She looked at me.

I pulled the tarpaulin up about her, as it had been before, to protect her from the storm.

In placing the coin in her mouth, I had not only, having discovered he was interested in such things, and the price was not too much, compensated her master for her use but had precluded further importunities on her part. I kissed a little at her face. I had thought the streaks there might have been rain, but they had a salty taste.

I moved from beneath the wagon and picked up my pack.

She looked up at me. She understood, the coin in her mouth, that she was now to be silent.

I looked up to the height of the stony plateau, and the palisade. In a flash of lightning, illuminated clearly for a moment, I could see, over the palisade, hanging from its chains, the crosspiece on the high pole, swinging in the storm, the huge sign with its emblematic representation of a bird, that with the vulturelike neck and the distorted, grasping right leg and talons, the sigh of the Crooked Tarn.

I looked back to the girl.

She was still looking at me.

I pointed to the gravel before her, under the wagon.

Immediately, kneeling, she lowered her head to the gravel, in obeisance. I then turned away, and began to ascend the bridge, leading up to the gate. I put the girl from my mind. She was, after all, a slave, and her use had been paid for.

"You are not a female," said the voice from behind the door, a small, narrow door cut in the left panel of the gate, the eyes peering out from a small sliding hatch in the door. "Show that you have money!"

I lifted up a copper tarsk. The fellow inside lifted up a small tharlarion-oil lamp to the opening. I held the coin where he could see it but I did not put it through the aperture.

"Not enough!" he said.

I then held up a silver tarsk. The door opened.

I entered.

He locked the door behind me.

I then followed him through a high, shedlike tunnel, walled with wood, about forty feet long, to the interior gate. There he turned about. "Something for the porter," I said.

"You are paid by the keeper of the house," I said.

"Times are hard," he said. "And it is late. I have opened the door late." "That is true," I said. I put a tarsk bit into his hand.

"Times are hard," he said.

I put down my pack. I took out a knife and pushed it a bit into his gut, pushing him back against the inner gate. He turned white. I lifted up his purse, on its strings, and, with the point of the knife, opened it. There were several coins within it. I could see in light of the small lamp he carried. "Times are not as hard as you thought," I said. "How much would you like?"

"A tarsk bit is quite sufficient," he said.

"You have it," I said.

"Yes, Sir," he said. "Thank you, Sir." He put the tarsk bit from his hand into his purse, as I held it, and then took the purse gingerly from me, and, sensing he was permitted, dropped it, on its strings, so that again it hung from his belt, on his left. If one is right-handed, one normally lifts the purse with the left hand and reaches into it with the right. The weight of the purse, on its drawstrings, closed it.

"It is a violent night out," I said.

"It is, Sir," said he. "What have you heard from the north?"

"I have come from the south," I said.

"Few go north now," he said.

"Most here, I gather," I said, "are from the north."

"Yes," said he, "and we are crowded beyond belief."

"With folks from Ar's Station?" I asked.

"Not many now," he said. "Some managed to flee."

"Most are trapped in the city?" I said.

"Apparently," he said.

"What is your latest intelligence?" I asked.

"Little that is new," he said.

"And what is old?" I asked.

"From whence have you come?" he asked.

"From the south," I said. That I had come from Ar herself was no business to this fellow.

"Only what I hear," he said, "a€”that the Cosians have invested Ar's Station, on three sides by land, and have closed the harbor, that with a wall of chained rafts."

"Have the walls been breached?" I asked.

"Several times," said he, "but each time the defenders have managed to hold the breach, and repair the wall."

I nodded. Some terribly bitter fighting takes place at such times. So, too, it can, in the streets themselves. "Cosians, as far as you know," I said, "hold no part of the city itself."

"Not as far as I know," he said.

"What are the numbers involved, and your speculations as to the outcome?" "It is you who wear the scarlet," he said. "I am only a poor porter." "Surely you have heard things," I said. I sheathed my knife. I sensed it might be making the fellow nervous.

"I have heard there are thousands of Cosians, their auxiliaries, and their mercenaries, at Ar's Station," he said. "Of that is true, they must outnumber the regulars in Ar's Station by as many as ten to one."

"Equipment, supplies?" I asked.

"They brought with them the devices for siege work from Brundisium," he said. "I suppose that, too, must be the source of their supplies."

That seemed to me to make sense. If it were true, however, why had Ar's tarnsmen not attempted to interdict these supply routes? If they had, I had heard nothing of it.

"The fighting at Ar's Station, by report, has been lengthy and fierce," said the man. "Her walls are defended by common citizens as well as soldiers. The Cosians, I think, did not expect such resistance.

I supposed not.

"You are of the red caste," said the fellow. "Why is Cos interested in Ar's Station?"

"I am not fully sure," I said, "but there could be various reasons, and some of them would seem obvious. As you know much of the friction between Cos and Ar has to do with their economic competitions in the Vosk Basin. Taking Ar's Station would, in a stroke, diminish the major citadel of Ar's Salerian Confederation and the Vosk League.

To be sure, in virtue of their mutual distrust of Cos and the Salerian Confederation normally maintained close relations, and the Vosk League, a confederation of towns along the Vosk, originally formed, like the Salerian Confederation on the Olni, to control river piracy, was, at least in theory, independent of both Ar and Cos. I say, "in theory' because one of the charter cities in the Vosk League is Port Cos, which, although it is a sovereign polis, was originally founded by, and settled by, Cosians. If Ar were out of the way in the area of the Vosk, of course, I did not doubt but what friction would develop quickly enough between Cos and the Salerian Confederation, and perhaps between Cos and the Vosk League, and for much the same reasons as formerly between Cos and Ar.

Some well-known towns in the Vosk League are Victoria, Tafa and Fina. The farthest west town in the league is Turmus, at the delta. The farthest east is White Water. Some of the towns of the league are actually east of Ar's Station, such as Forest Port, Iskander, Tancred's Landing, and, of course, White Water. Ar's Station, although it was apparently active in the altercations with pirates on the Vosk, never joined the league. This is probably because of the influence of Ar herself, which might regard her extensive territorial claims in the area as being implicitly undermined or compromised by membership in any such alliance.

The headquarters of the Vosk League is located in the city of Victoria. I suppose there are special historical reasons for this, for Victoria is not centrally located on the river, say, between the delta to the west and the entry of the Olni into the Vosk on the east, which point, incidentally, is controlled by the city of Lara, a member of the Salerian's Confederation. Victoria lies rather toward the west, in the reaches traditionally more subject to Cosian influence. Geographical position, accordingly, at least with respect to approximating the midpoint between the delta and the Olni, was apparently not the paramount consideration in locating the headquarters of the Vosk League. Had it been one might have expected to find its headquarters in, say, Jasmine or Siba, towns much more centrally located.