by Janet Morris
He struggled up on his elbows, incensed, all the meddling of these women in his affairs suddenly too much to bear. "How?" he thundered. "As I have kept you at arm's length? Jihan in her place? The witch-bitch away from my fighters? If I could banish the lot to any purgatory—Sanctuary, Bandara, a handy underworld, or worse, be assured I'd have done it long ago!"
"Ah, Tempus, Tempus. You still don't understand, poor thing." She reached out to touch his cheek and he struck her hand away. "You need me, brother, to fight your battles for you. Or will you be content to lose this one, too?"
And she stormed out, hopefully to get Jihan and Shamshi. If not, Critias and he had a backup plan they'd as soon put into effect: descend on Ajami's party and chop the lot into pieces small enough to be sent throughout Mygdonia in presentation boxes. That's what Crit was doing now—positioning one hundred fighters in hidden but strategic emplacements around the demilitarized meeting place, ready to strike on signal.
It was a comforting thought; he yawned, lay back, and stared at the tentpole with its quivering luffing. At times like these, he really wished that he could sleep, avoid the most disagreeable stages of his body's healing. The area in question burned and ached and pulsed at every cut and mending wound and, as he lay there, it began to itch.
He mustn't scratch it. He sat up and yelled for the Sacred Banders who had appointed themselves his sentries. When they came, he said, "Get me Critias and Randal."
But Crit was nowhere to be found. Straton came instead, outspoken and blunt as usual. "What's this about pardoning Grillo? Your sis—the lady Cime—says to let him go, that he's turned informer and now he's worth his weight in gold."
"You don't think he is?"
"Not to me. Not to Crit. We've known about him since before we left Tyse—we brought his bed-warmer in and we'd have sweated him ourselves except for his friendship with you."
"Sometimes Cime's right, you know. We'll give Grillo another chance—he's not going anywhere but with us, not for the winter season, anyway."
"To Mygdonia? You still think we will, no matter how this negotiation works out?" Strat's eagerness was obvious: he flexed his big hands as he spoke.
"We will. Trust me. And, since we're speaking of friendship—where's Crit?"
Straton looked uncomfortable. "Lots of details to attend to, commander… this and that."
"Which this? Which that?"
Strat grimaced. "Kama's which 'this and that', sir."
"Is Crit disobeying my orders?"
"Don't make me tell tales about my left-side leader, commander."
"I count on you, Ace, to keep me informed, in confidence, of what I need to know. I haven't time to confront Crit with minor infractions or the inclination to interrogate him. If whatever's on his mind is affecting his performance, it's your duty to let me know."
"I really don't see that it is, commander. He's got a lot of details to take care of, that's all."
"If the situation changes, you'll let me know?"
Strat took that as a dismissal. He stood up and backed away, stooped over, toward the tent's flaps. "Yes, commander, I surely will."
When Straton was gone, Tempus had a few moments to consider Sacred Bands and loyalty beyond question and to wonder whether it wasn't time for him to show himself, wounds or no, to the men who were about to risk their lives for him—Stepsons, 3rd Commando, Grillo's specials, Bashir's free men.
He'd just gotten to his feet and endured a spell of dizziness and pain when Randal, who didn't have to duck to enter the low black tent, came inside and saw him.
"Here," Randal offered, "let me help."
With an arm around Randal's bony shoulders, Tempus made his way outside where he could supervise the preparations, and where his men could see him—his presence itself was a galvanizing force among these fighters.
"How's Niko, Randal?" Tempus asked the Hazard as he took his arm away and stood unsupported to return salutes and greetings from the men busy breaking camp.
Above Randal's head the day was cloudless but for a roiling gray mass coming toward them against the prevailing wind from the high peaks to the south. "Not as fit as he'd like to be; he wants to accompany us to the meeting with Ajami. He thinks he's paid in advance for the 'honor' and that he's got a vested interest… some Sacred Bander's right he can invoke—"
"Go with us?" Tempus was watching the cloud behind Randal's head.
"Well," Randal wheedled, drawing himself up tall. "You can't go without me! What if the witch attacks again? You'll need me."
"Cime will be there," Tempus reminded the mageling.
"She doesn't scare me now that I've got my globe—except…"
"Yes, Randal?"
"Well, you see… on Meridian she happened to get hold of a gold coin of mine and… ah… she is your sister and she doesn't care for mages, as you know. I've got to get it back from her somehow."
Tempus's lips twitched. "In other than the customary fashion, you mean? I'll see what I can do."
"Would you? Oh, thank you! I really would feel better. I'm, ah, untried in her area of expertise, if you understand me. And I'd prefer to stay that way—makes for more power in an adept if he's celibate by choice."
"Surely you're not saying that you've never—Yes, I see you are. And is that so? Most sorcerers I've run into seem to fornicate with more abandon than—"
"Not all." Randal raised one hand as if giving a tutorial. "Not all adepts, that is. Power can come from demonic aides and devils under contract; another sort is had by becoming a pure black artist of the twelfth degree… untainted by passion or—
Randal continued explaining, but Tempus wasn't listening. The cloud coming toward them was arc-ing low. "Excuse me, Randal. Go see if you can use your adept's gift to help Niko get ready to ride. If he wants to come and he's able, then he's welcome." Patting the mage on the shoulder, Tempus walked away from a fountain of protective objections and suggestions aimed at keeping Niko out of harm's way.
Tempus hoped Randal would learn without an object lesson that no pairbound partner has the right to stand in front of the other: not even to protect his life would Niko accept that sort of help.
Then the cloud touched down and in it a vortex spun, opening like a maw. Through it could be seen three horses—one sable, two grays—and behind them Bashir's high peaks ramparts.
Tempus's Aškelonian trumpeted its joy to see him and to step once more on solid ground. Behind Cime, on the Aškelonian, Jihan waved from the back of one Trôs horse, who rumbled a softer greeting; ponied to its saddlehorn was its brother, with little Shamshi riding tall and bringing up the rear.
Once the cloud had irised in then popped out of existence, Tempus had his hands full: Cime had to be convinced to give up Randal's coin; Jihan had to be greeted with decorum. He must assuage Jihan's wrath at the damage done him and the slight he'd delivered unto her by leaving her "babysitting on Wizardwall" while "Cime and your favorite Stepsons had all the fun!"
"There's more fun to be had, I assure you," he told the Froth Daughter, and was rewarded: the red, feral flecks faded from her eyes.
If it was going to be difficult to wrest the mageling's coin from his sister, it might be impossible to convince Jihan that for all their sakes she must give up Shamshi, her all-but-adopted child.
"But he's a wizard's son," she objected, once they were alone and the murmur of her scale armor as it slithered over her glowing musculature made him wish he felt a little better, and then tell himself he might just feel well enough.
"They'll kill him," Jihan continued, "poor little wraith, when they find out he's not Adrastus Ajami's—and kill his mother, too. She was blinded by the witch Roxane. Is that not punishment enough? Besides," Jihan pouted, kneading his sore muscles where they'd found privacy among the pines, "he's made me promise not to give him back to the Mygdonians. He loves me. He wants to stay with me."
"What say we escort him to Mygdon so he can tell his father that? He's officially a man, by age at least, and i
n private, confidentially, we can probably convince Adrastus to give the boy leave to serve with me—under your protection, of course."
Tempus was grasping at straws, he knew; but Jihan, her breath coming faster as she ran her fingers over him, was by no means an expert at the machinations of strategy or diversionary tactics.
"And if I say yes to you, sleepless one, and lose the boy in spite of all you say, will you give me a child of my own to love and care for?" she demanded as she straddled him, her lips puffed with passion and her voice thick with longing.
"You know I can't do that," he said, his hands on her waist as he guided her into a position so compromised that he was sure that at least for the nonce she would do just what he told her. "Your father's forbidden it. Talk to him, not me. But short of that, I promise, you'll have nothing to regret."
That was one promise he could make good and one tactic at which he had no peer.
* * *
At dawn on the meeting day the sky was clear and a flock of geese passing overhead, right to left, was taken by both the overt negotiating party and the hidden commando units as an omen of success.
Down on the flat of the valley Lacan Ajami had specified, brightly colored tents were pitched and around them a dozen figures darted, setting out two gilded chairs and a laden victuals table under a red-and-black-striped awning.
A string of horses, groomed and black of hoof, stamped their feet off to one side. None of these were saddled; like the hard-steel weapons on display upon a propped-up board and the bubbly-pipes of gold and silver scattered around on little legged trays, they were there to sweeten the pot, to be traded or given up for this or that advantage, or to show good faith, or seal a bargain.
This made Crit think that the negotiation might be a real one, and not a wizard-sponsored trap, as Cirne maintained that it was. There had been a row last evening between the Riddler and his sister, something about a coin which had once belonged to Randal. Because of it, Cime had come to Crit and he'd had no choice but to accommodate her: she was one woman he didn't want for an enemy.
Because Crit felt so strongly about Kama, he'd all but ignored her ever since Cime had shown up. Thus Kama was in the peace mission's traveling party; to have forbidden her, Crit would have had to tell the Riddler she was pregnant, or make up some reason which wouldn't ring false to his commander, or to Cime, or to Sync. Crit hadn't been able to think of one.
Niko, too, was there… sort of: mounted on his Aškelonian, helmet on, visor down, gloved and armored with his mantle flapping behind, he hadn't said a word to anyone.
Nor had Randal, on a sorrel from Grit's string, sneezed even once, though the horse's thick winter coat was coming in and Crit hadn't had time to curry the fat, battle-seasoned gelding, only to saddle it and leave it before the private tent Niko's injuries had gotten the pair. He'd called out but no one had answered; he'd ground-tied the horse and left.
This silent, almost eerie pair rode right behind Strat and Crit, who headed up the delegation. Behind them were Sync and Kama, both in 3rd Commando dress-blacks and flashing "ceremonial" weaponry that no one was sure wouldn't see real, unceremonious use this day.
Then came Gayle and Ari, experts, if such existed, on Nisibisi trickery. Crit could hear Gayle's profane carping: the ex-special was telling Ari to "pork 'em if we porking-well see those porkers make one porking move that don't look right. Otherwise, we're porked," and enjoining Ari to keep his crossbow on his hip in euphemistic language that made even Kama turn her head and stare. Gayle had never talked that way in her presence when he'd thought of her as a woman; these days, with her unit around her, the Stepsons treated Kama just like any other fighter. Crit wished he could do the same.
In the middle of the procession were Tempus, Jihan, Shamshi, and Cime; close together, side by side, even. Crit couldn't imagine what Tempus was thinking of, offering such a tempting target to the Nisibisi wizard-caste: if he were leading the opposition, Crit would gladly have sacrificed the boy to take out the other three. Without Tempus, Jihan, and the sorcerer-slayer who'd done away with the archmage of black Nisibis, Mygdonia could camp here until spring and then march through Wizardwall's passes with no fear of significant resistance.
No commando worth the title could resist that coup.
So Crit's neck was getting sore from twisting in his saddle and craning his head around at the piney slopes and wondering whether the hundred fighters he'd deployed plus the twenty in their party could stand against a mixed offensive of ten times their number when some were warlocks. If it was just Mygdonians, ten to one were odds Crit was comfortable with, given that his men were all Stepsons, 3rd Commando veterans, Nisibisi free men who hated sorcery more than they loved their own lives, and specials… well, perhaps, if truth be known, he didn't rate the specials as highly as the rest. But there were none of them in this party: just Gayle and Ari, who were now Stepsons, and proud of it.
Crit heard something rattling like a diamond-back and shifted, one hand on his horse's rump, to detect its source.
Randal's kris, it must have been. The mage's gloved hand was tight upon its hilt. Like Niko, the Hazard was accoutered so that no square inch of skin or strand of hair could be seen. As for the kris, Crit had heard stories of what the charmed blades could do and of where Randal had acquired this one.
Crit faced front again. Someone had to look Ajami in the face and smile and get things off to a good start. That's what he was doing up front: Tempus wanted things to proceed to whatever conclusion without any provocation from their side. If Ajami was serious about negotiating, Tempus had instructed Crit, then negotiate they would. It was the honorable thing to do.
Straton, privately, had asked Crit if he believed the Riddler would actually give up the boy and revenge upon the Nisibisi black artists who had sicced the homunculus on him, tortured and murdered Stepsons, possessed Niko and most recently Grillo, just for an uneasy peace which could extend no farther than the northern border of Free Nisibis and the southern reaches of Tyse: Tempus had no mandate from Ranke to make a treaty more far-reaching. "And I don't think," Strat had said, "that the Nisibisi warlocks and that yum-yum, Roxane, are going to let Ajami give up until they've got back their ancestral haunt—or they're all dead and comfy in their witchy graves."
As usual, Straton seemed to be reading Crit's mind. In allaying Strat's doubts, Crit had circum-locuted his own, but failed to convince either one of them. They had too much combined experience to expect a final resolution, a fair settlement, or anything but treachery and deception which, Crit well knew, only led to one thing: war.
But it was the kind of war he liked, not street-fighting or police actions against civilian populations. Crit had put it to Strat this way: "Wouldn't you rather fight in Mygdon, where the pillage is easy?"
"And the women sultry?" Strat had added. They were curious about the north; only Niko had spent any time there. Not even the Riddler had sojourned among the peoples of the Mygdonian Alliance. When Tempus was warring this far north, there hadn't been any Mygdonian Alliance; in fact, there'd been no Mygdonia whatsoever, just tribal troops and farmers with regional councils and vigilante groups —no league of city-states.
When they reached the valley floor, and brightly clad Mygdonians in their best brocade surcoats and pantaloons came out to take their horses by the bridles, Crit gave all his worries to the gods: he was going to have to dismount and pretend he believed in all this pomp and ceremony, take seriously what was likely going to be a bad and possibly expensive joke. It was his job to make sure that this joke, when it came to light, was not on him and his, but on Lacan Ajami's army of turbaned fighters and Nisibisi dark lords.
He was just noticing that not a witch was to be seen among the Mygdonian negotiating team and absently calculating the visible odds—five to one in favor of the Mygdonian Alliance—when the sky above turned a seamless, dirty yellow and the air became very still.
Then everything—the Mygdonian coming toward Crit to take his horse by the
bridle, the tent-flaps opening to reveal Lacan Ajami with a witch on his arm whose hand was extended in the direction of Crit's party, even a hawk wheeling high overhead in the motionless air—seemed to stop.
* * *
Cime had been expecting something like this— some underhanded trick from the Nisibisi witch-bitch. Cime was prepared and all her allies were at her beck and call.
But no one else of Tempus's party was ready for fielded sorcery, except perhaps Randal, the Tysian Hazard, and the boy-wizard, Shamshi.
Tempus was still moving, if slowly—a testament to his strength of character, his inveterate stubbornness, nothing more. The Froth Daughter was frozen as still as a statue, but for roving eyes which made her better off than the soldiers of their party, asleep between blinks, arrested in mid-movement, all twenty fighters and their horses as inanimate as garden statuary.
Cime kept still: she wanted Roxane to come closer.
But even with so great an advantage, the Nisibisi Death Queen was cautious: she held back, only her laughter coming toward the spellbound group of victims, as she pointed out to Ajami Tempus's languid, slow-motion struggle to dismount. Lacan Ajami didn't look as happy as the witch beside him: he was an honorable man in his own eyes. Wanton slaughter of helpless victims was not his style.
Yet, at Roxane's urging, Ajami gave the order and his Mygdonians rushed into "battle" against a helpless enemy.
Still Cime held her own forces in abeyance, until the witch herself stepped forward, out of the shadow of her magical tent. Until three Mygdonians had almost reached her brother, who was drawing his sword slowly and from whose mouth issued a war cry distorted beyond recognition into a low, meaningless growl.
Then Cime took her diamond rods in hand, raised one up to heaven and pointed the other straight ahead, calling in a bold, commanding voice upon her consort and upon the powers concerned to render aid unto their constituents: "Now!"
And as she did, the boy-wizard Shamshi slipped from his horse, crying, "Roxane, Roxane!" and Randal's armored form vaulted from its horse, kris drawn, with throwing stars and poisoned blossoms streaming from the mage's person like a swarm of bees, downing the ten closest Mygdonians in an instant.