by Janet Morris
There'd been no one in there; Grit's back was to its threshold. Straton's widening eyes warned him and he snapped upright, pushing back his chair with his knees: he couldn't draw his sword or get any momentum behind a knife-throw sitting down.
As he whirled to face whatever enemy had sneaked up on them and Straton reached behind him (from the wall taking a crossbow and fitting a bolt, levering it to firing position), a laugh—throaty and distinctly feminine—filled the room.
"Don't shoot, O mighty warriors! Stepsons, I surrender! Skewer me not, or my brother will have both your skulls made into lamps!" Then the figure stepped through the door and into the hearth-light.
Crit already knew by then who it was. That voice, neither he nor Straton would soon forget: Cime, Tempus's fey sister, had healed Straton's failing eyesight and Critias's battle wounds during the Wizardwall campaign.
She'd done more than that for Crit—bestowed her charms upon him and, for all he knew, on Straton, too. This had caused some little friction between the task force leader and Tempus, and because of that, Crit had found it expedient to cut her loose. Or so he chose to remember what had passed between them.
Whatever Straton thought was not mirrored in his eyes, but Sync—who'd never seen Cime, or anything, Crit was willing to bet, as arresting as the Riddler's sister in her Aškelonian blood-brown armor and her fearsome helmet with three bobbing plumes—looked as though someone had just clouted him on the head.
Straton said, "Oh, god's balls, now we're in for it. Lock up your family heirlooms, boys; try to get some sleep during the day."
"Excuse me?" Sync had no idea what Cime's presence meant—an escalation of all conflict, a surfeit of extracurricular problem-solving, division among allies, all the trouble this woman signified.
"Cime," Crit said. "Lovely to see you. Are we that late, that he's sent you down to hurry us along?"
She came toward them, her hips swinging as she moved in a rustle of armor and leather. Her gleaming boots punctuated her words as her heels cracked on the planked floor. "Critias, well met. And Straton, nice to see you. I trust you see me as well, Strat. And no, he didn't send me. I thought I'd come down here, though, and facilitate the mobilization of our forces—we wouldn't want the troops worn out from trekking just when we need them for such a tasty little war…" As she spoke, she snapped up her visor and then took off her helmet. Black hair cascaded down around her face, shining locks freed by the removal of diamond rods to whose power Critias could personally attest.
She took Grit's seat, opposite Sync, and smiled. "Who is this? Will neither of you two Stepsons introduce me?"
"We'd as soon not," Straton said. "We need him just like he is."
Crit looked down at Cime. He wished she'd disappear back into the dream lord's realm; he hoped she wasn't the jealous type, and that he could keep from falling under her spell again—for his own sake as well as Kama's and the Riddler's. He said, "This is Sync, captain of the ex-Rankan 3rd Commando, now reunited with your brother. Sync, meet Cime, sorcerer-slayer of renown. As you may know, Cime is Tempus's sister and thus off-limits to all of us—"
"Oh, yes?" Cime's neck craned and, peering up at him, her eyebrow raised, she reached for him and brought Grit's head down to hers. He couldn't do anything but let her kiss him.
He didn't like this at all. One thing was certain: with Cime here, he'd double-time his preparations; get his people out of town as soon as possible.
When he could disengage her, he wiped his lips with the back of his hand and said, "Can you move nearly a hundred fighters? Or is that too big a job for you?"
"Too what? Foolish boy. Sit down." She patted the table where she obviously expected him to perch while she wrested his command from him and started in straight away: "Tell me about this problem you're having with the mageguild—that junior Hazard, Randal, is it? I couldn't help but overhear."
Sync was watching her with the sort of fascination a cornered mouse has with a hungry snake.
Straton finally put his crossbow by arid sat, then, saying before Crit could find a nicer way: "Randal's a Stepson, a valued asset. You keep your hands off him. Our mage, a good one. Do you understand?"
"I understand, Ace," she called Strat by his war name, "though I'm not convinced that you do. If you really need to talk to Randal, I might be of help. But then, of course, it's up to you." She looked between Strat and Crit. "As for moving the troops by other than natural means, we'll talk about it this evening, Critias, just you and I.
Meanwhile—"
She turned the full force of her smokey gaze upon Sync and said, "Can it be that you're not feeling well, soldier? A touch of influenza, perhaps? You wouldn't want to catch that witchy plague going around hereabouts, would you?"
"Is that a threat?" Sync misunderstood.
Crit stiffened, but Cime only chuckled, saying that if Sync would repair with her to yonder bedroom and cross her palm with silver or with gold to satisfy "the ritual," then she'd make him well in no time, and immune to the plague thereafter.
* * *
Everyone prepares for battle in his own way.
Tempus, on the night he and Niko came within sight of the Mygdonian camp, got out his leopard-skin mantle and his helmet set with boar's teeth and sat quietly before his tethered Aškelonian, oiling his leathers and whetting his sharkskin-hilted sword and wrapping with cheesecloth every buckle, D-ring, and clasp among his panoply and tack that might clink. His horse, like Niko's, had been cooled, fed, groomed, and had its forelegs sheathed in oxhide wraps and its hooves silenced with leather boots. Now it stood above him, head high and nostrils distended to learn all it could from the breeze which brought the scent of Mygdonian horse-lines, cookfires, and enemies to it through the mixed grove of pine, ash, and maple in which they camped. Its oblong pupils glowed as it stared upwind through the rustling leaves.
Niko's stud was with its master, some distance off among the trees. A while ago, Tempus had heard the susurrus of horses' hooves disturbing fallen leaves, but now no sound came from the direction in which Stealth had disappeared. The boy sought his maat, no doubt, through meditation, or had piled up rocks and now sat waiting for Father Enlil's blessing before an improvised Storm God's shrine.
Tempus sought no divine sanction, no blessings from on high or even promptings from within. He blacked his face and limbs with soot, donned his fearsome helm, and smoked a broadleaf laced with krrf, his hands cupped around the coal to hide its light. Then, feeling as much the avatar of destruction as he looked, he set out to find his right-side partner. Though he respected the youth's need for privacy and ritual, it was time for them to go.
He found Niko standing in a clearing, his face pressed to his mount's neck, one arm over the beast's withers, and wondered transiently whether Stealth, a boy-soldier of unparalleled reputation with over a decade's experience in the field, was actually afraid. Then Tempus chided himself: in spite of the charmed panoply he wore and Aškelon's "best" intentions, Nikodemos was resoundingly mortal. If the youth knew fear, he had every right to entertain it: circumstances had conspired to put Niko on Tempus's right hand, alone, against a Mygdonian contingent two divisions strong.
In times like these, men went exclusively by war names. The habit was so ingrained in him that Tempus, whose true name was safely buried in his past, thought of himself now as men described him: the Riddler. And when he called to his rightman, he said, "Stealth. Time's up. Let's go."
His words were Mygdonian; they'd been speaking the language since coming down off Wizardwall to brush up on the tongue and thus on the mindset of their enemy. It was lucky Niko had spent time among Mygdonians; no other Stepson had.
As Stealth raised his head and turned to lead his horse in Tempus's direction, Tempus decided he'd best not fool himself: there was no luck abroad tonight, or any night he and Stealth did battle. As it had been for Tempus long ago, so it was now for the youngster coming toward him—with one glaring exception: Niko was no sleepless one.
Otherwise, they were a true pair, prompted by forces neither venerated into actions neither condoned. The worst thing about tutelary gods and supernal patrons' habits of "helping" chosen warriors was that deific or magical aid took all the honor out of war, the meaning out of sacrifice, and the joy out of winning.
By the time he'd mounted and reined his horse toward the Mygdonian encampment, Tempus was missing Vashanka, his old companion, Rankan berserker god and pillager extraordinaire: when Vashanka had habitually possessed him, at least in battle his own melancholia was eased and surmounting an enemy made some sort of sense.
If ever he came through this without losing his Stepsons—or especially without losing the particular Stepson slouched on the horse to his right— he'd cut loose the boy and his whole beloved cadre and go alone to seek his missing god in whatever hell or sorcerous prison He now dwelt. It was as close to a prayer as he could manage. But then, it had been centuries since Tempus had put any stock in the power of prayer.
He had that in common with the Mygdonians whom he and Niko then set out to spook: Mygdonians were godless to the man. They died without mumbling prayers or even making warding signs.
The first pair of sentries he and Stealth sneaked up on found their throats slit where they sat dozing and couldn't make a sound with their vocal cords cut. Though they had plenty of time before they bled to death to consign their souls to the gods with handsigns, they didn't—they just scuttled toward their camp, stumbling as they ran.
It didn't matter if the sentries made it back to camp, though that would be fine with Tempus: he wanted every casualty of their evening's work investigated, examined, accounted for.
But he couldn't wait around. They vaulted to their horses and split up: Stealth to use his throwing stars and poisoned blossoms along the western edge of the encampment, the Riddler to set tripwires across the southward trail.
When they met again, the youth had used nearly all his stars and Tempus's trap was well and duly set.
"The horses, now?" Stealth whispered, shoulder to shoulder with him and barely out of breath though in the camp alarms were sounding, men running to form search teams and groping for their weapons in the dark, trying to make sense of what was happening and shake off drunken sleep.
"Now," Tempus confirmed, knowing that war upon the horse-lines was distasteful to the youth: the flash of cold eye he met under Stealth's raised visor confirmed that, as of this moment, young Niko loved him less.
Feeling cheered, the Riddler took the wineskin full of naphtha that Stealth held out wordlessly and continued what the boy had started: laying an inflammable circle of the oil-based incendiary around the perimeter of the entire Mygdonian camp.
The poisoning of hay and water and the running off of mounts in which Stealth now engaged would save some beasts from fiery death, which horses fear the most of all.
Only for a moment did Tempus pause to watch the youngster slip through the undergrowth without a sound; one blink, and even the Riddler couldn't see him. Stealth had covered his panoply as well as his skin with soot: it was up to Tempus to affright them, Niko'd said; for his part, he'd content himself with killing them.
Then, as now, Nikodemos had reminded Tempus by his grim attitude more than his words that it was in behalf of Mygdonia that the witch, Roxane, had first tortured, then possessed, this Stepson. Revenge for Niko's ravaged spirit, his partner Janni's horrid death, had been what lured Tempus and his Stepsons north from Sanctuary. To avenge the harm the witch had done while inhabiting the boy and after, to his self-esteem and his reputation among his fellows, from whom Stealth still felt estranged, would take some doing: more Mygdonians than those camped before them would have to die before they got the witch.
Whether even Roxane's head upon his pike would reinstate the love and trust Nikodemos had once enjoyed as a core member of the Sacred Band, Tempus was not certain.
As Stealth slipped off to lime the water, taint the hay, and foul the wine and food on which the Mygdonian army depended, the Riddler circled west and north, the goatskin bag of naphtha ever lighter in his hands.
Twice he encountered sentries and twice he killed where he could not maim.
The object here, as previously, was to let some luckless fools run hysterically into camp with tales of a leopard-skinned apparition, a giant with no face in a boar's-tooth helm who was in a dozen places or more at once: let Roxane explain to the Mygdonians, if she could, what he was and from whence he'd come.
To make sure it was on him the soldiers concentrated, after him they searched, and upon his terrible aspect they meditated, he showed himself at times, riding into jittery, noisy groups of four and five who combed the woods on foot, letting his foul-tempered Aškelonian wreak havoc with its teeth and hooves while he cleaved about him with his god-given sword in his right hand and an old, beloved war ax in his left.
He took two crossbow bolts in one encounter, though he'd judged the quarters too close for archers, and bellowed loudly that they'd better get their warlocks and their witches to protect them as he pulled out the bolts with more contempt than he really felt and snapped them both in twain, casting them back into the midst of Mygdonians quaking in their turbans as his steed, squealing, galloped away.
When he reached their due-north rendezvous, Stealth was not yet there. The Riddler poured the last of the naphtha sparingly until he found the spot where Niko'd begun pouring his; then he sat at the joining of a naphtha circle which would soon be a ring of fire.
* * *
All this, without the aid of gods or the appearance of magical defenders? He could not quite believe his luck—nary a demon nor a fiend nor a white-eyed undead had come out to engage him. His horse had suffered only three superficial wounds on its rump. His own wounds hurt but they were bleeding less now; the profusion of blood making his right side sticky boded well for healing. Pain was something he'd learned long ago that one must endure.
Squatting on the ground, he bound his wounds and walked his blowing horse in circles while, just south of him, in the Mygdonian camp, chaos raged. By now they'd be shooting at each other. The point of this sort of harassment was to induce confusion; more casualties would result from the hapless in the way of their own crossbow fire and men too frightened to identify themselves before they started swinging than from what Tempus and Niko, striking as quickly as they could from all directions, had done so far.
Time was passing and the sky was getting bluish; they were losing the darkness. Where could Niko be?
The Riddler had to set the fire while the night was still upon their enemy. Though Mygdonians were godless, they were not free from superstition. They had no magic of their own because they feared it more than death. Their contract-mages, Nisibisi black artists, might hold them firm by threat in the face of mortal enemies, but if Tempus could convince them that they faced a vengeful god, they'd break and run.
When, after what seemed an interminable interval, Stealth had still not appeared, he considered alternatives: he could set the fire and return to his own base camp, trusting that the youth would join him when and if he could; he could try calling upon Stormbringer, or Aškelon, for aid; he could sortie into the camp himself to find the boy.
One remark that Nikodemos had made kept coming back to Tempus as he hesitated: "We ought to have Randal with us, commander. Much as I hate to admit it, we could use the Hazard's help."
The Riddler had said nothing at the time. Now he wished he'd heeded Stealth, back in Bashir's high keep, and ordered Randal to join them in the field rather than come up later with Grit's cadre. But like Cime's, Randal's help was tainted, could turn out for ill as well as good.
And Niko was Tempus's responsibility, if a fighter of his quality could be said to be anyone else's but his own.
So the Riddler got out his flint and steel and lit the naphtha, standing well back from it: if a diversion would be helpful and timely, the racing circle of flame, licking skyward, would do the job.
* * *
Niko
had been passing among the horse-lines, his palm trailing off rump after rump, his work there all but done, when some ill-tempered beast had kicked him.
Some horse's hind feet had struck him so hard in the chest that the force of it had lifted him off the ground. But for his cuirass, forged by ancient hands and tempered with magic, his ribcage would have been caved in, his breastbone crushed.
As it was, he woke flat on his back, trying to catch his breath, the sky above, bereft of stars, turning gray and brown, with the screams of men and horses in his ears.
Gray? Brown? That wasn't right. By some piece of serendipity he'd landed under a short pine tree with broad and thickly needled branches. As he struggled to his elbows, he caught the breath he'd needed. Then he understood the gray/brown sky: fire. The Riddler had lit the naphtha.
Although he knew what he would see, Niko pawed at the branches hiding him from the Mygdonians, half their turbans unwound to cover mouths and noses now, to see the ranks struggling with balky, fire-shy horses who'd already eaten and drunk enough of what Stealth had added to their hay and grain and water that many were already swelling with colic.
Some steeds had gone to their knees, heedless of the fire and the men who held their heads and tails to try to keep them on their feet. Others snapped at soldiers who tried to blindfold them or remove the tainted food.
From their concern with their mounts, he realized they did not yet know that the fire encircled them; when they did, it might be too late for most of these.
Gasping from the pain of cracked ribs as he struggled to his knees, Stealth sought a likely exit.
But none was immediately apparent: the smoke billowed inward and the Mygdonians ran hither and thither, and from the center of the camp where the brightly colored tents of royalty were pitched, women and robed figures which might be Nisibisi warlocks streamed to seek in vain the water Stealth had limed.
From his waterbag he poured mineral water onto a strip of linen he'd torn from his undershirt and bound the strip over mouth and nose. He tried not to dwell on the fact that Tempus had closed the trap with him inside: he told himself it was a compliment, that it proved his commander thought that Stealth could fend for himself.