Barbara Hambly - The Ladies of Mandrigyn

“That’s ridiculous!” the Wolf said angrily. “There weren’t above fifty women in the poxy troop! And the women had started to take over running the businesses of the city from the minute the men marched off to fight their witless war! Hell, most of the crew of the ship that brought me here were skirts! And anyway, it wasn’t my idea...”

“The fact remains,” Tarrin said, “that it was you who schooled the women in these—” He glanced at the glowering members of his parliament. “—unseemly arts; and you who encouraged them to consort with gladiators and prostitutes.”

Sun Wolf’s voice was a croaking roar of rage, “And I’m being banished for that?”

“Not only for that,” Sheera said quietly. Under the rose and gold of her painted lids, her eyes were touched with something that was not quite sadness, but not quite cynicism either. “And it isn’t only the men who want to see you go. Captain. Do you have any concept of what has happened in this city? We were all of us raised to participate in a dance—the men to cherish, the women to be cherished in return, the men to rule and work, the women to be protected and sheltered. We knew what we were—we had harmony in those times, Captain.

“We have all passed through a hell of terror and pain, of toil and despair. We—Tarrin and I, and every man and every woman—fought not only for our city but for the dream of that way of life, that dance. We thought that with victory, all that old comfort of being what we were raised to be would be restored. But the men have returned to find the dream that sustained them in the mines forever broken. The women—” She paused, then went on, her voice level and cool. “Most of those women who did not fight did not even want what has happened. They wanted to be free of Altiokis, but not at the price that we have forced them to pay. We have pushed chaos and struggle into their lives without their consent. You yourself, Captain, and your lady, know that you cannot unknow what you know. And even those who fought find victory an ambiguous fruit to the taste.”

As if against his will, the Wolf’s eyes went to where Wilarne’s husband and son stood without her, their eyes both sullen and confused. How many others of the troop, he wondered, would meet with that mingling of outrage and incomprehending hurt? Not only from those close to them, he now saw—not only from the men. Most of the women in the crowd were silent and looked across at him and at the ladies he had trained with wariness and disapproval, with the anger of those who had something taken from them without their consent and who did not want what was offered in return. The seeds of bitterness were sown and could not be picked out of the soil again.

And, logically, he saw that he was the only one they could banish. He was not the disrupter of the dance, but he was the only one of those new and uneasy things that they could dispose of without tearing still further the already riven fabric of their lives.

He looked back at the young man before him, clothed in the stiff white ceremonial garb of the ruler of the city, and felt an unexpected stab of pity for the poor devil who would have to sort out the ungodly mess. At least he and Starhawk could get on their horses and ride away from it—and there was a good deal to be said simply for that. He grinned and held out his hand. Tarrin, who had been watching his face with some trepidation visible beneath his own calm expression relaxed and returned the smile and the handclasp with broken knuckled, pick-calloused Fingers.

“Along with the curses of parliament,” Tarrin said quietly, “I give you my personal thanks.”

“Of the two, that’s what matters.” The Wolf glanced over his shoulder at the sound of hooves clicking on the pavement behind them. The crowd opened in a long aisle, from the steps where they stood to the flower-twined stone lacework of the Spired Bridge, which led toward the Golden Gate of the city and to the countryside beyond. Down it, a couple of pages in the livery of the city were leading two horses, with saddlebags already packed and the Wolf’s and Starhawk’s weapons strapped to the cantles. One of the pages, it amused him to see, was Sheera’s daughter, Trella.

With a mercenary’s typical preoccupation, Starhawk gave one of the saddlebags an experimental prod. It clinked faintly, and Sun Wolf asked, “All ten thousand there?” That was a patent impossibility; no horse in creation could have carried the unwieldy bulk of that much gold,

“The rest of the money will be forwarded to you at Wrynde, Captain,” Sheera said, “as soon as it can be raised by parliament. Have no fear of that.”

Looking from her calmly enigmatic face to the disgruntled countenances of the members of parliament, the Wolf only muttered to Starhawk, “Where have we heard that before?”

She swung lightly into the saddle, her fair hair catching the sunlight like pale silk. “What the hell does it matter?” she asked. “We’re not going back mere, anyway.”

The Wolf thought about that and realized that she was right. He had sold his sword for the last time—like the women, like Starhawk, he was no longer what he had been. “No,” he said quietly. “No, I don’t suppose we are.” Then he grinned to himself, mounting, and reined back to where Tarrin and Sheera still stood at the foot of the steps. Sun Wolf held out his hand. “My lady Sheera?”

Sheera of Mandrigyn came forward and raised her lace-gloved hand for his formal kiss. In former days he would have asked the permission of Tarrin, but the King said no word, and the glance Sheera cast them silenced the parliament, like a spell of dumbness. For the first time since he had seen them together. Sun Wolf noticed that Sheera stood an inch or so taller than Tarrin.

He bent from the saddle and touched her knuckles to his lips. Their eyes met—but if she had any regrets, or wished for things between them to be or to have been other than they were, he could find no trace of it in that serene and haughty gaze. She was Sheera of Mandrigyn, and no one would ever see her with mud and rain and sweat on her face again.

He said softly, “Don’t let the men get your ladies down, Commander.”

She elevated a contemptuous eyebrow. “What makes you think they could?”

The Wolf laughed. He found that he could take a great deal of pleasure in seeing those he loved behave exactly like themselves. “Nothing,” he said. “May your ancestors bless you, as you will bless those who follow you with blood and spirit.”

He reined his horse away; but as he did so, Starhawk rode forward and leaned to take Sheera’s hand. A few words were exchanged; then, in a very unqueenly gesture, Sheera slapped Starhawk’s knee, and Starhawk laughed. She rode back to him at a decorous walk; the crowd moved aside again to let them ride from the city.

As they moved under the flamboyant turrets of the Spired Bridge, Sun Wolf whispered, “What did she say to you?”

Starhawk glanced at him in the shadows, her wide, square shoulders and pale hair silhouetted against the rainbow colors of the throng they had just left. Past her, the Wolf could still see Tarrin and Sheera, two glittering dolls beneath the scintillating bulk of the Cathedral of Mandrigyn.

“She told me to look after you,” the Hawk said.

Sun Wolf’s spine stiffened with indignation. “She told you to look after me ... ?”

Her grin was white in the gloom of the covered bridge. “Race you to the city gates.”

To those standing in the great square of the Cathedral, all that could be heard of the departure of Sun Wolf and Starhawk from the town was the sudden thunder of galloping hooves in the tunnel of the enclosed bridge and, like an echo, a drift of unseemly laughter.