"I want you to kill a man for me."
"Well—" Rikard sat thinking a moment, "Who is he?"
"I'll come to that. It's nobody you know or care about. If you fullfil that mission, there will be others, and your rise can be swift."
"You turn me loose with a sword," said the barbarian slowly, "and expect me to do just what you want?"
"Naturally," said Rayth, "I will keep your charming lady as a hostage." He smiled on Leda and a slow hot flush crept up her cheeks and stained her breast. "I shall see that she is not bored."
With a shave and a haircut, a decent tunic and a sword at his waist and a feather-cap tilted rakishly over one ear, Rikard could pass for anyone but the hunted rebel of Nyrac—a young guardsman off duty, perhaps, recruited from some recently conquered province and swaggering into the civilization which had swallowed his people. He drew no special attention as he pushed through the crowded hubbub of the city, except from an occasional bold-eyed maiden.
Toward the north side of the dome, roughly at ground level, was the area of those who were more than simple freemen without being quite nobles—merchants, shopkeepers, independent artisans of all kinds. Moving through that district, Rikard was struck by the bearing of the folk, neither servile nor haughty, neither uncouth nor overly mannered, a more civilized version of the barbarians' egalitarianism. It occurred to him that this class was an element which had entered into no one's calculations.
But he had a mission, and the farther he went the more desperate it began to seem.
There's little choice, he thought grayly. If I'd refused, he'd have had me slain then and there. But that I, who was chief over the freemen of Nyrac, should sink to be Rayth's assassin—!