Hammerfall by C. J. Cherryh

regular as you like it. Watch the madmen. Most will fall down.”
    She neither laughed nor grew angry. “If I had your ears, if I had your eyes, I could know what I wish to know. If I had your strength, I might walk to the east and know what I wish to know. So I purchase them. I purchase you. Is the price enough?”
    â€œI can’t bargain with you.”
    â€œAh, but you can. Ask me.”
    â€œI have nothing to ask.”
    â€œIf you betray me, I promise you Kais Tain will smoke for days. I promise your mother and your sister will die very unhappily. Does that excite your interest? I thought so. I give you this one year of their safety for free, and all the resources you may need, a regiment of my guard if you wish it. Gold? Gold is sand under my feet. But knowledge? That, you can bring me. Then you and I will talk again. Name what you need to accomplish what I ask.”
    He saw she was utterly in earnest. “Keep your regiment,” he said. “Give me my freedom. The safety of my house and its villages for this year. And my father’s life, even if he’s offended your officers.”
    â€œWhat do you care for him?”
    â€œHe’s my father. He’s signed your armistice.”
    â€œDone. What else?”
    What else was there? It was the last chance to amend their bargain. “Give me the madmen,” he said. He saw little use for them in the holy city, where they would die, hanged or stoned, the common fate of the mad once discovered. They had walked together, he and the wife of Tarsa, and the potter, and he could not walk away alive and forget their fate. “If you mean all you say, you have no need for them, and I might learn from them.”
    A red-gloved hand waved away inconsequences. “Take them. Do as you please with them. A caravan and its hire. Riding beasts. All these things.”
    â€œWeapons.” His were gone. “Tents enough for all of us.”
    She laughed like a child, as if, together, she on the steps, he on the ground, they were two children planning a delicious prank. “An au’it to write things down.”
    â€œI can write,” he said in offended pride.
    â€œI write,” she said with a wave of her hand, “but I find it tedious. An au’it, I say.”
    â€œWhat if the au’it runs mad? Shall I be blamed?”
    â€œYou will not be blamed.” The red-gloved hands clasped silken knees. The eyes deep as wells stared at him. “The east is full of strange things. So is the Lakht. Take the regiment.”
    â€œI never needed one. I rode all about these hills and your regiments couldn’t find us. The sand and the stones are no threat to me.”
    â€œThe vermin are. Bandits are.”
    â€œOnly when you feed them on corpses and fat caravans! The holy city is their source of food. Pour out water, and vermin and bandits alike fight among themselves.” He shrugged. “A regiment will take more time than an ordinary caravan. I know the Lakht. I don’t need them. Give me a good caravan master. Good sound canvas.”
    â€œAnd the mad.”
    â€œAnd the mad.”
    â€œBetter than a regiment?”
    â€œWe’ve learned the desert, have we not? We walked here.”
    A long, long moment that dark gaze continued, intimate and close.
    â€œI shall be very disappointed if you fail. Is there anything you might ask of me, any favor for yourself alone.”
    â€œOnly what I’ve asked,” he said.
    Perhaps it disquieted her to find a man who wanted so little. But there was nothing at all he wanted. There was absolutely nothing she could give, except his freedom, and the lives of his mother and sister and his father.
    â€œI dreamed of the east,” she said in a low voice. “As the mad do. I will have an answer, Marak Tain. I will have an answer.”
    â€œIf I’m alive to come back, I will come back. Let my mother and my sister go where they choose and