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his childhood.
His right eye glinting with surly amusement, Nob said, "I caught a hoof on the
back of the sconce, master, and it must have made me look like a deader for
sure when I come to the Samostans was all gone and I had the square to
myself."
Nob screwed up his ugly visage and shrugged. "That were a odd feeling, master.
You was gone into the sewer and me all alone there with the dead."
Blade shook his head. "All of them? Every Thyrnian soldier died?"
"Aye. Unless, mind you, there was others playing dead like me. But old Nob
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didn't stay to see. I
found a few of me jewels and gold pieces, not all, for those thieving
Samostans had taken them, and I
crawled my way through the piles of corpses and out the gate into the salt
marshes. There was naught to do but make for the coast, and that I did. I fell
in with a party of riff-raff like meself, you might say, and together we made
the coast in three days. Once there "
They stopped to watch some men tossing an oblong bladder about. Blade gave the
man a sharp glance. "And then?"
"Well, sire, we had what amounted to a falling out." Nob did not meet Blade's
eye. "There was some difference of mind, sire, on how to divide up the
treasure and arms we had, er, acquired, and about how many could go in the
little boat."
"You had a boat?"
"In a way, sire. One of the other other rogues knew where one was hid. I think
he must have been a smuggler, sire." Nob sounded so virtuous that Blade had
trouble suppressing a grin. He studied Nob for a moment, then nodded. "You say
you had a quarrel?" Blade looked away lest he smile. "What came of it?"
Nob stroked his lantern jaw. "You might say, sire, that I came of it. I tried
to reason with them, sire, but they would have naught of it. In the end well,
master, I swear that I buried them decently and said proper prayers over them.
By Juna's blonde fleece I did! I seen them off all right and proper."
Blade believed him. And dismissed it with a nod. "And you came to Patmos in
the little boat? And how to prison?"
Nob muttered gloomily. "Aye, straight to prison. I had no chance at all, sire.
The coast was alive with troops and watchers. At first I thought to fight, for
you have seen what the soldiers are like, sire, and I
could have eaten a score for breakfast which reminds me, master, when are you
going to find us something to eat?"
Blade, if he had acquired a good right hand and a servant, had also acquired a
responsibility. As they
circled a fountain and headed back toward the buildings he said, "Why did you
not eat the meal in prison, Nob?"
The man's good right eye glittered and he smote a horny fist into his palm.
"For the same reason you did not, master. My brains are not much, but they are
mine and so far are not addled. I would keep them so. They put the drug penthe
in the food here, to keep men happy and from thinking, like the salt they use
in Thyrnian prisons to keep a man's cock limp. In the end it is the same a man
is not a man!"
They strode a few paces in silence. Blade said, "How did you chance to know of
the drug, Nob?
You have been in Patmos before?"
For a long time Nob did not answer. Blade began to think that he was not going
to answer when he finally cleared his throat and growled: "I have a feeling,
master, now that we are twice met, that we are cast to each other for worse or
better. So I must trust you, it seems."
Blade met his eye. "I will not betray your trust, Nob. But what you tell must
be of your own free will.
The future is what interests me, not your past."
"Aye. I know that. But I will tell you nonetheless I have been in Patmos
before now. I served in the army, which is how I come to know how poor it is,
and if I am recognized I will be branded a deserter."
Blade was not too much surprised at this intelligence. "What is the penalty
for desertion here?
Certainly not a violent punishment?"
"Nay. But a miserable one, sire. They force feed you the penthe and exile you
to an isle for the rest of your life."
Nob, after a moment, and with a scowl and in a tone of horror, added, "An isle
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without women, sire!"
Blade nodded in sympathy. In this he and Nob were on the same
level it was an inhuman punishment.
They passed a group of elderly men sitting on the benches. They did not lift
their eyes as Blade and
Nob strolled past. Nob grimaced with his blackened stumps. "You see, master?
Accept the drug and you become like that."
Blade inclined his head. Nob was right. Such apathy and inertia served to make
a man little better than a corpse. It was death in life.
Nob said, "No half measures with me, master. I have told you that I am a
deserter from the army of
Patmos so know also that I am likewise a deserter from the Samostan army." Nob
did not try to hide his fear, nor the shudder that ran through his big body.
"That is one reason why I lagged in the fighting, sire. I always had thought
to escape, and if not that I
had intent to kill myself. For I am known to many officers in the army of
Samos, and the penalty there for desertion is to be bound to a wheel and have
your bones slowly broken with iron bars."
Blade halted and, chin in hand, regarded his newly acquired man. He was
pleased with this latest information even a private soldier could tell him
things about the Samostan army that he did not know at present but he
nonetheless kept his expression grim.
"So, Nob, you are three times a deserter? You admit this from Patmos, from
Samos, and lastly from Thyrne. That is the truth of it?"
Nob gave him a hideous grim with his broken stubs, and scratched at his newly
cut hair, but there
was a glint of anxiety in his good right eye. "In the main, sire, if you say
it. But about Thyrne there might be a dispute of minds. I was pressed into
Thyrnian service. I never joined of my free will."
"And yet you are a Thyrnian? Born there?"
"Aye, sire. Born there." Nob thrust his jaw at Blade and his eye hardened. "I
showed you the gutter, if you remember. My birth bed."
They walked on toward the building where they were quartered. Blade kept
silent. He began to see a little method in all this madness, to discern a
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