01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

Strong hands slipped over her shoulders from behind. A colorless voice purred, "Gilshalos?" She glanced at the hands, close by her cheek; long and thin, the fingers calloused and knotted from the discipline of the sword. Past the black shape of a tunic and the tasseled ends of white braids, she saw a thin face and cool, disinterested eyes. In a flanking maneuver, two other forms appeared and made themselves at home on either side of her.

The swordmaster Gnift took her hand and pressed it to his breast in a good imitation of passion. "O Pearl of my Heart," he greeted her, and she laughed and pulled her hand away. She had never spoken to the instructor, and indeed had been rather awed, watching him coach the Guards. But his teasing took away her shyness and eased the bitterness in her heart. On her other side, Seya was silent, but the woman's thin, lined face smiled. She was evidently long familiar with Gnift's mock flirtations.

"What do you want?" Gil asked, still grinning, shy with them and yet feeling strangely at home. In the brief time she had known them, Seya and the Icefalcon-and now, evidently, Gnift as well-had accepted her for what she was. She had rarely felt so comfortable, even among the other scholars at the university.

Distant firelight reddened the smooth dome of Gnift's head-his baldness was like a tonsure, the hair around the sides growing thickly down almost to his collar. Under the overhanging jut of his brows, his brown eyes were bright, quick, very alive. He said quietly in answer, "You."

And with a flourish he produced the bundle he'd been half-hiding at his side. Unwrapping it, Gil found a faded black tunic, homespun shirt and breeches, a surcoat, and a belt with a dagger. All were marked with the white quatrefoil sign of the Guards.

CHAPTER NINE

Though members of the various military companies mounted guard in the town throughout the night, no sound battered the outer walls but the steady drumming of rain. After a rationed supper of porridge and cheese, Gil took her position with the Guards of the first watch in the Town Hall. The refugees huddled in the shelter of that great, half-empty cavern bowed to her in respect, as they did to all the Guards.

Rudy saw the change in her when he himself strolled into the smoky dimness of the hall later; it puzzled him, for his experience with women, though extensive, had been within a very narrow range. "Talk about hiding out on the front lines," he remarked.

Gil grinned. She was finding that Rudy's opinion of her mattered much less than it had earlier. "We're all on the front lines," she replied equably. "If I'm out there, at least it will be with a weapon in my hands."

"Have you seen the way they train?" He shuddered delicately.

"The insurance is cheap at the price."

But they both knew that this was not the reason she had accepted Gnift's offer of inclusion in that elite corps, though neither Gil nor Rudy was quite clear about the true reason.

In the early part of the evening the great hall was wakeful, though without the boisterous quarrelsomeness that had characterized the previous days. The massacre at Karst had broken the spirits of those who had survived it, had brought home to them, as well as to their rulers, that there was no escape and nowhere to hide.

Still, Rudy was surprised to see how many had survived. Some of them he even recognized: that was the fat man with the garden rake of last night, and the pair of tough old broads he'd talked to in the woods yesterday; over in the corner he could see the little gang of tow-headed kids, keeping watch over the sleeping woman they seemed to have taken for their guardian. Stragglers who had hidden in the woods all day came into the hall by ones and twos, as well as people lost from their families who had taken refuge in other buildings in the town. From Gil's post by the doors, Gil and Rudy saw them enter the hall, all ages, from young teen-agers to creeping oldsters; they would enter and move slowly through the little groups engaged in bundling up their miserable belongings, searching the faces of the people. Sometimes, rarely, the searcher would find the one he sought, and there would be tears and anxious words, some questions and usually more tears. More often the seeker would leave again. One stout man in his forties, in the muddy remains of a respectable black broadcloth tunic and hose, hunted through the hall for the better part of two hours, then sat on one of the piles of smashed and discarded utensils and rags by the door and cried as if his heart would break.

Rudy was thoroughly cold and depressed by the time the gray-haired Guard, Seya, came over to them from the shadows of the great stairway, her face drawn and grim. "Do either of you know where Ingold might be found?" she asked them quietly. "There's a man sick upstairs-we need his advice."

"He should still be at the gatehouse," Gil surmised.