew some of them personally, and most by reputation. In fact, two slunk off immediately when they saw his face. Most were young, given leave by their fathers in this slack part of the farming year and eager for the rare chance to earn hard money.
Robre put them through their paces, checking their mules’ and horses’ backs for sores and their tack for cracked leather, watching them pack and unpack a load, follow a track, shoot at a mark, run and jump and wrestle.
King had Ranjit Singh handle the hand-to-hand testing. It was a good way to teach these wild natives a little respect, and none of them lasted more than a minute before finding themselves immobilized and slammed to the ground. The local style was catch-as-catch-can, the men strong and quick and active, quite oblivious of pain, but utterly unsophisticated. He wasn’t surprised; it was often that way, with warrior groups like this. They put so much into their weapons that they neglected unarmed combat, and the style the Imperial military used drew on ancient Asian traditions.
The Sikh rose grinning from the wheezing, groaning body of the last, dusted his hands, beat dirt and bits of grass and weed off his trousers; sweat glistened on his thick hairy torso, where iron muscle rippled in bands and curves.
“Not bad,” he said jovially. “For a man who knows nothing.”
The Sikh said it in Hindi, which took the sting out, although the object of it could probably guess the meaning of the words as he sat up and rotated a wrenched shoulder; the other candidates laughed at his discomfort. He was older than most of them-in his thirties, a tall rawboned swarthy man.
“All right,” the local said to the Sikh as he rose and rubbed his bruises. “You got some fancy wrasslin’ there-’n’ you’re strong as a bear with a toothache ’n’ twice as mean. Now, Jefe,” he went on to King, “who’s going to be your trail-boss on this trip?”
“I’m in command,” King said. “After me, my man Ranjit Singh here; after him, Robre sunna Jowan. Any problems with that-” He glanced down at the register. “-Haahld sunna Jubal?”
“You bet there is, by God. Robre is a good man of his hands ’n’ a fine hunter, no dispute. But it’s not fitting he should be trail-boss over older men, him so young ’n’ not having wife nor child nor land of his own and all.”
The rest stood silent; one or two seemed to agree. Robre flushed, but King put out a hand to restrain him. “In that case, you’re free to go,” he said cheerfully.
The face of the native standing before him turned darker. “That’s a mighty high-top way to speak, stranger, considering you’re far from home ’n’ alone here. Who’d you think you are?”
King rose, still smiling slightly, but the other man took a step back. “I know I’m an officer of the Empire,” he said calmly. “Which means that I’m an automatic majority wherever I go.” He gestured to the moneybags. “If you take my silver, you take my orders. If you won’t, get out.”
His body stayed loose, but his hands were tinglingly aware of the position of saber and pistol and knife. He’d met men like these before, from peoples whose ways demanded that a man be prickly and quick to take offense and forever ready to fight. You had to begin as you meant to go on, and be ready to back it up, like the head wolf in a pack. The air crackled between them, and the native’s eyes shifted slightly.
Just then the drumming sound of hooves turned heads. A ridden horse, a remount and a mule, all sweating a bit. And the rider…
Well, well, it’s the little redhead, King thought. He’d gotten most of her story out of Robre, and felt a certain sympathy-it was a hard world, and harder still for an orphan. Well, well, not so little, either.
In sunlight and flushed with exertion she looked even better than the other night’s tantalizing glimpse. She kicked a leg over the pommel of her saddle and slid to the ground, bosom heaving interestingly under the coarse cotton shift as she came toward him with her dog panting at her heel.
“Heya, Empire-Jefe King,” she said bluntly.
“Hello, miss,” he answered, amused. I am an Imperial chieftain, I suppose.
“Hear you’re hiring,” she said. “I want work.” At a snicker from the crowd of clansmen, she turned around and glared. “And not as no bedwarmer, either!” Turning back to King, “I can carry my load, ’n’ I know the eastern woods. Hunted east of the Three Forks since I was a girl, ’n’ with my pa east of the Black River twice.”
Beside King, Robre stirred, surprise on his face. Evidently that’s some claim; but she’s not lying, I’d think. Intriguing!
Haahld sunna Jubal snorted. “You got to be a fightin’ man for this trip, missie, able to carry a man’s load. Want me to test your wrasslin’?” The clansman roared with laughter.
Sonjuh’s face flushed red, and her foot moved in a blur while Haahld sunna Jubal was still holding his sides and hooting. There was a meaty thump as the toe of the girl’s boot slammed into the native’s groin.
King’s lips quirked upward; he thought he’d have been better prepared than the luckless Haahld, but then he’d stopped thinking of women as necessarily helpless when he was an ensign leading a patrol to break up a brawl in a military brothel in Peshawar Town. An Afghan tart crouching under a table had nearly cut his hamstrings with a straight-razor, and he’d never forgotten the raw terror of the moment.
The haw-hawing laughter turned into a strangled shriek of pain as the man doubled over and fell to the ground, clutching himself and turning brick red. Ouch. That hard a kick in the testicles was no joke-something might have been ruptured; the girl’s long legs were slender, but muscled like a temple acrobat’s from running and riding and tree-climbing. Now, there’s native talent, he thought, grinning and wincing slightly.
She stood back in the sudden silence, then seemed to lose a little of her bristling aura as most of the company guffawed and slapped their thighs; even Robre, who seemed like a sobersided young man, grinned openly.
Haahld was puking helplessly now, and moaning. Someone threw a bucket of water over him, which seemed to give him a little strength, and he crawled away to haul himself upright along a tree trunk, still nursing his crotch with one hand. He got a good deal of witty medical advice about poultices from the crowd, although a few of the older and more respectable looked shocked and disapproving.
“Well, miss, generally if I want to kick a man in the groin, I handle it myself rather than hiring it done,” King said, smiling. “Although I concede that was good work of its kind. What else can you do?”
“Ride. Rope. Run like a deer. Handle a pack mule. Track meat-game or big cat-or a man-through brush country; we lived aside in deep woods. I’m a pretty good shot, too.”
She turned, unslung the crossbow from her saddle and fired it at the target eighty yards away. The snap of the string and the thunk of the bolt striking the magnolia came almost instantly, and the octagonal steel head sank deep into the midriff of the human figure chalked out on the bark. King raised a brow, impressed despite himself, and at the speed with which she reloaded. Then she slid the tomahawk from where it rested across the small of her back and threw; that went home in the center of the X they’d carved in a dead pine twenty paces away. Haahld winced away-he’d used that trunk to regain his feet-and fell again.
“Your man Robre there can look at my beasts,” she said. “Sound backs ’n’ feet, ’n’ kept proper.”
“Well and good,” King said calmly, as Robre did just that, picking up hooves to check their shoeing and seeing that no bare gall-marks or sores hid beneath the tack.
King continued: “But why do you want to go on a dangerous expedition?”
“You’re going into the east woods,” she said. “Mebbe as far as the Black River, naw? I can’t go that far by
