The Misenchanted Sword: A Legend of Ethshar by Lawrence Watt-evans

Author:Lawrence Watt-evans
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, General, Fiction, Imaginary Places, Epic
ISBN: 9781587152825
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2000-11-30T17:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Eighteen

For three days after the self-proclaimed overlord's speech the busiest man in the Fortress was the paymaster. Hundreds of soldiers took Gor at his word and mustered out as fast as they could get through the red tape, each one collecting his back pay—less a fee for early discharge, of course, a fee carefully calculated to keep the treasury solvent without letting anyone feel seriously cheated. It came to a single silver piece, which Valder had to admit was reasonable enough, and the cash settlements were reportedly being made promptly and honestly.

When Valder attempted to collect his pay and go, however, he was refused. Enlisted men were free to go, but as yet officers and special services people were being asked to wait.

Valder thought about just packing up and leaving anyway. He doubted that anyone, in this chaotic new peace, would care about a deserter. However, he had a goodly sum owed to him; whatever its other drawbacks, assassination paid well. He knew he would need money to set himself up in the wine business, and so he waited.

In doing so he was operating on the assumption that he actually intended to become a wine merchant, but now that the prospect was an immediate reality, rather than a vague plan for the distant future, he was having second thoughts. What did he know about being a merchant?

Whatever he might do, however, he would almost certainly want money, and he saw no harm in waiting a few more days to collect it. Tandellin, too, was staying, for the moment; he had not yet decided what to do with himself, and as he explained it, “Why give up free room and board?” Sarai, too, was staying, and somehow with the arrival of peace it became implicitly accepted that Tandellin and Sarai would be married when they got around to it.

Valder remained uneasy about staying in the Fortress, however. He tried to reassure himself as he watched the men and women trickling away down the hillside, leaving the inner corridors ever less crowded. He caught glimpses of their faces—some as they turned back for a last look at the Fortress, others as they turned to face new directions. Some were smiling, full of life and hope, ready to conquer a piece of the World for themselves. Others seemed worried and uncertain as they left behind the only life they had ever known.

For three days new-made civilians walked away down the hillside, and for three days, at irregular intervals, soldiers would march up into the Fortress, alone or in patrols or squads or entire regiments, to be made into civilians and join the outward stream. A few were determined to remain soldiers, of course, and the barracks population fluctuated, rather than decreasing steadily.

As yet Gor had done nothing about his announced intention of building a city around the Fortress and its adjoining shipyards, but a ramshackle city was growing up anyway, a city of tents and crude huts. People were arriving

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