Well, it was only a practice blade. You wouldn’t want to kill anyone in mere practice, would you? he asked himself. He nodded and returned the weapon to its place.
He wished he knew more about swords and other weapons. He had no idea what to check for.
The rust, however, was obviously a very bad sign.
He turned back to face his men.
All of them, as he had noticed before, were larger than himself, but not all were mountains of muscle like his personal escorts, Alder and Dogal. In fact, the majority seemed to be pot-bellied or otherwise running to fat. He mentally compared them to the city guards he had seen back in Ethshar, strolling the streets to keep the peace, or rousting the beggars from Wall Street, or carousing in the taverns.
The Royal Army of Semma did not fare well in the comparison. Ethshar’s guardsmen came in all sizes, but they all had a certain toughness that this oversized bunch did not display. Guardsmen might be fat, but they were never soft.
Much of Semma’s soldiery looked soft.
Sterren suppressed a shrug. Things were different here. Whatever duties these men had, they obviously didn’t require the sort of ruggedness that was needed to maintain order in the world’s largest, richest, and rowdiest city.
Alder had told him that Semma had been at peace for more than forty years; Sterren hoped that was not about to change.
If it did, though, and all he had to fight with was this pitiful handful of men, well, Semma wasn’t his homeland. He could always surrender.
Couldn’t he? It occurred to him that he had no idea what the customs were in the Small Kingdoms regarding prisoners of war.
He walked from the armory back into the barracks and noticed something he had missed before. One of the bunks had been moved. It had been shoved up against a wall, so that the space between that bunk and the next was twice the space between any other two. As further confirmation, half the floor in the widened space was cleaner and lighter than the rest of the barracks floor.
His curiosity was piqued. “You,” he said to the nearest soldier, “slide that bunk out from the wall, would you?”
The soldier glanced at his mates, who all somehow managed to be looking in other directions.
“Come on,” Sterren said, using the phrase Lady Kalira had used when urging her horse onward.
The soldier stepped forward, moving slowly as if hoping for some miraculous reprieve, and pulled the bunk out, back to its original position.
In doing so, he uncovered several lines of chalk drawn onto the dirty planks.
Sterren recognized the lines immediately and grinned. He suddenly saw that he had something in common with these oversized barbarians.
“Three-bone?” he asked, in Ethsharitic.
The soldiers looked blank, and he puzzled out a Semman equivalent and tried that.
One soldier shook his head and replied, “No, double flash.”
His companions glared at him, too late to hush him. Sterren waved their displeasure aside. “What stakes?” he asked. “And do you pass on the first loss or the second?” He had picked the word for gambling stakes up from Dogal during the journey from Ethshar. Double flash was not his favorite dice game, by any means, he would greatly have preferred three-bone, but it was certainly better than nothing.
A friendly game was just what he needed to help him feel at home.
It would also serve nicely to get to know some of his men and perhaps to build up a little money that the other nobles would know nothing about. That could be very useful if he ever decided to leave.
He still had his purse, and the winnings from his last night in Ethshar. He pulled out a silver bit. “Will this buy me a throw?”
Feet shuffled, and someone coughed.
“Well, actually, my lord...”
“For now, just call me Sterren, all right?”
“Yes, my lord. Ah... Sterren. We usually play for copper.” “Good enough; can someone make change? And who’s got the dice?”
Coins and dice emerged from pockets and purses, and a moment later Sterren and three soldiers were crouched around the chalked diagram, tossing copper bits into the various betting slots. Any further inspection was forgotten.
When the dice were passed, Sterren felt the familiar thrill of competition, but the sense of calm oneness with the dice that he usually felt was absent. He dismissed it as an effect of the unfamiliar surroundings and proceeded to throw a deuce, losing his turn.
It was well after midnight when Sterren wearily climbed back up to his room in the tower. His purse was lighter by several silver bits, the equivalent of over a hundred coppers. His luck had been consistently bad.
Whatever talent or charm had kept him alive and solvent in the taverns of Ethshar obviously had not worked in this alien place.
He wondered, as he hauled himself up the dimly lit stairs, if it would ever work again. If it didn’t, he would have to give up dice for good.
Now, that was a really terrible thought!
He thrust it aside as he reached the top and saw Alder standing by the door of his room. As he walked down the short stretch of corridor and into his room he ran over the rest of the day in his mind.
It had certainly been an eventful one.
He hoped he never had another like it.
Alder opened the door and followed him into the room. As Sterren stood yawning, the big soldier lit a candle on the desk and stood awaiting orders.
CHAPTER 9
Sterren stretched, thought for a moment, and then shooed Alder out. When the door had closed behind Alder’s back he took a moment to make sure all his belongings were stashed where he could find them. That done, he lay down on the great canopied bed and tried to sleep.
His blood was still pumping hard from the excitement of the game, the shock of losing so badly, and the long climb up the stairs from the barracks, all coming at the end of an extraordinarily long and bewildering day; sleep was slow in coming. He was still lying awake when he heard a quiet knock on his door.
“What is it?” he called.
The door opened partway, and Alder stuck his head in.
“There’s someone here who wants to see you.” Alder said apologetically. “He says he has business with you.”
“At this hour?”
Alder explained, “He’s been stopping by regularly all evening, but you weren’t in before.”
That was true enough. “All right,” Sterren said, “what kind of business?”
“He won’t say. Something about settling an account your great-uncle left, I think.”
“Settling an account?” That did not sound encouraging at all. “Who is it?”
Alder considered before replying, “He’s a traveling merchant, I think, if that’s not too grand a word for him. He deals in trinkets and whatnot. I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him before. He really did deal with the old warlord.”
“Trinkets?”
Alder explained, “This and that. Little things.”
Sterren considered telling Alder to get rid of this uninvited visitor, but his curiosity got the better of him; what had the old warlord had to do with a traveling dealer in trinkets? Why was the merchant so eager to see him that he had not been able to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and leave the business, whatever it was, until
