Watching Stepson"s six formidable companions, waiting like purebred hunting dogs curried for show, he spied a certain litheness about them, an uncanny cleanliness of limb and nearness of girded hips. Close friends, these. Very close.

Abarsis"s sonorous voice had ceased, waiting for Hanse"s response. The disconcertingly pale eyes followed Hanse"s stare, frank now, to his companions.

"Will you say yea, then, friend of the Riddler? And become my friend, also?

These other friends of mine await only your willingness to embrace you as a brother."

"I own," Hanse muttered.

Abarsis raised one winged brow. "So? They are members of a Sacred Band, my old one; most prized officers; heroes, every pair." He judged Hanse"s face. "Can it be you do not have the custom, in the south? From your mien I must believe it."

His voice was liquid, like deep running water. "These men, to me and to their chosen partners, have sworn to forsake life before honour, to stand and never retreat, to fall where they fight if need be, shoulder to shoulder. There is no more hallowed tryst than theirs. Had I a thousand such, I would rule the earth."

"Which one is yours?" Hanse tried not to sneer, to be conversational, unshaken, but his eyes could find no comfortable place to rest, so that at last he took up the gift-sword and examined the hieratic writing on its blade.

"None. I left them, long ago, when my partner went up to heaven. Now I have hired them back, to serve a need. It is strictly a love of spirit, Hanse, that is required. And only in Sacred Bands is a mercenary asked so much."

"Still, it"s not my style."

"You sound disappointed."

"I am. In your offer. Pay me twice that, and I will get the items you desire. As for your friends, I don"t care if you b.u.g.g.e.r them each twice daily. Just as long as it"s not part of my job and no one thinks I am joining any organizations."

A swift, appreciative smile touched Abarsis. "Twice, then. I am at your mercy"

"I stole those diamond rods once before, for Tem-, for the Riddler. He"ll just give them back to her, after she does whatever it is she does for him. I had her once, and she did nothing for me that any other wh.o.r.e would not do."

"You what? Ah, you do not know about them, then? Their legend, their curse?"

"Legend? Curse? I knew she was a sorceress. Tell me about it! Am I in any danger? You can forget the whole idea, about the rods. I keep shut of sorcery."

"Hardly sorcery, no need to worry. They cannot transmit any of it. When he was young and she was a virgin, he was a prince and a fool of ideals. 1 heard it that the G.o.d is his true father, and thus she is not his sibling, but you know how legends are. As a princess, her sire looked for an advantageous marriage. An archmage of a power not seen anymore made an offer, at about the time the Riddler renounced his claim to the throne and retired to a philosopher"s cave. She went to him begging aid, some way out of an unacceptable situation, and convinced him that should she be deflowered, the mage would not want her, and of all men the Riddler was the only one she trusted with the task; anyone else would despoil her. She seduced him easily, for he had loved her. all his young life and that unacceptable attraction to flesh of his flesh was part of what drove him from his primogeniture. She loved nothing but herself; some things never change. He was wise enough to know he brought destruction upon himself, but men are p.r.o.ne to ruin from women. In pa.s.sion, he could not think clearly; when it left him he went to Vashanka"s altar and threw himself upon it, consigning his fate to the G.o.d. The G.o.d took him up, and when the archmage appeared with four eyes spitting fire and four mouths breathing fearful curses, the G.o.d"s aegis partly shielded him. Yet, the curse holds. He wanders eternally bringing death to whomever loves him and being spurned by whomsoever he shall love. She must offer herself for pay to any comer, take no gift of kindness on pain of showing all her awful years, incapable of giving love as she has always been. So thus, the G.o.ds, too, are barred to her, and she is truly d.a.m.ned."

Hanse just stared at Stepson, whose voice had grown husky in the telling, when the mercenary left off.

"Now, will you help me? Please. He would want it to be you."

Hanse made a sign.

" Would want it to be me?" the thief frowned. "He does not know about this?"

There came the sound of Shadowsp.a.w.n"s bench sc.r.a.ping back.

Abarsis reached out to touch the thief"s shoulder, a move quick as lightning and soft as a b.u.t.terfly"s landing. "One must do for a friend what the friend cannot do for himself. With such a man, opportunities of this sort come seldom. If not for him, or for your price, or for whatever you hold sacred, do this thing for me, and I will be eternally in your debt."

A sibilant sound, part impatience, part exasperation, part irritation, came sliding down Shadowsp.a.w.n"s hawkish nose.

"Hanse?"

"You are going to surprise him with this deed, done? What if he has no taste for surprises? What if you are wrong, and he refrains from aiding her because he prefers her right where she is? And besides, I am staying away from him and his affairs."

"No surprise: I will tell him once I have arranged it. I will make you one more offer: Half again the doubled fee you suggested, to ease your doubts. But that is my final bid."

Shadowsp.a.w.n squinted at the heartshaped face of Stepson. Then, without a word, he scooped up the short stabbing sword in its silver sheath, and found it a home in his belt. "Done," said Hanse.

"Good. Then, will you meet my companions?" The long-fingered, graceful hand of Stepson, called Abarsis, made a gesture that brought them, all smiles and manly welcomes, from their exile by the bar.

5.

Kurd, the vivisectionist who had tried his skills on Tempus, was found a fair way from his adobe workshop, his gut stretched out for thirty feet before him: he had been dragged by the entrails; the hole cut in his belly to pull the intestines out was made by an expert: a mercenary had to be at fault. But there were so many mercenaries in Sanctuary, and so few friends of the vivisectionist, that the matter was not pursued. The matter of the h.e.l.l Hound Razkuli"s head, however, was much more serious. Zaibar (who knew why both had died and at whose hands, and who feared for his own life) went to Kadakithis with his friend"s staring eyes under one arm, sick and still tasting vomit, and told the prince how Tempus had come riding through the gates at dawn and called up to him where he was checking pa.s.s-bys in the gatehouse: "Zaibar, I"ve a message for you."

"Yo!" Zaibar had waved. "Catch," Tempus laughed, and threw something up to him while the grey horse reared, uttered a shrill, demonic scream, and clattered off by the time Zaibar"s hand had said head: human; and his eyes had said, head: Razkuli"s and then begun to fill with tears.

Kadakithis listened to his story, looking beyond him out of the window the entire time. When Zaibar had finished, the prince said, "Well, I don"t know what you expected, trying to take him down so clumsily."

"But he said it was a message for me," Zaibar entreated, caught his own pleading tone, scowled and straightened up.

"Then take it to heart, man. I can"t allow you two to continue feuding. If it is anything other than simple feuding, I do not want to know about it. Stepson, called Abarsis, told me to expect something like this! I demand a stop to it!"

"Stepson!" Tall, lank Zaibar snarled like a man invoking a vengeful G.o.d in close fighting. "An ex-Sacred Bander looking for glory and death with honour, in no particular order! Stepson told you? The Slaughter Priest? My lord prince, you are keeping deadly company these days! Are all the G.o.ds of the armies in Sanctuary, then, along with their familiars, the mercenary hordes? I had wanted to discuss with you what could be done to curb them-"

"Zaibar," interrupted Kadakithis firmly. "In the matter of G.o.ds, I hold firm: I do not believe in them. In the matter of mercenaries, let them be. You broach subjects too sensitive for your station. In the matter of Tempus, I will talk to him. You change your att.i.tude. Now, if that is all... ?"

It was all. It was nearly the end of Zaibar the h.e.l.l Hound"s entire career; he almost struck his commander-in-chief. But he refrained, though he could not utter even a civil goodbye. He went to his billet and he went into the town, and he worked wrath out of himself, as best he could. The dregs he washed away with drink, and after that he went to visit Myrtis, the wh.o.r.emistress of Aphrodisia House who knew how to soothe him. And she, seeing his heart breaking and his fists shaking, asked him nothing about why he had come, after staying away so long, but took him to her breast and healed what she might of his hurts, remembering that all the protection he provided her and good he did for her, he did because of a love spell she had bought and cast on him long since. and thus she owed him at least one night to match his dreams.

6.

Tempus had gone among his own kind, after he left the barracks. He had checked in at the guild hostel north of the palace, once again in leopard and bronze and iron, and he was welcome there.

Why he had kept himself from it for so long, he could not have reasoned, unless it was that without these friends of former times the camaraderie would not have been as sweet.

He went to the sideboard and got hot mulled wine from a krater, sprinkling in goat"s cheese and grain, and took the posset to a corner, so the men could come to him as they would.

The problem of the eunuch was still unsolved: finding a suitable replacement was not going to be easy: there were not many eunuchs in the mercenaries" guild. The clubroom was red as dying day and dark as backlit mountains, and he felt better for having come. So, when Abarsis, high priest of Upper Ranke, left his companions and approached, but did not sit among the mercenaries Tempus had collected, he said to the nine that he would see them at the appointed time, and to the iron-clad one.

"Life to you. Stepson. Please join me."

"Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory." Cup in hand, he sipped pure water, eyes hardly darker never leaving Tempus"s face. "Is it Sanctuary that has driven you to drink?" He indicated the posset.

"The dry soul is wisest? Not at the Empire"s a.n.u.s, where the water is chancy.

Anyway, those things I said long ago and far away: do not hold me to any of that."

The smooth cheek of Stepson ticced. "I must," he murmured. "You are the man I have emulated. All my life I have listened after word of you and collected intelligence of you and studied what you left us in legend and stone in the north. Listen: "War is sire of all and king of all, and some He has made G.o.ds and some men, some bond and some free". Or: "War is ours in common; strife is justice; all things come into being and pa.s.s away through strife". You see, I know your work, even those other names you have used. Do not make me speak them.

I would work with you, 0 Sleepless One. It will be the pinnacle of my career."

He flashed Tempus a bolt of naked entreaty, then his gaze flickered away and he rushed on: "You need me. Who else will suit? Who else here has a brand and gelding"s scars? And time in the arena as a gladiator, like Jubal himself? Who could intrigue him, much less seduce him among these? And though I -"

"No."

Abarsis dug in his belt and tossed a golden amulet on to the table. "The G.o.d will not give you up; this was caught in the sorrel"s new shoe. That teacher of mine whom you remember ...?"

"I know the man," Tempus said grimly.

"He thinks that Sanctuary is the endpoint of existence; that those who come here are d.a.m.ned beyond redemption; that Sanctuary is h.e.l.l."

"Then how is it. Stepson," said Tempus almost kindly, "that folk experience fleshly death here? So far as I know, I am the only soul in Sanctuary who suffers eternally, with the possible exception of my sister, who may not have a soul. Learn not to listen to what people say, priest. A man"s own mistakes are load enough, without adding others"."

"Then let me be your choice! There is no time to find some other eunuch." He said it flatly, without bitterness, a man fielding logic. "I can also bring you a few fighters whom you might not know and who would not dare, on their own, to approach you. My Sacred Band yearns to serve you. You dispense your favour to provincials and foreigners who barely recognize their honour! Give it to me, who craves little else ...! The prince who would be king will not expose me, but pa.s.s me on to Jubal as an untrained boy. I am a little old for it, but in Sanctuary, those niceties seem not to matter. I have increased your lot here.

You owe me this opportunity."

Tempus stirred his cooling posset with a finger. "That prince..." Changing the subject, he sighed glumly, a sound like rattling bones. "He will never be a Great King, such as your father. Can you tell me why the G.o.d is taking such an interest?"

"The G.o.d will tell you, when you make of the Tros horse a sacrifice. Or some person. Then He will be mollified. You know the ritual. If it be a man you choose, I will gladly volunteer... Ah, you understand me, now? I do not want to frighten you ..."

"Take no thought of it."

"Then... though I risk your displeasure, yet I say it: I love you. One night with you would be a surfeit, to work under you is my long-held dream. Let me do this, which none can do better, which no whole man can do for you at all!"

"I cede you the privilege, since you value it so; but there is no telling what Jubal"s hired hawk-masks might do to the eunuch we send in there."

"With your blessing and the G.o.d"s, I am fearless. And you will be close by, busy attacking Black Jubal"s fortress. While you arc arresting the slavemaster for his treasonous spying, whosoever will make good the woman"s escape. I understand your thought; I have arranged for the retrieval of her weapons."

Tempus chuckled. "I hardly know what to say."

"Say you look kindly upon me, that I am more than a bad memory to you."

Shaking his head, Tempus took the amulet Abarsis held out to him. "Come then.

Stepson, we will see what part of your glorious expectations we can fulfil."

7.

It was said, ever after, that the Storm G.o.d took part in the sack of the slaver"s estate. Lightning crawled along the gatehouses of its defensive wall and rolled in b.a.l.l.s through the inner court and turned the oaken gates to ash.

The ground rumbled and buckled and bucked and great crumbling cracks appeared in its inner sanctum, where the slaver dallied with the glossy-haired eunuch Kadakithis had just sent up for training. It was profligate waste to make a fancy boy out of such a slave: the arena had muscled him up and time had grown him up, and to squeeze the two or three remaining years of that sort of pleasure out of him seemed to the slaver a pity. If truth be known, blood like his came so rarely to the slavepens that gelding him was a sin against future generations: had Jubal got him early on - when the cuts had been made, at nine, or ten - he would have raised him with great pains and put him to stud. But his brand and tawny skin smacked of northern mountains and high wizards" keeps where the wars had raged so savagely that no man was proud to remember what had been done there, on either side.

Eventually, he left the eunuch chained by the neck to the foot of his bed and went to see what the yelling and the shouting and the blue flashes and the quivering floorboards could possibly mean.

What he saw from his threshold he did not understand, but he came striding back, stripping off his robe as he pa.s.sed by the bed, rushing to arm himself and do battle against the infernal forces of this enemy, and, it seemed, the whole of the night.

Naphtha fireb.a.l.l.s came shooting over his walls into the courtyard; naming arrows torqued from spring-wound bows; javelins and swordplay glittered nastily, singing as they slew in soft susurrusings Jubal had hoped never to hear there.

It was eerily quiet: no shouting, not from his hawk-masks, or the adversaries; the fire crackled and the horses snorted and groaned like the men where they fell.

Jubal recollected the sinking feeling he had had in his stomach when Zaibar had confided to him that the bellows of anguish emanating from the vivisectionist"s workshop were the h.e.l.l Hound Tempus"s agonies, the forebodings he had endured when a group of his beleaguered sell-swords went after the man who killed those who wore the mask of Jubal"s service for sport, and failed to down him.

That night, it was too late for thinking. There was time enough only for wading into the thick of battle (if he could just find it: the attack was from every side, out of darkness); hollering orders; mustering point leaders (two); and appointing replacements for the dead (three). Then he heard whoops and abysmal screams and realized that someone had let the slaves out of their pens; those who had nothing to lose bore haphazard arms, but sought only death with vengeance. Jubal, seeing wide, white rimmed eyes and murderous mouths and the new eunuch from Kadakithis"s palace dancing ahead of the pack of them, started to run. The key to its collar had been in his robe; he remembered discarding it, within the eunuch"s reach.

He ran in a private wash of terror, in a bubble through which other sounds hardly penetrated, but where his breathing reverberated stentorian, rasping, and his heart gonged loud in his ears. He ran looking back over his shoulder, and he saw some leopard-pelted apparition with a horn bow in hand come sliding down the gatehouse wall. He ran until he reached the stable, until he stumbled over a dead hawk-mask, and then he heard everything, cacophonously, that had been so muted before: swords rasping; panoplies rattling; bodies thudding and greaved men running; quarrels whispering bright death as they pa.s.sed through the dark press; javelins ringing as they struck helm or shield suddenly limned in lurid fiery light.

Fire? Behind Jubal flame licked out of the stable windows and horses whistled their death screams.

The heat was singeing. He drew his sword and turned in a fluid motion, judging himself as he was wont to do when the crowds had been about him in applauding tiers and he must kill to live to kill another day, and do so pleasingly.

He felt the thrill of it, the immediacy of it, the joy of the arena, and as the pack of freed slaves came shouting, he picked out the prince"s eunuch and reached to wrest a spear from the dead hawk-mask"s grip. He hefted it, left handed, to cast, just as the man in leopard pelt and cuira.s.s and a dozen mercenaries came between him and the slaves, cutting him off from his final refuge, the stairs to the westward wall.

Behind him, the flames seemed hotter, so that he was glad he had not stopped for armour. He threw the spear, and it rammed home in the eunuch"s gut. The leopard leader came forward, alone, sword tip gesturing three times, leftward.

Was it Tempus, beneath that frightful armour? Jubal raised his own blade to his brow in acceptance, and moved to where his antagonist indicated, but the leopard leader was talking over his shoulder to his front-line mercenaries, three of whom were cl.u.s.tered around the downed eunuch. Then one archer came abreast of the leader, touched his leopard pelt. And that bowman kept a nocked arrow on Jubal, while the leader sheathed his sword and walked away, to join the little knot around the eunuch.

Someone had broken off the haft; Jubal heard the grunt and the snap of wood and saw the shaft discarded. Then arrows whizzed in quick succession into both his knees and beyond the shattering pain he knew nothing more.

8.

Tempus knelt over Abarsis, bleeding out his life naked in the dirt. "Get me light," he rasped. Tossing his helmet aside, he bent down until his cheek touched Stepson"s knotted, hairless belly. The whole bronze head of the spear, barbs and all, was deep in him. Under his lowest rib, the shattered haft stuck out, quivering as he breathed. The torch was brought; the better light told Tempus there was no use in cutting the spearhead loose; one f.l.a.n.g.e was up under the low rib; vital fluids oozed out with the youth"s blood. Out of age-old custom, Tempus laid his mouth upon the wound and sucked the blood and swallowed it, then raised his head and shook it to those who waited with a hot blade and hopeful, silent faces. "Get him some water, no wine. And give him some air."

They moved back and as the Sacred Bander who had been holding Abarsis"s head put it down, the wounded one murmured; he coughed, and his frame shuddered, one hand clutching spasmodically at the spear. "Rest now. Stepson. You have got your wish. You will be my sacrifice to the G.o.d." He covered the youth"s nakedness with his mantle, taking the gory hand from the broken haft, letting it fasten on his own.

Then the blue-grey eyes of Abarsis opened in a face pale with pain, and something else: "I am not frightened, with you and the G.o.d beside me."

Tempus put an arm under his head and gathered him up, pulling him across his lap. "Hush, now."

"Soon, soon," said the paling lips. "I did well for you. Tell me so ... that you are content. 0 Riddler, so well do I love you, I go to my G.o.d singing your praises. When I meet my father, I will tell him ... I... fought beside you."

"Go with more than that. Stepson," whispered Tempus, and leaned forward, and kissed him gently on the mouth, and Abarsis breathed out his soul while their lips yet touched.

9.

Now, Hanse had got the rods with no difficulty, as Stepson had promised he would be able to do, citing Tempus"s control of palace personnel as surety. And afterwards, the young mercenary"s invitation to come and watch them fight up at Jubal"s rang in his head until, to banish it, he went out to take a look.

He knew it was foolish to go, for it was foolish even to know, but he knew that he wanted to be able to say, "Yes, I saw. It was wonderful," the next time he saw the young mercenary, so he went very carefully and cautiously. If he were stopped, he would have all of Stepson"s Sacred Band as witnesses that he had been at Jubal"s, and nowhere near the palace and its Hall of Judgement.

He knew those excuses were flimsy, but he wanted to go, and he did not want to delve into why: the lure of mercenary life was heady in his nostrils; if he admitted how sweet it seemed, he might be lost. If he went, perchance he would see something not so sweet, or so intoxicating, something which would wash away all this talk of friendship and honour. So he went, and hid on the roof of a gatehouse abandoned in the confusion. Thus he saw all that transpired.

When he could in safety leave his roost, he followed the pair of grey horses bearing Tempus and the corpse ridgeward, stealing the first mount he came to that looked likely.

The sun was risen when Tempus reached the ridgetop and called out behind: "Whoever you are, ride up," and set about gathering branches to make a bier.

Hanse rode to the edge of the outcropping of rock on which Tempus piled wood and said: "Well, accursed one, are you and your G.o.d replete? Stepson told me all about it."

The man straightened up, eyes like flames, and put his hand to the small of his back: "What do you want, Shadowsp.a.w.n? A man who is respectful does not sling insults over the ears of the dead. If you are here for him, then welcome. If you are here for me, I a.s.sure you, your timing is ill."

"I am here for him, friend. What think you, that I would come here to console you in your grief when it was his love for you that he died of? He asked me,"

Hanse continued, not dismounting, "to get these. He was going to give them to you." He reached for the diamond rods, wrapped in hide, he had stolen.