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put on for the show of attention, or whether, as with some others she had
known, he had put on the act so often that he had become the character he
liked to play.
His audience was mostly young, of course, and they peppered him with
questions. Mavra eased over to
one of them and whispered, "Who he, anyway?"
is
The youngster looked shocked. "Why, that's Asam the Colonel himself!" came
the awed reply.
She didn't remember anything about rank in Dillia. "I'm sorry, I'm new here,"
she told the awe-struck youth. "Can you tell me about him? Why is he called
the Colonel?"
"Why, he's been completely around the world!" her informant breathed. "He's
served more'n fifty hexes at one time or another. Doin' all sorts of
stuff smugglin', explorin', courier you name it!"
A soldier of fortune, she thought, surprised. A Dillian soldier of fortune, an
adventurer, an anything-for-a-price risk-taker she knew the type. To have
gotten this old he had to be damned good even if half the stories told about
him probably weren't true. If in fact he had been around the Well
World, he was one of the very few who ever had. That alone said some-thing
about him and was the kind of accomplishment to make a legend right there,
thus probably true.
"And the Colonel part?" she pressed.
"Aw, he's been every kind'a rank and stuff you can think of in a lotta armies.
When he got the plague serum from Czill to Morguhn against all the Dhabi
at-tempts to stop him, why, they made him an honorary Colonel there. Dunno
why, but he stuck with that. It's what most everybody calls him."
She nodded and turned again to the powerful and legendary center of attention,
who was off on a tan-gent, telling some tale of fighting frost-giants in a
far-off hex long ago.
"If he's that kind of man, what's he doing here? Just hunting?" she asked the
youth after a while.
An older man edged over, hearing her question. "Pardon, miss, but it's his
obsession. Imagine being all over the world here and doing all he's done and
have Gedemondas right next door he was born here, Up-lake. It's a puzzle for
him. Off and on he's sworn to capture a Gedemondan and find out what makes
'em tick before he dies."
Her eyebrows arched and a slight smile played across her face. "Oh, he has,
has he?" she muttered under her breath. She stood there for a while, until the
story was done, then pressed a question through the throng to him. "Have you
ever seen a Gedemondan?" she called out.
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He smiled and took another swig, eyes playing ap-preciatively over her form.
"Yes, m'beauty, many times," he replied. "A couple of times some of the
creatures actually tried to do me in, pushing ava-lances on me. Other times, I
seen them at a distance, off across a valley or makin' them strange sounds
echoin'
off the snow-cliffs."
She doubted the Gedemondans had ever wanted to do him in. If they had, he
would be dead now, she knew.
She had Asam on the right track now, and finally he looked around and asked,
"Anybody else here seen a Gedemondan? If so, I wanta know about it."
There it was. "I have," she called out. "I've seen a whole lot of them. I've
been in one of their cities and
I've talked to them."
Asam almost choked on his ale.
"Cities? Talked to them?" he echoed, then leaned toward the
bartender. "Who is that girl, anyway?" he asked in a low rumble out of the
side of his mouth.
The bartender looked over at her, following the gaze of the rest of the
patrons, also staring at her, mostly wondering if the insanity was contagious.
"A recent Entry," the bartender whispered back. "Only been here a few days. A
little batty if you ask me."
Asam turned those strange green eyes again in her direction. "What's yer name,
honey?"
"Mavra," she told him. "Mavra Chang."
To her surprise, he just nodded to himself. "Ortega's Mavra?"
"Not exactly," she shot back, somewhat irritated at being thought of that way.
"We don't have much mu-tual love, you know."
Asam laughed heartily. "Well, girl, looks like you'n me we got a lot to talk
about." He drained the last of the mug. "Sorry, folks, business first!" he
announced, and made his way outside.
The structure, like most, was open to the street on one side, but even then it
was a problem for the two of them to make it outside. Still, the youngsters
fol-lowed in what looked like a slow-motion stampede, Mavra thought with a
chuckle.
Asam was using a hunter's cabin, the kind of place built for working
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