The sun was low in the west and a thin chill wind was blowing along the hills when Alfric saw Valkarion below him. He reined in his hengist and sat for a moment scouting the terrain with the hard-learned caution of many wandering years.
Save for himself, the broad highway that flung its time-raddled length down the rock slope was empty. On either hand, the harsh gullied hills stretched away to the dusky horizon, wind whispering in gray scrub and low twisted trees. Here and there, evening fires glimmered red from peasants’ huts, or the broken columns of temples in ruins these many thousand years loomed against the darkening greenish-blue. Behind him, the land faded toward the raw naked desert from which he had come. A falkh hovered on silent wings far above him, watching for a movement that might mean prey—otherwise he was alone.
Still—he felt uneasy. A prickling not due to the gathering cold tingled along his spine, and he had spent too much of his life in the nearness of death to ignore such warnings.
* * * *
He looked ahead, down the great road. It twisted and swooped between the fantastically wind-carven crags, a dim white ribbon in the deepening twilight. The smooth stone blocks were cracked apart by ages so long that the thought made his head reel, and in places the harsh wiry vegetation had grown through and over it, but still the old Imperial Way was there. The ancients had built mightily.
Halfway down the huge slope of hillside, the road ran into Valkarion city. Below that level, the cliffs dropped sharply, white with old salt-streaks, to the dead sea-bottoms—a vast depression, sand and salt and thin bitter plant-growth, reaching out to the sunset horizon.
Lights were winking on in the city. It was not far, and Alfric had no wish to sleep in the open or under some peasant’s stinking roof. So—why not go ahead? The city, his goal, was there, and naught to hold him from it save—
The hengist whickered and stamped its broad cloven hoofs. Its eyes rolled uneasily, and Alfric’s hand slid to his sword hilt. If the beast also sensed a watchfulness—
He caught the stir in the thick brush-clump out of the corner of one eye. Only a hunter would have noticed it; only a rover at once, without stopping to think, would have struck spurs into his mount. The hengist leaped, and the dart whispered past Alfric’s face.
One scratch from the poisoned missile of the southern blowguns was enough to kill a man. Alfric yelled, and flung his hengist at the brush. The sword whined from its scabbard, flamed in his hand.
Two men slipped from the thicket as he crashed into it. They were of a race foreign even to these southlands, small and lithe and amber-skinned. They wore only loincloths; all hair had been shaved from their heads and bodies, and the iron slave-collars were about their necks. Vaguely, Alfric was aware of the brands on their foreheads, but at the moment he was only concerned with their weapons.
One skipped aside, raising the blowgun to his lips. Alfric yanked the javelin from its holster by his saddle and launched it left-handed—through the slave’s belly and out his back.
Steel hissed beside him as the other swung with a scimitar. The hengist screamed as the blade cut its sleek gray hide. The forehoofs lashed out, the great hooked beak snapped, and the slave lay a bloody ruin on the Imperial Way.
Alfric reined in his prancing mount and looked around, breathing hard. An ambush—by the bear of Ruho, they’d meant to kill him!
But—why?
A poor solitary wanderer was no worthwhile quarry for footpads—anyway, these weren’t outlaws but slaves; they must have been set here with orders to destroy some specific person. But no one in Valkarion knew Alfric—he was a stranger without friend or enemy.
Had they mistaken him for someone else? That would be hard to do even in this dim light; he was too plainly a barbarian outlander. It made no sense. By Luigur, it made no sense!
He leaned over, studying the dead men. They were secretive even in the sprawled puppet-like helplessness of death; he could learn nothing. Except—hold, what was that owner’s brand—
A double crescent.
The double crescent!
The knowledge shocked home like a spear-thrust, and Alfric sat silent for a long moment with the wind ruffling his night-black hair. The double crescent—the sign of the Two Moons—that meant the slaves were Temple property. They’d been under orders of the priesthood of the Moons, which was the old Imperial faith and still the state religion of Valkarion.
But if the Temple sent out assassins—
* * * *
Alfric’s eyes traveled up to Amaris, the farther moon, high in the darkening heavens. The nearer one, Dannos, had not yet risen—out of the west, as was its strange wont—but its rocket-like speed would carry it up to and beyond the farther before dawn.
Aye—aye, now he remembered that tonight the moons would mate. On such nights the Temple no doubt had great ceremonies afoot; perhaps this matter of the assassination was involved in some religious proceeding.
Whispered legend and the moldering history books alike agreed that the turning points of the old Empire’s fate had come on nights when the moons mated. No doubt that still held good for the withered remnant of territory which Valkarion still ruled.
The moons were not important in the religion of the Aslakan barbarians, whose chief gods were the wind and the stars and nameless powers of winter and death. But a tingle of fear ran along Alfric’s spine at the thought of what might be abroad that night.
To Luigur with it! His lean face twisted in a snarl, and he snapped sword and javelin back in place and rode trotting on toward Valkarion. Come ambush or priesthood or the Moons themselves, he meant to sleep in the city tonight.
Behind him, the hovering falkh wheeled down toward the two still forms sprawled on the highway.
The sun slipped into the dead sea-bottom, and night came with a silent rush. Amaris rode high in a froth of stars, painting the hills with a dim eerie silver in which monstrous shadows lurked. The wind blew stronger, colder, with a faint smell of salt like the ghost of the long-dried ocean. Alfric wrapped his worn cloak tighter about him against its searching chill. Save for the vast echoing howl of the wind, the hiss of sand and rustle of leaves, he was alone in the dark. He heard the creak and jingle of his harness, the rapid clopclop of the hengist’s hoofs, against a background of hooting night.
The crumbling city walls loomed darkly before him, rearing enormously against the myriad brilliant, unwinking stars. He had half expected to find the gates closed, but instead a fire blazed in the tunnel which the gateway made through the walls. A dozen city guards stood about it.
They sprang to alertness as he rode up, a sudden wall of spears leaning forth in front of him. Behind that shining steel, the light picked out helmets and corselets and faces drawn tight with strain.
“Who goes?” called one. His voice shook a little.
“A stranger, but a friend,” said Alfric in his north-accented Valkariona.
He rode into the circle of firelight and sat in a watchful quiet as their eyes raked him. Plainly he was an outland barbarian—taller by a head than most of the southerners, his hard-thewed body clad in the plain leather and ring-mail of a northern warrior, his sword a double-edged claymore rather than the scimitar or shortsword of the south. His skin was a sunburned leathery brown where theirs was tawny, his long slant eyes a brilliant green where theirs were dark, and there were jeweled rings in his pointed ears. He went cleanshaven in accordance with southern custom, but the high cheekbones, thin straight nose, and long jaw were not theirs.
“Who are you, stranger,” demanded the guard captain, “and what is your errand?”
“I am Alfric, Beodan’s son, of Aslak,” he answered truthfully enough, “and am simply wandering about in search of employment. Perhaps Valkarion could use another sword-arm, or some merchant may want a good warrior to help guard his caravan, or—” he spread his calloused hands in a general gesture. No need to add that perhaps some highwayman was in town recruiting or some would-be rebel was in search of an experienced war-captain who would help for the loot. In his years of adventuring, Alfric had held most jobs, lawful or otherwise.
The guards seemed more taut and wary than the occasion warranted. Surely they had passed stranger and more dubious visitors than a single barbarian. Perhaps they wanted a bribe to let him by, or—
The captain nodded stiffly. “You may enter, since you are alone,” he said; and then, with a friendliness not quite natural: “If you wish good cheap lodging, and a place where men come who might want to hire a fighter, try the Falkh and Firedrake. First turn to your right, three streets down, one to your left. Good luck, stranger.”
Alfric scowled. For a moment he paused, tensing. There was something here—To Luigur with it. His nerves were still on edge from the fight. If something was supposed to happen, let it.
“Thanks,” he said, and rode into the city.
* * * *
It was like most of the old Imperial towns—somewhat larger and busier than the rest, no more. On either side of the broad paved street rose the ancient, columned facades of the Empire, proud building even now when their treasures were long gone and their corners worn smooth by the winds of millennia. There were lamps lighting the main ways, their yellow glow splashing on a milling throng of folk.
Most were native Valkarionas—merchants in their flowing cloaks and fur-trimmed silken robes, workers and artisans in tunics of blue or gray, peasants in clumsy homespun garments and fur caps, swaggering young soldiers in red tunics and polished metal, painted harlots, ragged beggars, near-naked slaves, the others of a city where life still pulsed strong though the days of glory were more thousands of years behind than it was pleasant to count. But there were strangers—robed traders from Tsungchi and Begh Sarrah riding their humped dromads, black-skinned men of Suda and Astrak, coppery feather-cloaked mercenaries from Tollaciuatl, fair-haired barbarians from Valmannstad and the Marskan hills—all the world seemed met at Valkarion, in a babble of tongues and a swirl of colors.
There were many of the tonsured priests of the Moons abroad in long red and black robes with the double crescent hanging from a silver chain about the neck. After each shaven-pate padded one or more of the yellow slaves, silent and watchful, hand on knife or blowgun. Alfric scowled, and decided he had best find lodging before venturing out into such company. A trading center like Valkarion necessarily tolerated all creeds—still, someone had tried to kill him—
He edged out of the throng and followed the captain’s directions. They brought him into an unsavory part of town, where moldering blank-walled houses crowded a winding labyrinth of narrow, unlighted streets and stinking alleys. Men of dubious aspect moved furtively through the shadowy maze, or brawled drunkenly before the tawdry inns and bawdy houses. Strange place for a city guardsman to direct him to—
But no priests or soldiers were in sight, which was recommendation enough. Alfric rode on until he saw the sign of the Falkh and Firedrake creaking in the chill gusty wind above a gloomy doorway.
He dismounted and knocked, one hand on his dagger. The door groaned open a crack and a thin scar-faced man looked out, his own hand on a knife.
“I want lodging for myself and my hengist,” said Alfric.
The landlord’s hooded eyes slid up and down the barbarian’s tall form. An indrawn breath hissed through his lips. “Are you from the northlands?” he asked.
“Aye.” Alfric flung open the door and stepped into the taproom.
It was dim and dirty and low-ceiled, a few smoky torches throwing a guttering light on the hard-faced men who sat at the tables drinking the sour yellow wine of the south. They were all armed, all wary—the place was plainly a hangout of thieves and murderers.
Alfric shrugged broad shoulders. He’d stayed in such places often enough. “How much do you want?” he asked.
“Ah—” The landlord licked his lips, nervously. “Two chrysterces for supper now and breakfast tomorrow, one soldar room and girl.”
The rate was so low that Alfric’s eyes narrowed and his ears cocked forward in an instinctive gesture of suspicion. These southerners all named several times the price they expected to get, but he had never haggled one down as far as this fellow’s asking price.
“Done,” he said at last. “But if the food is bad or the bed lousy or the woman diseased, I’ll throw you in your own pot and cut my breakfast off your ribs.”
“‘Twill not be needful, noble sir,” whined the landlord. He waved a thin little slave boy over. “Take care of the gentleman’s hengist.”
* * * *
Alfric sat down at a corner table and ate his meal alone. The food was greasy, but not bad. From the shadows he watched his fellow guests, sizing up their possibilities. That big spade-bearded fellow—he might be the head of a gang which would find an expert sword-swinger useful. And the little wizened man in the gray cloak might be a charlatan in need of a bodyguard—
He grew slowly aware of their own unease. There were too many sharp glances thrown in his own direction, entirely too many—too much whispering behind hands, too much furtive loosening of sheathed daggers. There was something infernally strange going on in Valkarion.
Alfric bristled like an angry jaccur, but throttled impatience and got up. Time enough to find all that out tomorrow—he was tired now from his long ride; he would sleep and then in the morning look the city over.
He mounted the stairs, conscious of the glances following him, and opened the door the boy showed to him. There he paused, and his hard jaw fell.
The room was just a room, small, lit by one stump of candle, no furniture save a bed. Its window looked out on an alley which was like a river of darkness.
It was the woman who held Alfric’s eyes.
She was clad only in the usual gaudy silken shift, and she sat plucking thin chords from the usual one-stringed harp. Her rings and bracelets were ordinary cheap gewgaws. But she was no common tavern bawd—not she!
Tall and lithe and tawny-skinned, she rose to face him. Her shining blue-black hair tumbled silkily to her slim waist, framing a face as finely and proudly chiseled as a piece of ancient sculpture—broad clear forehead, delicately arched nose, full mobile mouth, stubborn chin, long smooth throat running down toward her high firm breasts. Her eyes were wide-set, dark and starry brilliant as the desert nights; her lips were like red flame.
When she spoke, it was music purring under the wind that whimpered outside and rattled the window sash.
“Welcome, stranger.”
Alfric gulped, licked his lips, and slowly recovered his voice: “Thank you, my lovely.” He moved closer to her. “I had not—not thought to find one like you—here.”
“But now that you have—” She came closer, and her smile blinded him—“now that you have, what will you do?”
“What do you think?” he laughed.
She bent over and blew out the candle.