Stealthily, she groped for the gun, snatched it, and just as Cabell turned—surely, he turned too slowly! —she struck him on the temple.

He fell without a sound, and Shahron searched him, awkwardly, one-handed, for a more familiar weapon. Ahhh, there was a clasp knife. She wished that she had the strength to bind him, but one-handed . . . She made do with a gag. Then, wadding up her food in her napkin, _vand tossing a blanket over her shoulders, she grabbed up Cabell’s keys and ran. Miraculously, no one stood guard outside, and no one loitered about. Except that, as she left, she thought that she saw a shadow, a shadow as of a man leaning against a wall, looking up at the sunset, then down at his wrist, and she remembered Corbett’s words.

Nothing happens in my camp of which I am not aware.

She was glad that she had not hit Cabell any harder.

Then real fear set her running, and she fled.

The pressure of the huge prairiecat’s jaws on her skull had not abated. But, thank the Silver Lady, it had not increased either, Shahron thought.

“I wandered for a couple of days,” she whispered. “I ate all my food, all the food that the general knew that I would need. I knew that I dared not seek out my uncle. I had betrayed his daughter. There could be no welcome for one who had done that. And besides, after seeing Ehrikah, I had another fear. How could they know that I was not myself an Ehrikah? I dared not expose anyone to that risk either. Thus, even when I saw families on the road, I dared not approach them. And now ...” Her voice thickened and broke. “I cannot forgive myself, and I cannot forget.”

She sank to the ground, aware for the first time that

Steeltooth’s jaws had relaxed, releasing her, and that she was still alive.

The big amber cat rubbed against her, purring and licking her face clean with ... as much care as Cabell. Poor Cabell, whom his general, no doubt, had ordered to stand still while she hit him. She hoped that the headache wasn’t too bad, or that he hadn’t gotten into any trouble. Somehow, she suspected that Jay Corbett could protect his soldier.

“You, an Ehrikah?” repeated the man, who, astonishingly, she had been told was God Milo himself. “That’s not what Steeltooth says.”

“So I passed?”

“You passed both tests,” said God Milo. “The first test was simple survival. You kept your wits, you kept your nerve, and you made your way to us. The second test. . . let’s just say that if you had lied to Steeltooth, you and I would not be talking. Somebody get the child a chair!” Milo ordered.

To her continued amazement, he held out a goblet to her an$ splashed an inch or so of rich brown fluid into it. “I gather that you have a taste for brandy. And you look as if you could use it.”

Numbly, she took the cup and sipped. This much, she told herself, at least I have accomplished this much. My honor is unstained. Yet Rohzah is dead and my uncle has disowned me. I have nowhere to go . . . and Ehrikah is still alive.

“You know,” said God Milo, “if you ask, I will order your uncle to reinstate you in the clan.”

“A loveless hearth is cold,” Shahron said.

“Where will you go, then?”

Abruptly, Corbett’s words came back to her. In that Broomtown of his, there might have been a place for her, a husband for her, of his choosing. Even if she did not have a dowry.

The brandy warmed her, all the way from her mouth to her belly. And the bargaining instinct that nothing could ever drive out of an Ahrmehnee’s mind suddenly woke. “I have no place to go,” she said, as if making a preliminary offer on a pot. “And no dowry.” “That can be taken care of.”

Shahron suppressed a smile and heard a stifled sound. When she dared to glance upward, she saw that God Milo had one hand over his mouth. “If I needed more proof, there it is!” he commented. “Ahrmehnee to the core! The girl offers me a bargain in my own tent.” Around him, the Horseclansmen laughed, but watched Shahron with some wariness.

She smoothed her hands down her hips as if she were at market, chaffering for vegetables or for the pot that she had thought of earlier. What sort of bargain could she drive?

“The question is,” God Milo said, “where do you go next?”

A shrewd stroke. But she had known from the moment that she saw him that he was no common trader. He had knowledge that could provide her with a future; she had knowledge that could ease his plans. It only remained upon what terms they would trade it.

She took a deep breath and started to bargain. “I could stay here,” she volunteered. “Perhaps there are other Ahrmehnee in God Milo’s camp, clans who would accept me? I can work, tend flocks, cook, spin, and—” Her strongest bargaining points flashed into her mind. “I have been a prisoner of Witchmen. I can tell you about them.”

“Child, I know about Witchmen.” Shahron sipped her brandy. Was she going to allow him to drive down her price with that statement?

“God Milo, I am certain that you know more about Witchmen than I will ever learn,” she said, countering his assurance with mock humility, emboldened by the humor in his eyes. “But do you know about these Witchmen, their names and their natures?”

“Well played!” God Milo approved. “Have some more brandy. Lord, I wish my wife Neeka were here. The Witchmen had her too, you know.”

Shahron hadn’t known, but that was interesting. She started to suggest that she would be glad to speak with this Lady Neeka, then clamped her lips shut. In every bargain came the time when you had to stop speaking and let your adversary persuade himself that he had made a good deal. That time had now come, she could tell.

“I wonder what the two of you could come up with. . . . Hmmmm, that’s a good idea. And then, once the campaign is over, I am certain that some of Bili’s Ahrmehnee clan-kin, like Tahm . . .”

God Milo trailed off into thoughtful mutters. Shahron knew that type of muttering from older, happier days. Men did it when you had given them an idea that they liked and that they had to turn around in order to claim it for their very own. Usually, once the muttering started, it meant that you got what you needed.

As she would too, she suspected. She sipped her brandy, aware that the world was receding at a rate too fast for good sense. She set the cup down and met God Milo’s eyes. Of course he was wiser and kinder than her uncle. After all, her uncle was only a nakharar, but Milo was a living god.

But she couldn’t shake off the notion that he reminded her of someone else who knew everything that was going on in his camp. And who had let her have what she needed to go on living.

But he had been muttering approval. Generally, once that happened, it was prudent to withdraw so that you could be sent for and given whatever you had inspired the man to think he had had in mind all along. She rose, bowed, and . . .

“What’s that, Shahron? No, don’t go yet. There will be dinner in a moment. And I want you to tell me about this General Corbett. One day, I think that he and I are going to have to sit down and do a little bargaining.”

Dirt Brother

by Roland J. Green and John F. Carr

ROLAND J. GREEN lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter. He is currently working on a series to follow his novel, Peace Company. This is the second story about Djoh, and they say that there’s more left to tell.

JOHN F. CARR lives in Southern California with his wife and two children. A war-games enthusiast, he is well known among students of medieval and Renaissance history. His most recent projects are coediting War World, a shared-world anthology, and writing Gunpowder God, a novel set in the world of H. Beam Piper, with Roland Green.