The smell! That awful deadman stench of decay! I gagged, whimpered, struggled, shoved the dagger in deeper. But it didn’t care! It didn’t care about the dagger or the wound or the fountain of black blood it was spilling across our faces. All it cared about was my throat, my blood, my flesh, and never had I known such complete, utter terror.

Then there were other hands, human hands, and they had the creature and were lifting him up and Orman held it off the floor by the hair on the top of its head while Gruffle chopped its head off with his short wide blade and it was all over and those of us still alive stood there huffing and puffing for the several seconds it took for the various sections to stop jerking and reaching.

I had thought there were thousands. There were only six.

And I had gotten three. Imagine that. Or two and a half.

While I was still trying to get it together, one of the Ormans released the proprietor and his staff from the locked cellar. Turned out the place was more than just a tavern and more than an inn. It was a Hall. And Markus, the owner, was famous for running the best Hall on the river. He was quite a guy. Small and lean, with a trim beard and elegant manner, he immediately dispatched his staff to clean up the carnage with no more apparent alarm than you’d expect over a dropped tray during the noontime rush.

A small covey of buxom lovelies appeared with warm water and soft cloths to clean off our gore. They also brought ice-cold mugs of ale to give us something to do while they worked on us.

The whole time Markus was watching me out of the corner of his eye. It was beginning to make me a little nervous. He apparently noticed this and came over to our table. I stood warily.

But his manner was completely friendly.

“You are the One,” he said with a smile.

It felt right to nod and say: “I am.”

Markus’s smile was broader. “Lord Smada is my good and dear friend.” He just stared at me for a moment, looking pleased and—I dunno—satisfied or something. Then he turned and snapped his fingers in the direction of a middle-aged woman supervising the clean-up. She hurried over bringing her own smile. “His rooms have been prepared for two days. This is Nasus. She is my wife.” We nodded at each other. “She will show you the way.”

It sounded pretty good. We had been marching cross-country since dawn, and sleep sounded better than sitting there and thinking about what had just happened. I turned to Orman, who looked pale and drained and sad, and I was thinking he was getting too old for this until I realized he had lost his son today. Tonight. Ten minutes ago.

“I am sorry about Grussle.”

He nodded, looking vacantly past me. “He was my One.”

Ouch. His son and his best fighter.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

He looked at me this time. His smile was thin. “It is the Price,” he said.

I didn’t have an answer to that. I just beheld his Style.

“Sleep,” he said to me after a few moments. “Sleep and in the morning we will talk.”

Smada must have been some good friend, all right. Or at least a big tipper. His rooms were on the third-story comer, the only rooms on that floor. They looked spacious and wide and elegant and perfectly suited to his orgy-rhythm life-style.

Markus’s wife, Nasus, made me nervous. Too respectful, too much bowing. The food and drink, lavish and tasty, made me nervous, too. It felt a lot like I was being fattened up for something.

I drank some ale and smoked a cigarette. Then I drank some more ale. It wasn’t much good, but it worked. But nothing would have worked as well as I wanted. I tried for a blank brain and held it awhile, pretending fascination with the way the cigarette smoke spun and whirled. Then I took great interest in noting how these rooms, this entire Markus Hall, was the cleanest place in this Place I had ever seen.

Then I gave up and admitted how well I had fought and how smug I was about it and even the rest of it: how full of shame I was and deserved to be.

The food looked great. Steaming fresh meat and a fresh salad-something. I took my nausea and ale out onto the balcony.

It was a great broad terrace with a wide carved stone railing just even with the treetops. It was an incredibly beautiful night. The moon was full and glowing, the stars shining. The river was there sending gently rippling reflections towards me and with it a lush warm breeze that smelled of affection and reward.

“It is very pure,” beamed the cat.

I started, looked around. My Guide and Shelter was sprawled with lazy magnificence on a flat cornice where the railing met the wall.

“How’d you get in?” I blurted rudely.

“ ‘Get in’? I leapt,” he beamed back.

I walked to the railing and looked over. Thirty-five feet if it was an inch and sheer except for a small shack perhaps six feet high. That still left it about a thirty-foot jump straight up.

I grunted. I doubt if I could fall that far.

I turned back to him. “I thought you didn’t like being around so many people.” At least that had been his reason for not entering the village with us.

“I do not like herds of two-legs, that is true,” he replied with a truly gargantuan yawn. “But many nights have your Lord Smada and myself spent thus, he with his ale and I with my moon.”

“He’s not so much my Lord Smada.”

I could have sworn he looked confused. “Are you not his One?”

I thought about it, sighed. “So I hear.”

It was quiet for a while.

“It is very pure,” he beamed again.

I nodded. “Lovely night.”

He turned his great head and eyed me to the core the way only cats can. “No. I mean not the night. I mean the Struggle.” He stood, stretched, replaced himself. “The Swordsmen and the Dead. It is very pure. It is very clean.”

I knew exactly what he meant but decided to be an ass instead.

“It was pretty messy tonight,” I growled and drained the last of the ale.

He didn’t respond and I didn’t look at him but I could feel him staring at me for what seemed like forever until at last I had had it. I rose, said: “I’m to bed,” over my shoulder and headed back inside. “Felix,” he beamed gently to me.

I stopped, turned reluctantly to face him.

“Felix, you hide your fear well.”

There were a lot of things I could have said. But. . . “Thank you,” I said at last and went on in and flopped down fully dressed and slept.

6

I dreamed of my starving-artist phase.

When I was twenty-three I took my years of doodling fighter planes in the back of the classroom to the edges of the ghetto to become a painter. I lived in an old warehouse with several other artists surrounded by lots of worn-out, usually abandoned buildings, a couple of rubbled lots, a few bars, a Vietnamese grocer, and some crime.

I was so determined, so hardworking, so pitifully eager that I got some work. Some covers on local magazines. Some caricatures. Some illustration work. That sort of thing. By busting my ass working all day long every day I made just enough money to pay my rent and buy enough food to bust my ass working all day long every day.

I was happy to do almost no thinking at all.

Amber and his wife, Simone (at least black parents try names more original than Bob and John and Pamela), lived in the loft above mine and were the center of bur lives. She was always sweet and their place always clean and his work was so damned good it made your heart ache. Everyone loved them and everyone was there the night he unveiled his sketch for a two-story wall mural for the outside of our building. Amber was a tall and handsome young man the color of his name who rarely let his feelings show and when his voice choked up as he described his plan it jolted and inspired and made all of us get misty.