War in Tethyr by Victor Milan, Walter (CON) Velez Page B

leather jack over a much-spotted sleeve. "Now these merchants, you take them; they're just bloodsuckers. No better than vampires, I'm bound, even if their color's better."
    He laughed uproariously, and moistly, at his own jape. After a while he noticed that his audience wasn't laughing with him. He quieted and leaned forward again.
    "Merchants make nothing. They delve not, neither do they spin. But they rake off fat profits, yes they do! And for what? For nothing."
    "For taking the effort and the risks in conveying goods to those who wouldn't otherwise see them," Zaranda said.
    A hand wave. "Nothing, as I said. Now you take the warrior, though-there's a life that's honest and clean."
    "You kill monsters and you take their gold."
    "That's right! Yours is the right of the sword. You take what you will! By the sword!" He slammed his fist down upon the table. "That's the way for a man to live! And, uh, a woman like yourself, too, Zaranda. Not as some money-grabbing merchant."
    Anger flared behind Zaranda's eyes. She felt her cheeks grow taut and hot. No, she told herself, you've always held that any being had the right to speak freely. You'd cut a poor figure if that went by the wayside whenever someone spoke against your liking.
    She forced her hand away from the hilt of Crackletongue and smiled a grim smile.
    Valides had become distracted by discovery that his jack was running dry, and he turned around to bellow for a serving wench. Zaranda scanned the tavern.
    The Smiling Centaur was little different from any tavern one would encounter from the Sword Coast to the Vilhon Reach: a broad common room with low smoked rafters and tables and chairs of inexpensive but solid make to resist use by customers of greater than human size or strength, and misuse during bar fights. The place was lit fitfully by candles placed on wagon wheels hung by chains from the ceiling, and by oil lamps in stout, cagelike wrought-iron sconces on the whitewashed walls. An ox-roasting hearth gaped like a monster maw in one wall, but it was cold and dark; the evening was cool to the edge of crispness, but the day's residual heat and the warmth of bodies left no room for a fire.
    It was crowded, but to her experienced eye, less than she might have expected on such a fine spring evening after a southern day more than amply hot to put an edge on one's thirst. The noise level was lower, too, as if the revelry were somehow subdued. Even the cleanshaven face of proprietor Berdak, the centaur who gave the place its name, seemed to be smiling less broadly than usual as he washed brass flagons behind the bar.
    Now and then Zaranda caught a muttered reference to darklings, accompanied by nervous looks around, as if the night-stalking horrors might be lurking beneath tables nearby. As far as gossip informed her, the things posed small threat to those who went abroad in armed parties, which was not unusual for most of the Centaur's patrons. She thought there must be more to the almost furtive mood, the hollow, sunken eyes around her.
    Or perhaps it was all Zaranda's imagination, energized by her own nightmare-induced lack of sleep and the day's events. But she had not survived such a hazardous life by taking aught for granted. She made a quick, careful survey of the immediate surroundings, reassuring herself that no one was taking undue interest in her or her four companions.
    A serving maid appeared at the table, a young gnome with rather prominent pointed ears and a harried but pretty face that tapered from wide cheekbones to an almost elfin pointed chin. Valides snarled his demand for more wine like a curse, and when the gnome woman's hip accidentally brushed the table as she turned, he raised a fist to strike her.
    Zaranda's hand caught him by the wrist, so quickly that it simply seemed to be there. He tried to pull away and turned a red-eyed glare to her when he could not. The serving girl scampered off.
    Zaranda Star was one of those rare women who gave away