He handed the piece to Hansen. It was dense and unquestionably real.
Hansen grinned back. And then again, it might be exactly what Walker had meant; but if it was, it didn’t help Hansen a lot.
“Thanks,” he said as he got up. “I figured I ought to know something about the hardware, since my life depends on it now.”
And that was no more than the truth.
Hansen thought he might find Shill and Maharg in the hall, so he wasn’t surprised to see them at the building’s entrance.
He hadn’t expected to see Malcolm stamping toward the pair from one of the huts, tying the sash of his vivid tunic and glowering like a stormcloud. A female slave skipped along the boardwalk behind Malcolm, eyes bright with anticipation.
“I thought I’d take you two out for a little practice,” Hansen said to Shill and Maharg while Malcolm was still three strides away. The words were an instinctive game to prove that he was both innocent and ignorant of whatever was going on.
“What in the hell is going on?” Malcolm snarled.
“Nothin’,” Maharg mumbled. He was rubbing his face. His nose had bled a rusty wedge into his moustache and beard.
“There’s a new lot in from the East,” Shill said. ” ‘Bout a dozen of ’em all together.”
“Seven, yeah,” said Malcolm. Hansen noted the way the veteran’s anger vanished as though he’d closed a door over it.
Malcolm glanced toward the hall. Sounds of laughter and a snatch of song came though the half-open doors. “Go on.”
“Bastards think they’re tough,” Maharg said. His voice caught.
Because Maharg was so big, it was hard to remember that he was only about sixteen standard years. That didn’t make him less dangerous—more dangerous, maybe—but it meant that his emotions were still on the roller-coaster of youth.
Right now, Hansen thought he might be about to cry.
“They are tough,” Malcolm said coldly. “Go on.”
“They threw bones at him!” Shill said. “He was braggin’ about what he’d do in the next fight, and they started throwin’ bones at him. And me!”
“You bloody damned fools,” Hansen said, before Malcolm could speak. The words were so close to those the veteran would have spoken that Malcolm blinked to hear them from another mouth.
Hansen pointed at Shill. “You sent for him, didn’t you? Grabbed a slave—” the woman who’d followed Malcolm from his ladyfriend’s lodging hovered nearby “—and sent her to roust your boss?”
“Well, I thought—”
“If you’d bloody thought,” Hansen snarled, his arms at his sides and his face leaning close to that of the old warrior, “then you’d’ve known the best way to get out of this without a loss of status was to pretend it didn’t happen. What d’ye expect? That Malcolm’s going in there—”
He pointed at the door with his index and middle fingers together. “—and mop up your dozen tough bastards himself?”
“Wuzzn’t that many,” Maharg muttered, lifting his nose high, then lowering it again despite the fact that it continued to bleed. “Fuck this. I oughta go to Frekka. They’re hiring there.”
Malcolm’s face hardened. “No true warrior would take service under merchants,” he said.
“They got good armor fer their people,” Shill said. “They know how a warrior oughta be treated.”
“Merchants’ armor!” Malcolm snapped. “All turned out the same.”
“Sure, that’s easy for you ta say,” sniffled Shill. “You got a first-class outfit, you do. But how about somebody like me what never had no luck?”
“You’ve just had your luck,” Hansen said. “You met me. Now, go on in there, one at a time so nobody thinks we’re starting anything—which we’re not—and get your armor. I’m going to teach you how to use it.”
The two hirelings, the old man and the near boy, gave Hansen identical looks of sheeplike defiance. Then Shill spit into the mud, rubbed his lips, and said, “I s’pose practice wouldn’t hurt none, with a battle coming up.”
He peered through the doorway, then ducked inside.
“You coming with us?” Hansen asked Malcolm.
The veteran shook his head curtly. “No,” he said. “No.”
But ten steps down the walkway toward his girlfriend’s dwelling, Malcolm turned and called, “Maybe later. Maybe.”