The Chick Is In The Mail

head beside the earlier one, making a matched set. I was outnumbered thirty to one. Lomo had my horse and my sword. Even my trusty mail, veteran of years of fighting, had let me down. Maybe this was the Change of Life after all and I'd worked too long at this exhausting, dangerous business. Maybe it was time to hang up my-

'Can I go now?' Dal ducked his head. 'You can keep the donkeys and hymnals.'

Lomo whirled and shoved him to the ground beside Gerta's limp form. 'Get on with the confessions!'

Dal's head hit Gerta's scabbard with a sharp crack. His eyes fluttered, then he sagged like a windless sail. The bandits surged forward, aghast. 'Lomo, you killed our priest!' one of them cried. 'Now, how are we going to confess?'

My fingers wrenched desperately at the last buckle and finally with a squeak, it gave. My mail split open along the side seam and I drew in a blessed full breath.

'You promised us hymns and sermons and confession!' A hulking brute seized Lomo's shirt and hauled him up onto his toes. 'Otherwise, we'd never have followed you. Now, we've finally caught something at least close to a priest, after all these months, and you bash his blinkin' head in. I think we need us a new king!'

A chorus of assent went up on all sides. Lomo looked decidedly nervous.

'First, though,' the tall brute said, 'throw that meddling Iron-Thighs broad down the crevice. We was doing fine until she showed up!'

'Yeah!' They advanced on me, a reeking, unkempt mob, unsatisfied repentance blazing in their eyes.

I raised my chin, remembering whose daughter I was. No bunch of priest-deprived bandits was going to take me down! A true warrior is never without resources. If they wanted a sermon-

'Brethren!' I cried. 'We find ourselves brought together by fate tonight, out here, underneath these brilliant and, I can assure you, all-seeing stars!'

They paused, slack-jawed.

'Some of you have not always led, shall we say, admirable lives,' I said with as much authority as I could muster. 'Of that I think we can be certain.'

One of the worthless band whimpered.

'Down on your knees, dogs!' I crossed my arms and looked uncompromising. 'It's time to make amends!'

Three of the closest knelt. 'Wait a minute!' Lomo cried, still hanging by his shirt from the brute's fist. 'She's not a priest!'

'You never take presents to your mothers, do you?' I tapped my foot.

Two more dropped to their knees. Their eyes looked suspiciously red. 'This is stupid,' Lomo broke in. 'Don't lis-'

His captor rammed him facefirst to the ground, then knelt, folding his hands piously. Lomo sprawled limply and barely breathing in the fire's dancing shadows.

'You slurp your soup and eat with your mouths open! You curse and burp and never ever share!'

Five more knelt, openly sobbing.

Gerta stirred. I put my foot in the middle of her back to hold her in place. 'Raise your eyes to the stars and confess all the nasty, dirty, rotten things you've ever done!'

The holdouts knelt along with the rest of my congregation and commenced airing their dirty laundry. It was a loud and most enthusiastic list. I eased my foot off Gerta's back. 'Get up!' I whispered urgently. 'We have to go!'

Her hand twitched.

'Now would be a real good time!' I said.

The confessing faltered and the bandits' feral eyes once again glittered at me in the firelight. I whirled back to them. 'Do you call those sins?' I cried. 'By all the powers above, you are a pathetic bunch! I thought you were men! My grandmother has committed worse crimes than that!'

They raised their eyes and went back to it with a vengeance. I shuddered at the transgressions mentioned; by all accounts, they had been a very naughty lot.

Gerta groaned, then hitched herself away from the fire, one agonizingly slow bit at a time. I reached down and slipped a hand through Dal's belt and dragged him out of the light. 'Find the horses,' I told Gerta. 'I'll collect our swords.'

She nodded groggily and lurched off into the darkness. I put my hands on my hips and strode through the crowd. One of the appropriated hymnals lay open close to the fire and I picked it up and examined the inside cover. Oh, ho! I thought. If we ever got back to the lowlands, both King Mytchell the Extremely Picky of Damery and King Bentley the Culinary of Alowey would find this very interesting! I shoved the volume into my belt.

Then I recognized Gerta's sword, Gut-Spiller, on the hip of a rugged blond fellow. 'Slackers!' I cried. 'Put your backs into it!' I whacked the yellow- headed thief across the shoulders and sent him reeling, at the same time deftly filching the sword. My nose wrinkled as I turned away. By his pungent odor, he apparently hadn't bathed since birth.

'Do you think confession works if you mumble?' I said. 'I can't hear you!' The noise level climbed another notch. 'Straighten up, you lily-livered wuss!' I told another. 'You look like a leaking sack of feed!' I spotted my sword, thrust through Lomo's belt. He was lying across it. Damnation! I worked my way around the babbling throng until I was looming over him. 'Fall on your faces, worms! Beg forgiveness of the almighties!'

Most of them did, but several, including Lomo's attacker, hesitated. 'What we got to do that for?' he asked, as all around him confessions were shouted into the dirt. 'I never heard of no priest saying `Fall on your face!' '

I could fight him, of course, but then I'd have to take on all thirty of them, not a practical choice at the moment. 'Say,' I said, dropping my voice into a honeyed lower register and leaning closer. 'You are a big one, aren't you? I could go for a fine full-sized fellow like you.'

The light in his eyes changed from petulance to vanity. He flexed his bicep and winked. 'Yeah?'

'Yeah,' I murmured throatily, then turned sideways and gave him a sharp elbow on the point of his jaw. He toppled like a felled hundred-year oak. 'That's the spirit, brother!' I cried, then glared at the remaining two bandits. They hurriedly buried their faces in the dirt.

Keeping an eye on my parishioners, I rolled Lomo's unconscious body over, freed Esmeralda from his worn belt, then glanced around for Gerta. She signalled me from the other side of the camp. Fortunately, she'd found the strength to hoist the hymnal merchant over Slasher's saddle like a deer carcass. The confessions were growing ever more hoarse and insignificant. The bandits were now down to episodes of dog kicking and flower trampling; we were almost out of time.

'All right,' I said, 'enough confessing. It's time for a rousing chorus of-of-' I searched for an appropriate song.

'What about `Oh Come All Ye Druids'?' one tear-stained bandit suggested timorously. 'I always find that so uplifting.'

'Splendid!' I hauled the newly confessed miscreant to his feet. 'I'm appointing you choirmaster. Lead on!'

As off-key strains of the chosen song violated the clear mountain night air, I vaulted into Corpsemaker's saddle. Gerta mounted Slasher behind the merchant's body, then we gave the horses their heads so they could pick their way down the winding rock-strewn trail in the darkness.

Behind us, the abysmal singing went on for a long, long time.

* * *

'I thought you two were supposed to be the best!' Dal said the next day, as we began our descent into the kingdom of Damery. His swollen nose was still beet-red and he talked thickly as though he had a cold. 'You lost all my stock and didn't kill a single bandit!'

I pulled out the battered hymnal I'd picked up the night before and opened the cover. I squinted, then held it out to him. 'Funny, I don't see an Alowey tax stamp anywhere in this book.' I pressed the volume to my chest. 'Merchant Dal, have you perhaps been dealing with those renegade cut-rate monks down beyond the Brimford frontier? You know, the ones who don't believe in lawful taxes?'

'Of course not!' Dal averted his bloodshot eyes.

'That's good,' I said. 'Because we all know how King Mytchell the Extremely Picky feels about tax evaders running goods across his border. I believe the last twenty or so were boiled in apple vinegar and then fed to the royal swine.'

Dal flushed and stared down at his knotted fingers. 'You know, I've been thinking of emigrating across the channel to Doria. The weather is so much better there and the population is known for having perfect pitch, just the place for a hymnal salesman to get ahead.'

'Really?' I said. According to Gerta, who'd been born across the channel, Doria was so far north, they thought summer was when it sleeted instead of snowed. 'That does sound like a pleasant change.'

'What about our fee?' Gerta asked glumly. Golden wisps of hair had escaped her braids, her black eye was swollen shut, and she didn't look nearly as valiant as usual. 'No doubt you want a refund.'

I leafed through the illicit hymnal, then hummed a few bars of that old standard, 'Cairn of Ages, Cleft for Me.'

'Keep your fee!' Dal squeaked. 'You earned it! I wouldn't dream of asking for a refund!' He swallowed hard. 'Can I, um, have my hymnal back?'

'Yeah.' I tossed it to him. 'I suppose it does have a certain sentimental value.'

Dal tore the pages out as we rode and threw them surreptitiously along the trail behind us, but otherwise kept blessedly quiet for the rest of the journey.

* * *

Two nights later, we dumped Dal off at the infamous Inn of the Second Wart at the foot of the mountain and then ate freshly roasted piglet out underneath the dazzling sweep of stars.

'Surprising that someone would be so careless about marking their stock,' Gerta was saying. 'Are you sure that pig wasn't marked?'

Not after I whacked its ears off, I thought. 'Not a mark anywhere,' I said. I wiped pork grease off my hands, then picked up my poor magicked mail. It was now so small, it fit in the palm of my hand, no bigger than a doll's shirt and shrinking ever more quickly as time went by. At this rate, it would be flea-sized by morning. 'I will have to order new mail when we get to town, but at least it won't be because I'm getting old.'

Gerta turned over on her back and stared up at the sky. 'I'm afraid you are in for a change, though. Surely you've heard that, once you've been