'I trust in the lady to help me out of this.'
'Praise the Beautiful One!' Thod agreed, looking puzzled.
Benard did not explain, because he wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do. Certainly he was in mortal danger. No Werist, especially one as new to his collar as Cutrath Horoldson, could ignore such an insult. Any other man would flee the city, but Benard was a hostage on parole. The day he failed to report to the palace guard, he would be an outlaw, an escaped prisoner, fair game for anyone. The only people who could possibly restrain Cutrath were his parents. Lady Ingeld would certainly intervene if Benard asked her to, but even a peaceable artist drew the line at hiding behind a woman's skirts, and Cutrath probably wouldn't listen to her anyway.
He would obey his father, but the satrap was no friend of Benard's. Horold might side with his loutish son and specifically order him to avenge the family honor, or he might choose to regard the incident as a criminal offense and sentence the culprit to be flogged, branded, or hanged as the fancy took him. Since no other solution found its way through Benard's thundering hangover, those risks would have to be taken. He was a firm believer that where there was life there was hope.
¦
Hurrying off to the palace, clad in Thranth's smart linen cloth with the sun hot on his back, Benard felt reasonably respectable. He had combed out his black tresses, oiled them, and tied them back with a red headband some girl had given him once, which he had rediscovered a few days ago under a jar of umber pigment. He carried a plank of balmwood that Thod had sanded clean for him. Mud brick would last forever if it was kept dry, but every heavy rain would undermine a wall or two somewhere. As often as not the whole side of the house would then be flattened and rebuilt, raising the level of the street and converting the next flood into a neighbor's problem. Thus, through uncounted generations, Kosord had lifted itself high above the plain. The highest point of all was the temple of holy Veslih, surmounted by the bronze canopy above Her sacred fire. Around that, in splendid confusion of roofs and levels, sprawled the palace and everything else, descending higgledy-piggledy to the outlying shanties of the poor.
The palace was approached up wide steps of bricks glazed white and green and red. More polychrome bricks adorned its walls; sunlight flamed on the bronze pillars flanking its high doorway. Just inside that was the guard room, to which Benard must report each day. In the ten years since he was apprenticed to Master Artist Odok, he had forgotten this duty only once; the unpleasant results had improved his memory dramatically.
At full strength Horold's host numbered more than twenty sixty, although he normally kept only two hunts in Kosord itself, billeting the other three in other cities. His satrapy, covering about a third of the Face, contained many other hosts whose leaders were nominally subordinate to him, but any Werist put in charge of an army soon developed revolutionary ambitions. The Heroes found peace an elusive concept. Even summer training exercises were regarded as failures if they did not get out of hand.
Compared with the rest of the host, the palace guard was a joke, a handful of men too old or maimed to fight plus a number of boys in training, all under the command of Flank-leader Guthlag, who should always be seen as early in the day as possible. Benard found Guthlag on his usual bench, rolling knucklebones and quaffing beer with three young Werists sporting the white sashes and leather collars of cadets. By noon they would owe him a fortune; before sunset they would win it all back. It seemed as if he had made a good start on his drinking already, for his pall had sagged into a clumsy rumple, while the youngsters' looked sculpted, not a fold out of place.
He scowled at his visitor with bleary pink eyes. 'Early for you, isn't it? Did you wet the bed or did she just kick you out?'
To any man except a warrior, Benard would have retorted along the lines of 'We thought we heard you coming back,' but one could never trust a Werist's sense of humor, not even Guthlag's.
He bowed, which made his head throb harder. 'Lord, the miserable low-life Florengian beetle reports that he is present as required.'
'You were a slug yesterday. How did you get promoted?'
'Lord, that was before she kicked me out.'
Elderly Werists were rare. Guthlag Guthlagson—that patronymic meant that his father was either unknown or had refused to acknowledge him—had run with the Kosord host back in the days of State Consort Nars Narson, before the coming of Stralg. Werists were not supposed to outlive their leaders, and Nars's hordeleader had certainly died with him in the massacre. Old Guthlag's survival was never explained.
He was a withered stick now—pate all leathery and chest hair white, skin draped loose on his arms and swollen purple cords disfiguring his legs. His fingers were twisted and his hips stiff, yet he showed none of the dehumanization that Werists called battle hardening. Age had marred him, but only as it marred other men, which suggested that he had done little fighting. Nevertheless, the old warrior did keep the vicious youngsters of the guard in line, and in the past he had been known to cuff ears when the Cutrath rat pack nibbled too hard at the Celebrian hostage. If he knew of the satrap's son being on a blood hunt today, he would certainly drop a warning, but he just rolled his eyes as he saw Benard help himself to a stick of sausage some guard had left on the table unguarded.
'What's that?' He pointed to the plank.
'Just a sketch. May I ask a question, lord? I don't intend to pry into the mysteries of Weru, but—'
'I wouldn't recommend it.'
'Of course not, lord. I got into an argument last night—'
'From the look of you I'm not surprised.'
'Er, yes, lord. Someone said that Werists could assume their battleform at will, and someone else insisted that they could do so only on the command of their leader. Is that secret information?' What he wanted to find out was how the newly initiated Cutrath was likely to come after him, but he wasn't going to tell that story unless he had to.
The room had chilled perceptibly. Menace stared through pale eyes.
'I suggest,' growled Flankleader Guthlag, 'that you mind your own business, artist. Have you ever seen a warbeast?'
'No, lord.'
'Pray you never do. It is usually a fatal experience for extrinsics.' An audience always made the old rogue surly.
