Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

The Commander only looked down with stony eyes. "Move aside." He kneed his sweat-darkened horse forward, past her. The wagons had not even stopped.

"Pig!" the woman yelled at him, and bent to pick up a stone from the roadway. It struck his back hard enough to raise dust. He didn't turn. "All of you, pigs!!"

It wasn't what Gil had expected. Walking beside her horse's head, hanging grimly onto the cheekpiece of the bridle to keep from staggering, she'd half-expected to be cheered into town. But, she thought cynically, people are people-nobody cheers the lunchwagon unless he gets first dibs on the food. She looked back along the line of the convoy and saw none of her own feeling reflected in the strained and dusty faces of the other Guards. It's a hell of a thing, she thought, to risk your life to feed someone and have him pelt you with mud on your way into town. But she supposed the Guards had seen too much of human nature in this crisis ever to be surprised by anything again.

They walked quietly along the blue evening road with a tirelessness and an endurance she bitterly envied. The civilians moved dully with fatigue, leading the overburdened horses in silence. The sun had already vanished behind the tips of the surrounding mountains, and the evening grew cold. It would soon be night. Someone had scrounged a heavy, hooded cloak for her from the ruins of the Palace, and it flapped awkwardly around her ankles, the folds of it catching on her sword; the rhythmic slap of the scabbarded weapon against her calf was curious, but somehow comforting. She would take the sword back to California with her along with the memory of this strange and terrifying place.

Where in hell are all these people coming from? she wondered, as a dozen or more came scrambling down the ferns of the roadside and into the way of the carts. She straightened up and scanned the woods, picking out the hundreds of trashy little campsites that strewed the slopes all around Karst. Sweet Mother of God, do they think there's a magic force-field around the place? Did they really buy that line of Alwir's about how safe they all are? The refugees tacked themselves onto the train, keeping pace with exhausted horses and their Guards, tagging them through the blue rivers of shadow between the first outlying buildings. Some of the Guards drew their swords, but no move was made against them; the people simply followed, crowding one another but not the warriors, only making sure of being at the distribution point when shareouts began. Gil heard the murmur of voices thrown back by the moss-grown walls, a restless tension and discontent. So many people, so few wagons, so little food!

And then they moved into the twilit square. Gil paused in shock, stiffening as if against a physical blow, and cold apprehension fisted in her chest. The square was nearly solid with people, all ages, both sexes, dirty, in rags or clothes soiled enough to be rags, and watchful as wolves. The great bonfires of last night had been kindled at the four corners of the square, and the leaping scarlet light repeated itself a millionfold in their glittering eyes, like the eyes of the rats in the vaults. The ugly tension was palpable; even Gil's horse, drooping with weariness, sensed it and threw up its head with a snort of fear.

At the head of the convoy, Janus moved his horse toward the mob that was headed for the villa across the square where the food was to be stored. There was a slight movement, an uneasy convection current in the dark mass of eyes and faces, but no one stepped aside. The Commander's war horse fidgeted and sidestepped from that wall of hatred. Janus drew his sword.

Then Gil felt the cart she was leading creak with a sudden motion, and Ingold, who had been dozing in the back, swung himself up onto the driver's seat. In the firelight, he was visible to everyone in the square, the hood falling back from his head to reveal his craggy face with its rough chaparral of white beard and his eyes as cold and hard as the storm sky. He said nothing, did nothing, only stood leaning on his staff, looking down at the mob in the square.

After a long moment of silence, men shifted away from the doors of the villa. A pathway widened before the Guards, their convoy, and the wizard.

Janus' voice was crisp on the chilly air. "Start unloading. Get the stuff indoors, under triple guard." But he himself did not dismount. Other Guards emerged from the villa, mixed with Alwir's red-liveried private troops and the warrior-monks of the Church, also in red, the bloodtroops of God. Gil leaned against the shoulder of the carthorse, feeling the sweat cold on her face, the warmth of the beast through cloak and jacket and shirt against her arm, tired and glad it was over. The mob in the square had fallen back, crowding one another around the bonfires, but they watched the moving lines of armed men stowing the food, and that restless murmuring never ceased.

Gil heard someone call out. "My lord Ingold!" Turning, she saw someone beckoning urgently from the Town Hall steps. She saw the wizard scan the crowd, judging it, but few of the people were watching him now; all eyes were riveted, as by enchantment, on the food. He swung himself lightly down from the cart, and the crowd rippled back from where he landed on his feet. They moved, not in dread or fear, exactly, but in awe of something they did not and could not comprehend. He did not have to push his way through them to the steps.

If Gil hadn't been watching him, following his path with her eyes, she would have completely missed what happened next. A man, cloaked and hooded in red, stood waiting for him on the steps of the Town Hall, holding a rolled parchment in one hand, flat and colorless in the deep shadows thrown by the fires. He handed Ingold the parchment and drew his sword.

Gil saw Ingold read what was written there and look up. She could feel, even at that distance, the fury and indignation that tautened every line of his body, the wrath that smoked off him. A dozen men in red emerged quietly from the shadows and surrounded him. They all carried drawn swords.

For one instant, she thought he would fight. And she thought, Oh, my God, there'll be a riot, and a queer, cold fury put fire-ice into her veins. Several of the red troops evidently thought so, too, for they flinched back from him. Gil remembered that, in addition to being a wizard, Ingold was supposed to be one hell of a swordsman. Then he held his hands up to show that they were empty, and the men closed him in. One of them took his staff, another his sword, and they all vanished into the shadows of the Town Hall doors.

Stunned, Gil turned to see if Janus had witnessed this, but the Commander's back was to her, his attention held by the mob. The Guards were still working, carrying grain, sides of bacon, and sacks of potatoes and corn up the steps of the villa and through the guarded darkness of the doors. She doubted anyone besides herself had seen the arrest. They timed that, she thought suddenly. And they counted on his going quietly, rather than triggering a riot by resistance.

Rage swept her then, leaving no room for fear. She looked back at the steps, splotched by shadow and firelight. They were empty, as if nothing had happened. The wizard might simply have disappeared.

A dying civilization. A land locked in fear. A world going down in a welter of hopeless chaos before an enemy that could not be fought. And, Rudy thought, strolling down the mossy cobbled streets of Karst through the cool sunshine of that mellow afternoon, one hell of a lot of people standing nose-deep in the sewer, with the tide coming in.

If it weren't jammed to the ceilings with people, Karst would be a pretty town, he reflected. That is, if you had indoor plumbing and some kind of central heating and streets you weren't likely to break your ankle on. This lane was relatively uncrowded and quiet, winding away from the town square to lose itself in the woods; it was paved in lumpy, fist-size cobbles that were high and dry along the walls on both sides and heavily upholstered with bright green moss down the center, through which a thread of silver water reflected the sky. Rudy had slept-badly-in a stuffy and flea-infested closet on the third floor of the Town Hall, and had spent what was left of the morning and most of the afternoon poking around Karst, trying to scrounge food and water, scraping acquaintance with refugees and Guards and some of the Bishop's people, and checking out the town. He'd come to the conclusion that if Alwir didn't get his act together fast, they'd all be dead in short order.