Sun Wolf 1 - The Ladies Of Mandrigyn Read Online Free PDF Page A

now the silver content wasn’t going to be high. But he let the silence run on, knowing the effect of it on men already a little nervous about that corps of storm troops camped by the walls of Melplith.
    It was General Gradduck, the head of all the Kedwyr forces who had taken most of the credit for breaking the siege, who finally spoke. “But if you are willing to accept local currency . . . ” he began, and left the bait dangling.
    They expected the Wolf to start grudgingly stipulating silver content on coinage—impossible to guarantee unless he wanted to have every coin assayed individually. Instead he said, “You mean you’d like to renegotiate the contract?”
    “Well—” the President said, irritated.
    “Contractually, you’re obligated for gold,” Sun Wolf said. “But if you are willing to renegotiate, I certainly am. I believe, in matters regarding international trade, the custom in the Peninsula is to impanel a jury of impartial representatives of the other states hereabouts, to determine equivalent local currency values for thirty-five hundred in gold.”
    The President did not quite turn pale at the thought of representatives from the other Peninsular states setting the amount of money he’d have to pay this mercenary and his men. The other states, already alarmed by Kedwyr’s attack on its rival Melplith, would love to be given the opportunity to disrupt Kedwyr’s economy in that fashion—not to mention doing Sun Wolf a favor that could be tendered as part of the payment the next time they needed a mercenary troop.
    He was clearly sorry he had mentioned it.
    A pinch-faced little councilman down at the end of the table quavered, “Of all the nerve!”
    The President forced one last smile. “Of course, Captain, such negotiations could be badly drawn out.”
    Sun Wolf nodded equably. “I realize the drain that’s already been put on you by our presence here. I’m sure my men could be put up in some other city in the vicinity, such as Ciselfarge.”
    It had been a toss-up whether Kedwyr would invade Melplith or Ciselfarge in this latest power struggle for the amber and silk trades, and Sun Wolf knew it. If the President hadn’t just returned from swearing lasting peace and brotherhood with Ciselfarge’s prince, the remark could have been construed as an open threat.
    Grimly, the President said, “I am sure that such a delay will not be necessary.”
    The bar of sunlight slid along the table, glared for a time in Sun Wolf’s eyes, then shifted its gleam to the wall above his head. Servants came in to light the lamps before the negotiations were done. Once or twice, Sun Wolf went down to the square outside the Town Hall to speak to the men he’d brought into the town with him, ostensibly to make sure they weren’t drinking themselves insensible in the taverns around the square, but in fact to let them know he was still alive. The men, like most of the Wolf’s men, didn’t drink nearly as much as they seemed to—this trip counted as campaign, not recreation.
    The third time the Wolf came down the wide staircase, it was with the fat Captain Gobaris of the Outland Levies and the thin, bitter, handsome Commander Breg of the Kedwyr City Guards. The Outland Captain was chuckling juicily over the discomfiture of the Council at Sun Wolf s hands. “I thought we’d lose our President to the apoplexy, for sure, when you specified the currency had to be delivered tomorrow.”
    “If I’d given him the week he’d asked for, he’d have had time to get another run of it from the City Mint,” the Wolf said reasonably. “There’d be half the silver content of the current coins, and he’d pay me off in that.”
    The Guards Commander glanced sideways at him with black, gloomy eyes. “I suspect it’s what he did last year, when the city contracts were signed,” he said. “We contracted for five years at sixty stallins a year, and that was when stallins were forty to a gold piece. Within two