The Gathering Storm

At that moment, the door the inn slammed open and the burly mayor entered, accompanied by the men who had joined him earlier, although they'd left their axes behind. They didn't look pleased to find half the village inside the tavern gambling with Mat.

"Mat," Talmanes began again.

Mat raised a hand, cutting him off. "This is what we've been waiting for."

"It is?" Talmanes asked.

Mat turned back to the dicing table, smiling. He'd gone through most of his bags of coins, but he had enough for a few more throws—not counting what he'd brought along outside, of course. He picked up the dice and counted out some gold crowns, and the crowd began to throw down coins of their own—many of which, by now, were gold ones they'd won from Mat.

He tossed and lost, causing a roar of excitement from those watching. Barlden looked as if he wanted to toss Mat out—it was getting late, and sunset couldn't be far off—but the man hesitated when he saw Mat pull out another handful of gold coins. Greed nibbled every man, and strict "rules" could be bent if opportunity walked past and winked suggestively enough.

Mat tossed again, and lost. More roars. The mayor folded his arms.

Mat reached into his pouch and found nothing but air. The men around him looked crestfallen, and one called for a round of drinks to "help the poor young lord forget about his luck."

Not bloody likely, Mat thought, covering a smile. He stood up, raising his hands. "I see it's getting late," he said to the room.

"Too late," Barlden interjected, pushing past a few smelly goatherds with fur-collared cloaks. "You should be going, outlander. Don't be thinking I'll make these men give back what you lost to them fairly, either."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Mat said, slurring his words just a tad. "Harnan and Delarn!" he bellowed. "Bring in the chest!"

The two soldiers from outside hurried in a moment later, bearing the small wooden chest from the packhorse. The tavern grew silent as the soldier carried it over to the table and set it down. Mat fished out the key, wobbling slightly, then unlocked the lid and revealed the contents.

Gold. A lot of it. Practically all he had left of his personal coin. "There's time for one more throw," Mat said to a stunned room. "Any takers?"

Men began to toss down coins until the pile contained most of what Mat had lost. It wasn't nearly enough to match what was in his chest. He looked it over, tapping his chin. "That's not going to be enough, friends. I'll take a bad bet, but if I've only got one more throw tonight, I want a chance of walking out of here with something."

"It's all we've got," one of the men said, amid a few calls for Mat to go ahead and toss anyway.

Mat sighed, then closed the lid to the chest. "No," he said. Even Barlden was watching with a gleam in his eyes. "Unless." Mat paused. "I came here for supplies. I guess I'd take barter. You can keep the coins you won, but I'll bet this chest for supplies. Foodstuffs for my men, a few casks of ale. A cart to carry it on."

"There isn't enough time." Barlden glanced at the darkening windows.

"Surely there is," Mat said, leaning forward. "I'll leave after this toss. You have my word on it."

"We don't bend rules here," the mayor said. "The price is too high."

Mat expected calls from the betting men, challenging the mayor, begging him to make an exception. But there were none. Mat felt a sudden spike of fear. After all of that losing ... if they kicked him out anyway. . . .

Desperate, he pulled open the top of the chest again, revealing the gold coins inside.

"I'll give you the ale," the innkeeper said suddenly. "And Mardry, you've got a wagon and team. It's only a street down."

"Yes," said Mardry, a bluff-faced man with short dark hair. "I'll bet that."

Men began to call that they could offer food—grain from their pantries, potatoes from their cellars. Mat looked to the mayor. "There's still got to be what, half an hour until nightfall? Why don't we see what they can gather? The village store can have a piece of this too, if I lose. I'll bet you could use the extra coin, what with the winter we had."

Barlden hesitated, then nodded, still watching the chest of coins.

Men whooped and ran about, fetching the wagon, rolling out the ale. More than a few galloped off for their homes or the village store. Mat watched them go, waiting in the quickly emptying tavern room.

"I see what you're doing," the mayor said to Mat. He didn't seem to be in a rush to gather anything.

Mat turned toward him, questioningly.

"I won't have you cheating us with a miracle win at the end of the evening." Barlden folded his arms. "You'll use my dice. And you'll move nice and slow as you toss. I know you lost many games here as the men report, but I suspect that if we search you, we'll find a couple of sets of dice hidden on your person."

"You're welcome to give me a search," Mat said, raising his arms to the side.

Barlden hesitated. "You will have thrown them away, of course," he finally said. "It's a fine scheme, dressing like a lord, loading dice so they make you lose instead of win. Never heard of a man bold enough to throw away gold like that on fake dice."

"If you're so certain that I'm cheating," Mat said, "then why go through with this?"

"Because I know how to stop you," the mayor replied. "Like I said, you'll use my dice on this throw." He hesitated, then smiled, grabbing a pair of dice off the table that Mat had been using. He tossed them. They came up a one and a two. He tossed them again, and got the same result.

"Better yet." The mayor smiled deeply. "You'll use these. In fact . . . I'll make the throw for you." Barlden's face in the dim light took on a decidedly sinister cast.

Mat felt a stab of panic.

Talmanes took his arm. "All right, Mat," he said. "I think we should go."

Mat held up a hand. Would his luck work if someone else threw? Sometimes it worked to prevent him from being wounded in combat. He was sure of that. Wasn't he?

"Go ahead," he said to Barlden.

The man looked shocked.

"You can make the throw," Mat said. "But it counts the same as if I'd tossed. A winning hand, and I walk away with everything. A losing hand, and I'll be on my way with my hat and my horse, and you can keep the bloody chest. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

Mat stuck out his hand for a shake, but the mayor turned away, holding the dice in his hand. "No," he said. "You'll get no chance to swap these dice, traveler. Let's just go out front and wait. And you keep your distance."

They did as he said, leaving the muggy, ale-soaked stench of the tavern for the clear street outside. Mat's soldiers brought the chest. Barlden demanded that the chest remain open so that it couldn't be switched. One of his thugs poked around inside it, biting the coins, making certain that it really was full and that the coins were authentic. Mat waited, leaning against the door as a wagon rolled up, and men from inside the tavern began rolling casks of ale onto its bed.

The sun was barely a haze of light on the horizon, behind those blasted clouds. As Mat waited, he saw the mayor grow more and more anxious. Blood and bloody ashes, the man was a stickler for his rules! Well, Mat would show him, and all of them. He'd show them. . . .

Show them what? That he couldn't be beaten? What did that prove? As Mat waited, the cart piled higher and higher with foodstuffs, and he began to feel a strange sense of guilt.

I'm not doing anything wrong, he thought. I've got to feed my men, don't I? These men are betting fair, and I'm betting fair. No loaded dice. No cheating.

Except his luck. Well, his luck was his own—just as every man's luck was his own. Some men were born with a talent for music, and they became bards and gleemen. Who begrudged them earning coin with what the Creator gave them? Mat had luck, and so he used it. There was nothing wrong with that.

Still, as the men came back into the inn, he started to see what it was that Talmanes had noticed. There was an edge of desperation to these men. Had they been too eager to gamble? Had they been foolhardy with their betting? What was that look in their eyes, a look that Mat had mistaken for weariness? Had they been drinking to celebrate the end of the day, or had they been drinking to banish that haunted cast in their eyes?

"Maybe you were right," Mat said to Talmanes, who was watching the sun with almost as much anxiety as the mayor. Its last light was dusting the tops of the peaked homes, coloring the tan tile a deeper orange. The sunset was a blaze behind the clouds.

"We can go, then?" the Talmanes asked.

"No," Mat said. "We're staying."

And the dice stopped rattling in his head. It was so sudden, the silence so unexpected, that he froze. It was enough to make him think he'd made the wrong decision.

"Burn me, we're staying," he repeated. "I've never backed down from a bet before, and I don't plan to now."

A group of riders returned, bearing sacks of grain on their horses. It was amazing what a little coin could do for motivation. As more riders arrived, a young boy came trotting up the road. "Mayor," he said, tugging on Barlden's purple vest. That vest bore a crisscross of patched rips across the front. "Mother says that the outlander women aren't done bathing. She's trying to hurry them, but. . . ."

The mayor tensed. He glanced at Mat angrily.

Mat snorted. "Don't think I can do anything to hurry that lot," he said. "If I were to go rush them, they'd likely dig in like mules and take twice as long. Let someone else bloody have a turn dealing with them."

Talmanes kept glancing at the lengthening shadows along the road. "Burn me," he muttered. "If those ghosts start appearing again, Mat. . . ."

"This is something else," Mat said as the newcomers threw their grain onto the wagon. "It feels different."

The wagon was already loaded high with foodstuffs; a good haul to have purchased from a village this size. It was just what the Band needed, enough to nudge them along, keep them fed until they reached the next town. That food wasn't worth the gold in the coffer, of course, but it was about equal to what he'd lost dicing inside, particularly with the wagon and horses thrown in. They were good draft animals, sturdy, well cared for from the look of coat and hoof.

Mat opened his mouth to say it was enough, then hesitated as he noticed that the mayor was talking quietly with a group of men. There were six of them, their vests drab and ragged, their black hair unkempt. One was gesturing toward Mat and holding what looked to be a sheet of paper in his hand. Barlden shook his head, but the man with the paper gestured more insistently.

"Here now," Mat said softly. "What's this?"

"Mat, the sun . . ." Talmanes said.

The mayor pointed sharply, and the ragged men sidled away. The men who had brought the food were crowding around the dimming street, keeping to the center of it. Most were looking toward the horizon.

"Mayor," Mat called. "That's good enough. Make the throw!"

Barlden hesitated, glancing at him, then looked down at the dice in his hand almost as if he'd forgotten them. The men around him nodded anxiously, and so he raised his hand in a fist, rattling the dice. The mayor looked across the street to meet Mat's eyes, then threw the dice onto the ground between them. They seemed too loud, a tiny rattling thunderstorm, like bones cracking against one another.