before the weather turned really ghastly. Hecht had won outside Khaurene with a third of the numbers he had had when crossing the Dechear, westbound.
Hecht assembled his senior officers and staffers.
'I wanted to thank everyone. We did well. Probably too well. The new people are afraid of us. Which leaves me suspicious of their gathering us here. They're up to something.'
Sedlakova stood. His handicap lent no strength to his argument as he made an impassioned appeal for men of faith to enter the Brotherhood of War.
Hecht stopped listening. The others all talked about what they might do with their lives, now. The Connecten Crusade was over. Nothing had been concluded. They were not distraught, though. That was not a new experience. Castles and cities fell. Death and misery walked the earth. Little changed in the broader picture.
He sank into a reverie about Anna Mozilla and the children. Thoughts of home had had a powerful impact on him these past few months. Never had he been drawn that way back when he was Else Tage.
He had developed new dimensions here in the west.
Everyone was distracted by concerns about tomorrow, forgetting that today still harbored dangers more deadly than the nuisance perils lately offered by the Night.
Hecht and some staff went to the harbor to watch the ships come in. Peter of Navaya's ships, mainly fat traders flying the banners of Platadura. A few lean triremes boasting Navayan colors larked around the flanks of the convoy. Hecht studied those ships and wished Pinkus Ghort was handy so they could brood over shared suspicions. He noted that several older, more weary-looking ships flew Sonsan standards and resembled vessels he had seen falling into ruin along the wharves of that city.
Shrieking birds wheeled and dove where the ships churned up the water. Though it was winter, the harbor reek was thick. The chill had reduced the insect population to a tolerable level.
Clej Sedlakova, seated on a cask, said, 'Them tubs is riding high in the water. They must figure on really loading them down.' Sedlakova was in a permanent foul temper lately. He was sure that, given just a few more weeks, maybe just a few more days, he could have reduced Antieux. Even absent Bronte Doneto and the City Regiment. People inside the city had begun to put out feelers, looking for rewards.
'Put Antieux behind you,' Hecht told him. 'We get paid the same sitting here as we do risking our behinds in the field.'
Colonel Smolens said, 'It isn't the risking that bothers me. It's the freezing and starving.'
Sedlakova said, 'Listen to that shit. What's he had going, this whole war? Hanging out in Viscesment. Then hanging out here. Check him out. He's gained fifteen pounds.'
Smolens said, 'I confess. The food is good. I'll miss it.'
Hecht said, 'You may not have to leave.'
'What? What's this?'
'I haven't heard anything about us giving up Sheavenalle. If King Peter is running the new Patriarch, you can bet he won't give up control of a city this important. My guess is, they'll try to make it over into a free city, like Sonsa or Platadura. Allied to Navaya.'
'What was that?'
'What was what?'
'Sounded like a giant bumblebee.'
Twenty yards out on the mucky bay gulls dove to examine a small splash.
Madouc, always close by, still moving gingerly because of his wounds, said, 'That was no bumblebee, sirs.' Then he howled, flung back against Hecht, clawing at a crossbow bolt that had penetrated the left shoulder of his leather body armor.
Another bumblebee struck the cask that served Sedlakova as his throne. Sedlakova had vanished. Most everyone had. Madouc was down and trying to drag Hecht along.
Hecht refused to be dragged.
He headed for the source of the bolts. Not thinking, just reacting. With controlled anger. Grabbing half a broken oak stave abandoned by some dock walloper. The wood was old. Probably older than he was, Hecht thought, having one of those irrelevant thoughts that surface in times of stress, when everything seems to be happening in slowed motion.
People yelled behind him, telling him to get his dumb ass down.
Someone else yelled out front, right where the assassins ought to be. He jerked to the right. A bumblebee hummed on by, headed for the harbor.
He burst into a crowd of snipers. Two were desperately spanning crossbows. The third abandoned his weapon and took off. Which made no sense to Hecht.
He clubbed the first man he came to.
The second stopped wrestling his crossbow. He produced a short sword, then a dagger in his off hand.
Hecht drew his own blade. But kept the broken stave in his right hand.
He hit the man who was down several times so he would not help his associate.
Help arrived. 'There's one more, headed that way. Dressed the same.' He dropped onto a small bale of cotton that must have been smuggled out of Dreanger. Distracted by irrelevant thoughts again, he stared at his broken stave, imagining it being used to lever cargo before its mishap.
Buhle Smolens settled beside him. 'What the hell was that, Piper? You could've gotten killed. Which was probably the point of the exercise.'
'I didn't think. I just acted.'
'Those boys are Artecipeans. You notice?'
'I'm not surprised. But how can you tell?'
Smolens said a blind man could see it.
'I didn't grow up around here, Colonel. Everybody from around the Mother Sea looks pretty much the same to me.'
Smolens shook his head in disbelief. 'Let me talk to these guys. They'll get cooperative once they understand the alternative.'
Hecht began to shiver but not because he was cold.
'That was a stupid thing to do.'
The words were a whisper so soft no one else heard. Hecht glanced aside. And saw Cloven Februaren. No one else noted the old man. Who said, 'Something to worry about. Could someone else do the things I do?'
For sure.
'You have to be more alert, Piper. Those who want to destroy you never sleep.'
'I can't live that way.'
'Then you won't live at all.' Februaren turned sideways.
Titus Consent asked, 'Who were you talking to?'
'I said I can't stand to live this way. With somebody always after me.'
'I heard another voice.'
'I don't think so.'
Consent did not believe him. But did not contradict him. 'You don't want to keep on like this, find out who's sending the assassins. Deal with him. Or her.'
'I know who's doing it. I wish I knew why.'
'Who?' As Hagan Brokke wearily plunked himself down on a nearby bale, Hecht wondered why the bales were so small. Because of how they were smuggled out of Dreanger?
'Rudenes Schneidel. It's always been Rudenes Schneidel.' He looked to Brokke. Brokke had not been there to watch the ships come in. Brokke was recovering from wounds suffered in the battle outside Khaurene, where his quick thinking had kept Queen Isabeth's Direcians from getting through the boggy ground to the unprepared troops on the Patriarchal left. 'You feeling chipper enough to go back to work?'
'No. A courier boat brought some men in from the fleet. They want to see you.'
'Some men?'
'A Principate I don't know who speaks only Direcian and Church Brothen. Some functionaries from the Mother City. And a big wheel Direcian.'
'And they want?'
