Maybe the rumors are true, but nobody said they set on visitors here.

And it didn't smell as bad as some towns did; just woodsmoke and barnyard, mostly. They probably had working sewers.

Four more towers around the gatehouse there… right, that's where the bridge leads in.

The town was built in a U formed by the river, which meant a natural moat on three sides; an old but well kept pre Change bridge ran to the edge of the gate. A carved and painted statue twice life-size was set into the wall on either side, a beautiful woman with long golden hair standing on a seashell on the left, a naked man holding a bow and crowned with the sun on the right.

As his horse set a hoof on the pavement he heard a thunder of drums from the gatehouse towers, and a screeching, skirling drone that sent Boy to tossing his head and snorting, and made the hair rise along the back of Ingolf's neck. His eyes were still flicking up to the source of that catamount wail when he halted before the gate guard.

"Never heard bagpipers before, eh?" one of them said with a chuckle. "It's not someone biting a cat's tail, honest. We're bidding farewell to the Sun, you see."

Ingolf smiled back and nodded. "Just startled me a bit."

It was always sound common sense to be friendly with armed strangers, and anyway, the one who'd spoken was a good-looking woman about his own age, with a freck led snub-nosed face and lively brown eyes. Which was a little odd, but while fighting women weren't numerous, they weren't so rare that he'd never met one before ei ther. He'd campaigned with a couple who were pretty good, in fact, and one of them had been notably better than that.

He took off the hat, slapping it against his knee to shed the water, and incidentally to let them see his face in the circle of light cast by the big lamps. Looking him over was their job, and he didn't have anything- well, not much -to hide.

They'd see a big man, a little over six feet and broad shouldered, with a pleasant enough face despite a scar on his forehead and a nose that had been broken and healed very slightly crooked; his close cropped beard and bowl-cut hair were light brown, his eyes dark blue, and his skin had the ruddy weathered look of someone who spent his time out-of-doors in all weather.

His gear was likewise plain and serviceable; a thigh length shirt of chain mail under his long leather duster, a yard of point-heavy curved shete hung from his belt, and a ten inch knife balancing it on the other side. A horseman's short horn-and-sinew bow was cased at his left knee; his kettle helmet hung by the right, and a quiver was slung over his back, covered right now with a round shield painted dark brown with an orange wedge; a tomahawk had its three-foot handle through a loop at the back of his belt.

There was no glitter of gold or gems on hilt and buckle; unlike some fighting men he didn't boast by wearing his portable wealth.

While he let them look he studied them in turn. Two of the six guards were women, in fact. They were dressed like the others, in pleated knee length skirts of wool tartan-checked in brown and dark green divided by slivers of dull orange, with boots and knee socks and an odd blanketlike stretch of the same material wrapped diago nally across their torsos and pinned over one shoulder with a brooch. Everyone here seemed to wear their hair shoulder-length or better, braided or loose, and the men sported mustaches; one example dangled down below the chin on either side.

Short swords and bucklers and long daggers rode at their waists. Four had yew longbows in their hands and quivers over their backs, and two held polearms: a seven-foot spear and an ugly thing like a great ax on a six-foot shaft whose blade tapered upward into a point, with a spike-hook on the rear. The man who held it was taller than Ingolf, and broader, and wore a beard the color of rust halfway down his chest. The spear and ax thing slanted crosswise to bar his way; behind them were the open leaves of massive metal-clad gates, and a raised portcullis. There were murder-holes in the arched ceil ing of the gate passage, and another set of gates on the inner side.

"Who are you, stranger? Where from, and what busi ness would you be doing in Sutterdown?" the young woman asked, with her thumb hooked in her sword belt.

Now that she was closer he could see she wore a ring of twisted gold around her neck, the open end over her throat ending in two knobs. She had the same accent he'd noticed in the village-the dun-where he'd stopped to buy bread and cheese and ask a few questions this morn ing, but stronger. Sort of a rolling lilt, and sometimes a strange choice or order of words; it sounded exotic and musical but not unpleasant, and easier to understand than some dialects that had grown up in out-of-the-way places.

"The name's Ingolf Vogeler," he said, conscious of how his flat hard Badger vowels would sound strange here. "Out of the east-"

"Not Pendleton, I hope," one of the others said.

"Christ, no, and I didn't like what I saw of the place when I passed through," he said honestly.

Several of them laughed, nodding, and Ingolf went on: "I'm from a lot farther east than that. East of the Rockies and the plains."

Best establish that I'm respectable, he thought, and went on: "My father is… was… Sheriff of Reads town in the Kickapoo country, in the Free Republic of Richland."

At their blank looks he called up the memory of old maps and books from his brief schooldays and added, "Southern Wisconsin, if that means anything to you."

"East of the Mississippi!" the woman who seemed to be in charge blurted, her eyes growing wide in surprise. "From the sunrise lands! Stranger, you have come a long way!"

They all looked impressed. Natural enough. People would get excited back to home if someone from here showed up. I'm a little impressed they all know where Wisconsin is. A lot of ordinary folks back home couldn't name Oregon to save their lives.

"Yup," he said. "I wander and do this and that-caravan guard, peace officer, some cowboying, or any honest work-I'm a passable carpenter and blacksmith, and I can handle horses."

He touched the side of his duster, where it covered an inner pocket. "I can pay an entry tax, if you have one."

"No need," the woman said. "All honest travelers and traders are welcome here, but we have a short way with thieves or outland bandits-scourge for the back or Lochaber ax for the neck, as needed-so take warning."

The hulking redhead with the gruesome bladed weapon grinned through his thatch of beard and hefted it, so that must be a Lochaber ax; he looked cheerful rather than menacing, though.

"Fair enough." Ingolf nodded. It was what he'd heard about these Mackenzies along the way. "I'm a peaceable man, when I'm let be."

Her voice took on a formal note as she continued: "Enter then and be welcome, guest within our walls, with the blessing of the Lady and the Lord, who hold dominion here in Sutterdown as the Foam-born Aphrodite and Apollo of the Unconquered Sun."

Wow, he thought. The names were vaguely familiar, but… They are strange here!

Aloud: "Anywhere I can get food and lodging for my self and my beasts? And I could use a hot bath, by God! I was in Bend four days ago."

The big man with the ax whistled; that was a hundred miles, a lot of it very cold this time of year and very steep in any season.

"You've good horses, then, Ingolf the Wanderer! And weather luck in plenty."

"Take my word for it and don't try going back east that way until spring, unless you've got skis."

Just then a voice shouted down from above, where the wild music had been. "Hey, will you be talking through till dawn, then? We can't go home until you close the gate!"

The woman turned and shouted back: "Would you leave a stranger out in the cold, and on the holy eve of-"