tinware, pins, nails, and bolts of colored cloth to trade to the peasants and village folk along the route to Zazesspur.
It was penny-ante commerce, and Zaranda would be doing well to break even. She didn't care. It was a cheap way to garner intelligence and goodwill, and be-sides she felt for the people of the Tethyr countryside. Between bandits and big-city ambitions, only a rare armed caravan such as hers ever reached them. Other-wise the countryfolk had no access to goods beyond what they made themselves, which was why every mo-bile soul for miles had come pouring into town as news of the caravan's arrival spread.
Goldie stood to one side watching the proceedings with interest. Now she cocked an eye at the grass- chewing peasant who had proclaimed the need for strong government.
'Why do you say that?' she asked. The man only goggled at her slightly; word that the caravan leader rode a talking mare had spread quickly through the village.
'That's like saying you need more locusts.'
'Now, Golden Dawn,' Father Pelletyr said, munching a cold chicken leg, 'you shouldn't talk that way.'
'You don't think I should talk at all, Father.'
'Now, child, you know that's not true-'
'Begging your leave,' the peasant said pointedly around his grass stalk, 'but our neighbors have more wealth than we.'
'Truer words never saw daylight,' agreed his friend in the cap. 'A good, strong government would take it from them and give it to us.'
'Why should they do that?' Goldie asked.
The locals looked at her in consternation. 'Because we are hardworking and worthy sons and daughters of Tethyr.'
'Aren't they the same?'
The crowd began to give the mare hard looks. 'Do not trouble yourself overmuch with her babblings, good folk,' Farlorn said suavely. 'She's merely a dumb animal.'
The peasants looked at each other, then nodded and went back to their shopping.
'I'll show you a dumb animal, you ringleted gigolo,' Goldie grumbled.
'Goldie!' Zaranda said sharply.
The bard laughed. 'Would you rather be thought a dumb animal or someone whose opinions are so seditious she should be chopped up into food for hounds?'
For once Goldie had no answer. Father Pelletyr beamed indulgently as he bit into a raw onion he'd bought from a farmer-more early yield from the long Southern growing season. 'They're right, anyway,' he said. 'A good, strong government is a benefit to all.'
'Isn't envy a sin in Ilmater's eyes?' Zaranda asked quietly. The cleric looked blank. She decided not to press it; the crowd might decide she was better off as dog food, and while she was intrepid, by her reckoning she'd faced enough angry mobs in her lifetime.
The inn door opened. Three men emerged into the brilliant midday sun, managing at once to saunter and swagger. They were typical Tethyrian bravos in garish costume, with puffed blouses and extravagantly padded codpieces, which tended to turn any sort of walk into a swagger. They arranged their broad-brimmed hats and floridly dyed plumes and walked across the road to the green.
Stillhawk watched them closely with his brooding dark eyes. He had sealed his bow in a waterproof case of some soft and supple hide that Zaranda suspected to be kobold skin-the elves had some folkways that seemed pretty abrupt by human standards. A man of the Dalelands, and an obvious ranger at that, was a substantial novelty in the sparsely forested Tethyrian plains. Zaranda feared he might excite the villagers unduly if he wandered around with an elven longbow strung and ready for action. He wore his long sword, also of elvish make, scabbarded at his hip.
He dropped a hand as dark and hard as weathered wood to the hilt and looked a query at Zaranda. Stand easy, she signed to him.
The newcomers carried swords with elaborate hilts and blades so broad they each had two deep, wide fuller grooves-which lightened weight and increased structural integrity and hadn't a blessed thing to do with letting blood flow, as the ignorant would have you believe. These swords weighed about five pounds each, which was in the upper range for anybody of human strength to wield one-handed and expect to live. Daggers they had as well, daggers in profusion: broad-bladed daggers, slim poniards, misericords, dirks, toadstickers, and hunting knives with grips of kobold bone. These blades hung all about their harness as if, come combat, they anticipated sprouting extra arms and fighting in the manner of the intelligent octopi rumored to haunt the rocks off the coast of Lantan in the Trackless Sea. But enough of blades.
There was nothing intrinsically sinister about the three. Their garb, outlandish and weapon bedizened as it was, was no more than what was fashionable among Tethyrian bravos, particularly soldiers-of-fortune-which these appeared to be. Their gait was fairly steady, which indicated they likely hadn't imbibed enough in the tavern to make them boisterous. They could turn into trouble, but didn't constitute automatic menace. 'Ho,' said one with ginger-colored mustachios waxed into wings. He approached Stillhawk. 'Are you the master of this traveling circus?'
The ranger nodded to Zaranda. The bravos looked to her and shrugged. Taller than any of them, with her man's garb and her saber with its well-worn hilt slung now at her own waist, Zaranda Star did not invite men to trifle with her, for all her handsomeness. Instead they craned to look past the mob of locals rummaging through the goods on the racks and drop cloths.
The tallest of the sell-swords, whose black hair hung in tight perfumed curls to his shoulders and who wore tights that were vertically striped red, blue, and yellow on one leg, and purple with yellow stars on the other, elevated a long and lordly nose.
'Rubbish for rubes,' he opined. A general growl rose from the locals, but instead of pressing, they edged away from the heavily armed trio. Ignoring them, the black-ringleted bravo looked square at Zaranda. 'Have you nothing more worthwhile than straight pins and thimbles?'
'Straight pins and thimbles are amply worthwhile for folk who have none,' said Zaranda evenly. She made it a habit not readily to take offense, and to deal in general in the calmest manner possible. This habit was highly profitable to a merchant. Her mastery of swordsmanship and her latent skill at magic made it easier for her to maintain the required serenity of mind.
'We have some swords and daggers from the East,' Farlorn said. 'Wondrous work, of a style seldom seen in these parts.' Zaranda had coached him carefully in advance: Tethyrians tended to prize craftsmanship above all things.
The third man waved him off. His close-cropped brown hair and the yellowish scar that ran from one eye to his broad, stubble-clad jaw belied the foppery of his dress. 'Weapons we have. Have you good magic?'
Farlorn cocked an eyebrow at Zaranda. A little sardonically; this was her call to make, though Farlorn was one who little cared to defer to others. But he was, after all, in her pay.
Here was a cusp of sorts. Zaranda was ready enough to sell her goods to whoever was willing to pay a good price for them. The nicety here was whether the query sprang from mere curiosity, a prospective customer's interest, or something more sinister. On their own account, these three worried Zaranda little, particularly with Farlorn and grim Stillhawk at her side. But who knew how many comrades they had out of sight outside the village, who might be eager to ambush even such a well-guarded caravan as this for sufficiently tempting plunder? Magic items were always in demand, immensely valuable in their own right and readily convertible to cash anywhere in Faerun.
Which, of course, was why a comparative handful of rare and powerful objects from fiend-haunted Thay provided the backbone of the profit Zaranda hoped to realize on this expedition.
'Are you mages?' she asked. 'Could you, say, read a spell scroll, or ply an enspelled wand?'
Ginger Mustachios spread hands no less scarred than Stillhawk's. 'We are simple fighting men. We have no skill with spells. Still, we can use enchanted weapons as readily as the next man.'
Zaranda shook her head and smiled thinly. 'I regret that the only magic weapons we have are those we ourselves carry. And they're not for sale.'
It was the truth. They had won some enchanted weapons on the Thay expedition, but without exception these had been cursed, or such that they would turn and bite the hand of anyone who tried to wield them who
