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

months they were down to sixty-five.”
    “Oh, there’s not much I wouldn’t put past that slick bastard.” Gobaris chuckled as they stepped through the great doors. Before them, the town square lay in a checkwork of moonlight and shadow, bordered with the embroidered gold of a hundred lamps from the taverns that rimmed it. Music drifted on the wind, with the smell of the sea.
    No,
    
     Sun Wolf thought, signaling to his men. And that’s why I didn’t come to this town alone.
    They left their places in the open tavern fronts and drifted toward him across the square. Gobaris scratched the big hard ball of his belly, and sniffed at the wild air. “Winter rains are holding off,” he judged. “They’re late this year.”
    “Odd,” the commander said. “The clouds have been piling up on the sea horizon, day after day.”
    Obliquely, it crossed Sun Wolf’s mind that the woman Sheera had spoken of having someone on board her ship who could command the weather. A wizard?
     he wondered. Impossible.
     Then his men were around him, grinning, and he raised his thumbs in a signal of success. There were ironic cheers, laughter, and bantering chaff, and Sheera slipped from the Wolf’s mind as Gobaris said, “Well, that’s over, and a better job of butchery on a more deserving group of men I’ve never seen. Come on, Commander,” he added, jabbing his morose colleague in the ribs with an elbow. “Is there anyplace in this town a man can get some wine to wash out the taste of them?”
    They ended up making a circuit of the square, Sun Wolf, Gobaris, and Commander Breg, with all of Sun Wolf’s bodyguard and as many of the Outland Levies as had remained in the town. Amid joking, laughter, and horseplay with the girls of the local sisterhood who had turned out in their tawdry finery, Sun Wolf managed to get a good deal of information about Kedwyr and its allies from Commander Breg and a general picture of the latest state of Peninsula politics.
    A cool, little hand slid over his shoulder, and a girl joined them on the bench where he sat, her eyes teasing with professional promise. Remarkable eyes, he thought; deep gold, like peach brandy, lighting up a face that was young and exquisitely beautiful. Her hair was the soft, fallow gold of a ripe apricot, escaping its artful pins and lying over slim, bare shoulders in a shining mane. He thought, momentarily, of Fawn, back at the camp—this girl couldn’t be much older than eighteen years.
    The tastes of wine and victory were mingled in his mouth. He said to the men he’d brought with him, “I’ll be back.” With their good-natured ribaldry shouting in his ears, he rose and followed the girl down an alley to her rose-scented room.
    It was later than he had anticipated when he returned to the square. A white sickle moon had cleared the overhanging housetops that closed in the alley; it glittered sharply on the messy water that trickled down the gutter in the center of the street. The noise from the square had entirely faded, music and laughter dying away into four-bit love and finally sleep. His men, Sun Wolf thought to himself with a wry grin, weren’t going to be pleased at having waited so long, and he steeled himself for the inevitable comments.
    The square was empty.
    One glance told him that all the taverns were shut, a circumstance that bunch of rowdy bastards would never have permitted if they’d still been around. Dropping back into the sheltering shadows of the alley, he scanned the empty pavement again—milky where the moon struck it, barred with the angular black frieze of the shadows cast by the roof of the Town Hall. Every window of that great building and of all the buildings round about was dark.
    Had the President had them arrested?
    Unlikely.
    
     The candle lighted room to which the girl had led him wasn’t that far from the square; if there’d been an arrest, there would have been a fight, and the noise would have come to him.
    Besides, if the Council