LITMIR.BIZ

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for walking and mustering.

      Stone didn’t recognize the warriors strolling about, either. Except for Fox. He recognized him. Worse luck. “Dunno why we’re snockered,” he said again, “’cept the First and Finest are always a little snockered when they go charging up through the breach. And ’cause they gave us the stuff and what else were we to do with it but drink it?”

      “Maybe that’s why.” Fox set a small keg on its end and plopped down on it. “Give us these fancy red poufs of trousers so we’ll be sure to get shot at. Get us just snockered enough we’ll run like lunatics into that hellmouth, and call us a brilliant-sounding name like First and Finest so we won’t realize we’re something else entirely, like First and Foolishest.”

      “No such word as foolishest,” Stone offered, nodding sagely. Or as sagely as he could, given that he was at least a quarter full of some truly vile liquor. “And you shouldn’t talk that way. It’ll get back to the Rulers. You do realize you’re sitting on a keg of black powder, don’t you?”

      Carefully, Fox leaned to one side and peered down at his impromptu seat. “Damn me, so I am. Suppose it wouldn’t do to get myself blown to bits prematurely.”

      “No. Won’t do at all.” Stone took his partner’s hand and hauled him to his feet. “D’you suppose we started drinking too early? They haven’t started the cannonade yet, have they?” He froze, trying to force thought through his slightly pickled brain, to hear what he ought to be hearing. “Have I gone deaf?”

      Just then, the concentrated thunder of hundreds of cannon firing simultaneously at close range threatened to knock both men off none-too-steady feet.

      “Did you hear that?” Fox said when the noise faded.

      “Yes.”

      “Then you’re not deaf.”

      “Do you know where we are?” Again Stone tried to pick out landmarks.

      “Haven’t a clue.”

      “I don’t suppose you know where women’s quarters are from here.”

      “Not a bit.”

      Stone shoved his hair out of his face with both hands. “Why doesn’t your hair ever get in your way? It’s just like mine, yellow and curly. It should get in your way like mine.”

      “I remember to get mine cut.” Fox produced a length of string, bunched Stone’s hair together on the top of his head and tied it off. “You look ridiculous. Like there’s a fountain sprouting from your head.”

      “Don’t care. It’s out of my way. Thanks, brodir.”

      “Anytime.” Fox paused, then pointed at the banner hanging above a nearby tent. “Isn’t that the vo’Haav banner?”

      Stone turned, looked. The banner was hard to see in the firelight, but he thought he recognized a black bear on the yellow flag. “If a bear is vo’Haav’s emblem, then it is.”

      “Our camp is always just to the east of theirs.”

      “Don’t tell me you know where east is. The sun’s down. The moon’s not up yet.”

      Fox pointed. “The city is east. Therefore east is that way. Our tent is also that way.”

      Stone sighed, his chest heaving in his disappointment. “I really wanted a woman tonight.”

      “One last time before we die.”

      Anger flashing like sparks in dry grass, Stone swung, his fist plowing into his partner’s face, knocking him to his backside. Stone spat in the sand beside him, invoking the warrior’s god. “Don’t say that,” he ordered, fists clenched. “Maybe we’ll die, but maybe we won’t. It’s not up to us. You go into battle knowing you’ll die, Khralsh will give you what you want. Death is easy.”

      Once more he reached down and pulled Fox to his feet. “You go into battle determined to live, maybe he lets you live. Life, that’s not so easy, not in battle. Either way, Khralsh decides. But if you ask for what you want, maybe he gives it.”

      “And maybe he doesn’t.” Fox couldn’t meet Stone’s gaze.

      “Maybe not.” Stone shook the wrist he gripped, jarring his partner’s whole body, willing him to understand, to believe. “But who guaranteed you life to begin with? Remember that Bureaucrat we saw get run down by the ale wagon? Or the Farmer who got gored by his bull? Everybody dies, Fox, sooner or later. Swear your life to Khralsh, let him look after it. You can’t.”

      This time, Fox’s sharp brown gaze locked onto Stone’s. He envied Fox his eyes as well. Few others had the pale blue of Stone’s eyes. Their mentors had always shuddered and called them uncanny, witchy. But he didn’t mind uncanny now if it convinced Fox.

      Slowly, Fox nodded. “All right. I’ll swear. With you at my shoulder I believe it.”

      “Then swear. We swear together, we fight together, fight well, and surely Khralsh will let us live.”

      “I swear. I swear myself to Khralsh. I ask for life, but my life in his hands whatever happens.” Fox spat in the sand, offering a body fluid precious to the warrior god.

      Stone copied him. “And so I swear also. My life to Khralsh.”

      They stood another moment, swaying faintly when the wind gusted through, setting tent walls to flapping.

      “D’you suppose we ought to try to sleep?” Stone scratched his head, careful not to disturb his new topknot.

      The cannon crashed again, less in unison than before.

      “In this noise?” Fox turned his partner and pushed him in the direction of their division. “You can try.”

      “Why do you always have all the answers?”

      “Because somebody has to, and you obviously don’t.”

      Stone punched Fox in the shoulder hard enough to send him reeling to the far side of the tent street. “What is it I have then?”

      “Lunatic courage.”

      “You have courage. Plenty of it. I’ve seen it.”

      “Ah, but I have the sensible sort of courage. Somebody has to be the crazy one, the one who’ll charge cannon with a misfired musket or volunteer for First and Finest. And that’s you.”

      “You were right there charging and volunteering with me.”

      “We’re paired. Where else am I supposed to be but at your back, making sure you don’t get your fool self killed.”

      Stone thought long enough they passed two tents, trying to work his way to Fox’s meaning. The cannon’s booming, now a steady rumble as the big guns fired at will, seemed to shake the alcohol from his brain. “You’re pissed.” He stopped in the throughway. “Not drunk pissed. Angry pissed. Because I volunteered.”

      “I’m not angry.” Fox took his arm and got him moving again. “I was. But I’m not anymore. You convinced me we’d live through this. And if we don’t, Khralsh will welcome us to his hall.”

      “Yes.” Stone believed it. He couldn’t believe anything else. “Volunteering for First and Finest will get us noticed. It could get us promoted.”

      Fox sighed. “Don’t you ever get tired?”

      “Of what?”

      “This.” Fox swept his arm in a half circle, indicating the camp around them, the cannon, the city with its broken walls. “Living in tents. Slogging through mud or heat or rain or all three to the next camp. Fighting. Bleeding. Healing up so we can do it all over again. Don’t you wish we could rest for a little while? Go home, soak in the baths, spend some time with a woman who has all her teeth?”

      “I don’t know, I rather like the toothless one. The way she can wrap

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