The Face of Chaos tw-5 Page 6

  The Stepson's commander stood around helplessly with three others, friends ofNiko's, until the barber-surgeon had finished with needle and gut, then chased them all away, shuttering windows, barring doors. Cup in hand, then, he gave the battered, beaten youth his painkilling draught in silence, only sitting and letting Niko sip while he assessed the Stepson's injuries and made black guesses as to how the boy had come by green and purple blood-filled bruises, rope burns at wrist and neck, and a face like doom.

  Quite soon he heard from Nikodemos, concisely but through a slur that comes when teeth have been loosed or broken in a dislocated jaw, what had transpired: they had gone seeking the Alekeep owner's daughter, deep into Shambles where drug dens and cheap whores promise dreamless nights, found them at Ischade's, seen them hustled into a wagon and driven away towards Roxane's. Following, for they were due to see the witch at high moon in her lair in any case, they'd been accosted, surprised by a death squad •armed with magic and visaged like the dead, roped and dragged from their horses. The next lucid interval Niko recalled was one of being propped against dense trees, tied to one while the Nisibisi witch used children's plights and spells and finally Janni's tortured, drawn-out death to extract from him what little he knew of Tempus's intentions and Rankan strategies of defence for the lower land. 'Was I wrong to try not to tell them?' Niko asked, eyes swollen half-shut but filled with hurt. 'I thought they'd kill us all, whatever. Then I thought I could hold out... Tamzen and the other girls were past help... but Janni -' He shook his head. 'Then they... thought I was lying, when I couldn't answer ... questions they should have asked of you - Then I did lie, to please them, but she ... the witch knew...'

  'Never mind. Was One-Thumb a party to this?'

  A twitch of lips meant 'no' or 'I don't know'.

  Then Niko found the strength to add: 'If I hadn't tried to keep my silence I've been interrogated before by Nisibisi ... I hid in my rest-place ... until Janni - They killed him to get to me.'

  Tempus saw bright tears threatening to spill and changed the subject: 'Your rest-place? So your maat returned to you?'

  He whispered, 'After a fashion ... I don't care about that now. Going to need all my anger ... no time for balance anymore.'

  Tempus blew out a breath and set down Niko's cup and looked between his legs at the packed clay floor. 'I'm going north, tomorrow. I'll leave sortie assignments and schedules with Critias - he'll be in command here - and a rendezvous for those who want to join in the settling up. Did you recognize any Ilsigs in her company? A servant, a menial, anyone at all?'

  'No, they all look alike... Someone found us, got us to the gates. Some trainees of ours, maybe - they knew my name. The witch said come ahead and die up country. Each reprisal of ours, they'll match fourfold.'

  'Are you telling me not to go?'

  Niko struggled to sit up, cursed, fell back with blood oozing from between his teeth. Tempus made no move to help him. They stared at each other until Niko said, 'It will seem that you've been driven from Sanctuary, that you've failed here ...'

  'Let it seem so; it may well be true.'

  'Wait, then, until I can accompany -'

  'You know better. I will leave instructions for you.' He got up and left quickly, before his temper got the best of him where the boy could see.

  The Samaritan who had brought their wounded and their dead was waiting outside Tempus's quarters. His name was Vis and though he looked Nisibisi he claimed he had a message from Jubal. Because of his skin and his accent Tempus almost took him prisoner, thinking to give him to Straton, for whom all manner of men bared their souls, but he marshalled his anger and sent the young man away with a pocket full of soldats and instructions to convey Jubal's message to Critias. Crit would be in charge of the Stepsons henceforth; what Jubal and Crit might arrange was up to them. The reward was for bringing home the casualties, dead and living, a favour cheap at the price.

  Then Tempus went to find Jihan. When he did, he asked her to put him in touch with Askelon, dream lord, if she could.

  'So that you can punish yourself with mortality? This is not your fault.'

  'A kind, if unsound, opinion. Mortality will break the curse. Can you help me?'

  'I will not, not now, when you are like this,' she replied, concern knitting her brows in the harsh morning light. 'But I will accompany you north. Perhaps another day, when you are calmer ...'

  He cursed her for acting like a woman and set about scheduling sorties and sketching maps, so that each of his men would have worked out his debt to Kadakithis and be in good standing with the mercenaries' guild when and if they joined him in Tyse, at the very foot ofWizardwall.

  It took no longer to draft his resignation and Critias's appointment in his stead and send them off to Kadakithis than it took to clear his actions with the Rankan representatives of the mercenaries' guild: his task here (assessing Kadakithis for a Rankan faction desirous of a change in emperors) was accomplished; he could honestly say that neither town nor townspeople nor effete prince was worth struggling to ennoble. For good measure he was willing to throw into the stewpot of disgust boiling in him both Vashanka and the child he had co-fathered with the god, by means of whom certain interests thought to hold him here: he disliked children, as a class, and even Vashanka had turned his back on this one.

  Still, there were things he had to do. He went and found Crit in the guild hostel's common room and told him all that had transpired. If Crit had refused the appointment outright, Tempus would have had to tarry, but Critias only smiled cynically, saying that he'd be along with his best fighters as soon as matters here allowed. He left One-Thumb's case in Critias's hands; they both knew that Straton could determine the degree of the barkeep's complicity quickly enough.

  Crit asked, as Tempus was leaving the dark and comforting common room for the last time, whether any children's bodies had been found - three girls and boys still were missing; one young corpse had turned up cold in Shambles Cross.

  'No,' Tempus said, and thought no more about it. 'Life to you. Critias.'

  'And to you, Riddler. And everlasting glory.'

  Outside, Jihan was waiting on one Tros horse, the other's reins in her hand.

  They went first southwest to see if perhaps the witch or her agents might be found at home, but the manor house and its surrounds were deserted, the yard criss-crossed with cart-tracks from heavily laden wagons' wheels.

  The caravan's track was easy to follow.

  Riding north without a backward glance on his Tros horse, Jihan swaying in her saddle on his right, he had one last impulse: he ripped the problematical Storm God's amulet from around his throat, dropped it into a quaggy marsh. Where he was going, Vashanka's name was meaningless. Other names were hallowed, and other attributes given to the weather gods.

  When he was sure he had successfully cast it aside, and the god's voice had not come ringing with awful laughter in his ear (for all gods are tricksters, and war gods worst of any), he relaxed in his saddle. The omens for this venture were good: they'd completed their preparations in half the time he'd anticipated, so that he could start it while the day was young.

  Crit sat long at his customary table in the common room after Tempus had gone. By rights it should have been Straton or some Sacred Band pair who succeeded Tempus, someone ... anyone but him. After a time he pulled out his pouch and emptied its contents on to the plank table: three tiny metal figures, a fishhook made from an eagle's claw and abalone shell, a single die, an old field decoration won in Azehur while the Slaughter Priest still led the original Sacred Band.

  He scooped them up and threw them as a man might throw in wager: the little gold Storm God fell beneath the lead figurine of a fighter, propping the man upright; the fishhook embraced the die, which came to rest with one dot facing up Strat's war name was Ace. The third figure, a silver rider mounted, sat square atop the field star - Abarsis had slipped it over his head so long ago the ribbon had crumbled away.

  Content with the omens h
is private prognosticators gave, he collected them and put them away. He'd wanted Tempus to ask him to join him, not hand him fifty men's lives to yea or nay. He took such work too much to heart; it lay heavy on him, worse than the task force's weight had been, and he'd only just begun. But that was why Tempus picked him - he was conscientious to a fault.

  He sighed and rose and quit the hostel, riding aimlessly through the foetid streets. Damned town was a pit, a bubo, a sore that wouldn't heal. He couldn't trust his task force to some subordinate, though how he was going to run them while stomping around vainly trying to fill Tempus's sandals, he couldn't say.

  His horse, picking his route, took him by the Vulgar Unicorn where Straton would soon be 'discussing sensitive matters' with One-Thumb.

  By rights he should go up to the palace, pay a call on Kadakithis, 'make nice' (as Straton said) to Vashanka's priest-of-record Molin, visit the Mageguild ... He shook his head and spat over his horse's shoulder. He hated politics.

  And what Tempus had told him about Niko's misfortune and Janni's death still rankled. He remembered the foreign fighter Niko had made him turn loose - Vis. Vis, who'd come to Tempus, bearing hurt and slain, with a message from Jubal. That, and what Straton had gotten from the hawkmask they'd given Ischade, plus the vampire woman's own hints, allowed him to triangulate Jubal's position like a sailor navigating by the stars. Vis was supposed to come to him, though. He'd wait. If his hunch was right, he could put Jubal and his hawkmasks to work for Kadakithis without either knowing - or at least having to admit - that was the case.

  If so, he'd be free to take the band north - what they wanted, expected, and would now fret to do with Tempus gone. Only Tempus's mystique had kept them this long; Crit would have a mutiny, or empty barracks, if he couldn't meet their expectation of war to come. They weren't babysitters, slum police, or palace praetorians; they collected exploits, not soldats. He began to form a plan, shape up a scenario, answer questions sure to be asked him later, rehearsing replies in his mind.

  Unguided, his horse led him slumward - a bam-rat, it was taking the quickest, straightest way home. When he looked up and out, rather than down and in, he was almost through the Shambles, near White Foal Bridge and the vampire's house, quiet now, unprepossessing in the light of day. Did she sleep in the day? He didn't think she was that kind of vampire; there had been no bloodless, no punctures on the boy stiff against the drop's back door when one of the street men found it. But what did she do, then, to her victims? He thought of Straton, the way he'd looked at the vampire, the exchange between the two he'd overheard and partly understood. He'd have to keep those two quite separate, even if Ischade was putatively willing to work with, rather than against, them. He spurred his horse on by.

  Across the bridge, he rode southwest, skirting the thick of Downwind. When he sighted the Stepsons' barracks, he still didn't know if he could succeed in leading Stepsons. He rehearsed it wryly in his mind: 'Life to all. Most of you don't know me but by reputation, but I'm here to ask you to bet your lives on me, not once, but as a matter of course over the next months ...'

  Still, someone had to do it. And he'd have no trouble with the Sacred Band teams, who knew him in the old days, when he'd had a right-side partner, before that vulnerability was made painfully clear, and he gave up loving the death seekers - or anything else which could disappoint him.

  It mattered not a whit, he decided, if he won or if he lost, if they let him advise them or deserted post and duty to follow Tempus north, as he would have done if the sly old soldier hadn't bound him here with promise and responsibility.

  He'd brought Niko's bow. The first thing he did - after leaving the stables, where he saw to his horse and checked on Niko's pregnant mare - was seek the wounded fighter.

  The young officer peered at him through swollen, blackened eyes, saw the bow and nodded, unlaced its case and stroked the wood recurve when Critias laid it on the bed. Haifa dozen men were there when he'd knocked and entered - three teams who'd come with Niko and his partner down to Ranke on Sacred Band business. They left, warning softly that Crit mustn't tire him - they'd just got him back.

  'He's left me the command,' Crit said, though he'd thought to talk ofhawkmasks and death squads and Nisibisi - a witch and one named Vis.

  'Gilgamesh sat by Enkidu seven days, until a maggot fell from his nose.' It was the oldest legend the fighters shared, one from Enlil's time when the Lord Storm and Enki (Lord Earth) ruled the world, and a fighter and his friend roamed far.

  Crit shrugged and ran a spread hand through feathery hair. 'Enkidu was dead; you're not. Tempus has just gone ahead to prepare our way.'

  Niko rolled his head, propped against the whitewashed wall, until he could see Crit clearly: 'He followed godsign; I know that look.'

  'Or witchsign.' Crit squinted, though the light was good, three windows wide and afternoon sun raying the room. 'Are you all right - beyond the obvious, I mean?'

  'I lost two partners, too close in time. I'll mend.'

  Let's hope, Crit thought but didn't say, watching Niko's expressionless eyes. 'I saw to your mare.'

  'My thanks. And for the bow. Janni's bier is set for morning. Will you help me with it? Say the words?'

  Crit rose; the operator in him still couldn't bear to officiate in public, yet if. he didn't, he'd never hold these men. 'With pleasure. Life to you. Stepson.'

  'And to you. Commander.'

  And that was that. His first test, passed; Niko and Tempus had shared a special bond. .

  That night, he called them out behind the barracks, ordering a feast to be served on the training field, a wooden amphitheatre of sorts. By then Straton had come out to join him, and Strat wasn't bashful with the mess staff or the hired help.

  Maybe it would work out; maybe together they could make half a Tempus, which was the least this endeavour needed, though Crit would never pair again ...

  He put it to them when all were well disposed from wine and roasted pig and lamb, standing and flatly telling them Tempus had left, putting them in his charge. There fell a silence and in it he could hear his heart pound. He'd been calmer ringed with Tyse hillmen, or alone, his partner slain, against a Rankan squadron.

  'Now, we've got each other, and for good and fair, I say to you, the quicker we quit this cesspool for the clean air of high peaks war, the happier I'll be.'

  He could hardly see their faces in the dark with the torches snapping right before his face. But it didn't matter; they had to see him, not he them. Crit heard a raucous growl from fifty throats become assent, and then a cheer, and laughter, and Strat, beside and off a bit, gave him a soldier's sign: all's well.

  He raised a hand, and they fell quiet; it was a power he'd never tried before: 'But the only way to leave with honour is to work your tours out.' They grumbled. He continued: 'The Riddler's left busy-work sorties enough - hazardous duty actions, by guild book rules; I'll post a list - that we can work off our debt to Kitty-Cat in a month or so.'

  Someone nay'd that. Someone else called: 'Let him finish, then we'll have our say.'

  'It means naught to me, who deserts to follow. But to us, to cadre honour, it's a slur. So I've thought about it, since I'm hot to leave myself, and here's what I propose. All stay, or go. You take your vote. I'll wait. But Tempus wants no man on his right at Wizardwall who hasn't left in good standing with the guild.'

  When they'd voted, with Straton overseeing the count, to abide by the rules they'd lived to enforce, he said honestly that he was glad about the choice they'd made. 'Now I'm going to split you into units, and each unit has a choice: find a person, a mercenary not among us now, a warm body trained enough to hold a sword and fill your bed, and call him "brother" - long enough to induct him in your stead. Then we'll leave the town yet guarded by "Stepsons" and that name's enough, with what we've done here, to keep the peace. The guild has provisions for man-steading; we'll collect from each to fill a pot to hire them; they'll billet here, and we'll ride north a unit at a time and meet up
in Tyse, next high moon, and surprise theRiddler.'

  So he put it to them, and so they agreed.

  NECROMANT by C. J. Cherryh

  The wind came from the north tonight, out of chilly distances, sending an unaccustomed rain-washed freshness through the streets of Downwind, along the White Foal where traffic came and went across the only bridge. The Stepsons had finally done the obvious and set up a guard post here; in these fractious times, things were bad indeed. Previous holders of power in Sanctuary had been content to watch and gather information. Now (when subtlety is lacking, one tries the clenched fist) they meant to control every move between Downwind and the Maze.

  Tonight another guard was dead, pinned to the post beside the guardhouse; the second one - no one knew where. The word spread in all those quarters where folk were interested to know, so that traffic on the bridge increased despite the rumbles of oncoming thunder, and those who for a day or two had been caught on one side of the White Foal or the other heard and went skittering, windblown, across the White Foal bridge, some shuddering at the erstwhile guard whose eyes still stared; some mocking the dead, how whimsical he looked, thus open-mouthed as if about to speak.

  For those who knew, the stationing of that corpse was a signature: the Downwind knew and did not gossip, not even in the security of Mama Becho's, which sat, a scruffy, doors-open building, a tolerable walk from the. White Foal bridge. Only the fact was reported there, that for the third time that week the bridge guard had come to grief; there was general grim laughter.

  The news found its way to the Maze on the other side and drew thoughtful stares and considerably less mirth. Certain folk left the Vulgar Unicorn with news to carry; certain ones called for another drink; and if there was gossip of what this chain of murders might mean, it was done in the quietest places and with worried looks. Those who had left did so with that skill of Maze-born skulkers, pretending indirection. They shivered at the sight of beggars in the streets, at urchins and old men, who were back again at posts deserted while the bridge guard had (briefly) stood.