Robert Asprin - The Face of Chaos

'0 gods,' Mradhon heard beside him, Moria lunged and he caught her arm. Hers was hard and tense; she twisted like a cat, but he held on.

'Moria,' her twin said, no longer twin, 'for Ils' sake listen -'

She stopped fighting then. Perhaps it was the face, which was vastly, horribly changed. Perhaps it was Haught, who moved in the way of her knifehand, making himself the barrier, too careless of his life. Haught was a madman. And he could win what no one else could. Moria stood still, still heaving for breath, while Mor-am stood still at Ischade's side.

'See what love is worth,' Ischade said, smiling without love at all. 'And loyalty, of course.' She walked a pace nearer, on the slanted stones. 'Mor-am's loyalty, now - it's to himself, his own interests; he knows.'

'Don't,' Mor-am said, with more earnestness than ever Mradhon had heard from the hardnosed, streetwise seller of his friends; for a moment the face seemed twisted, the body diminished, then straightened again - a trick of the light, perhaps, but in the same moment Moria's arm went limp and listless in his hand.

'You'd live well,' Ischade said in her quiet voice, an intimate tone which yet rose above the river-sound. 'I reward - loyalty.'

'With whatT Mradhon asked.

She favoured Mradhon with a long, slow stare, ophidian and, at this moment, amused.

'Gold. Fine wines. Your life and comfort. Follow me - across the bridge. I need four brave souls.'

'What for? To do what for you?'

'Why, to save a life,' she said, 'maybe. The bumed house. I'm sure you know it. Meet me there.'

The light went, the shadow rippled, and in the half-dark between the pilings and the flagstone bank, one shadow deserted them. The second started then to follow. 'TTie patrols -' he said to the dark, but she was gone then. Mor-am stopped, abandoned, his voice swallowed by the river-sound. He turned hastily, facing them.

'Moria -1 had a reason.'

'Where have you been?' The knife was still in Moria's hand. Mradhon remembered and took her by the sleeve.

'Don't,' Mradhon said, not for love of Mor-am, the gods knew; rather, a deep unease, in which he wished to disturb nothing, do nothing.

'What's this about?' Moria asked. 'Answer me, Mor-am.'

'Stepsons - They - they hired her. They sent - Moria, for Ils' sake, they had me locked up, they used me to bargain with - with her.'

'What are you worth?' Moria asked.

'She works for Jubal.'

That hung there on the air, dying of unbelief.

'She does,' Mor-am said.

'And you work for her.'

'I have to.' Mor-am turned, amorphous in his cloak, began to vanish among the pilings.

'Mor-am -' Moria started forward, brought up short in Mrad-hon'sgrip.

'Let him go,' Mradhon said, and in his mind was a faint far dream of doing something rash, breaking with sanity and heading for somewhere safe. To the Stepsons, might be. But that was, lately, no way to a long life.

Haught was on his way - why, he had no idea, whether it was despair or ensorcelment. 'Wait,' he called to Haught, losing control of things, but he had lost that when he had come out here, blind-sotted as Moria at her worst. He let her draw him up the stone facing, among the pilings, chasing after Haught at the first, but then joining him in the open, where anyone might spy them.

There was the empty guard station, the pole standing vacant.

'They got him down,' Haught said.

'Someone did,' Mradhon muttered, looking about. He felt naked, exposed to view. The rain spattered away at the board surface of the bridge, a shadowed span leading through the dark to Downwind, to Ischade. A distant, solitary figure flitted like illusion at its other end, lost itself into Downwind, among its shuttered buildings. Here they stood, neither one place nor the other, neither in the Maze of Sanctuary nor in the Downwind, belonging now to no one.

And there was no hiding now.

Haught started across the bridge. Mradhon followed, with Moria beside him, and all he could think of now was how long it took to get across, to get out of this nakedness. Someone was coming their way, a shambling, raggedy figure. He clutched his cloak about him, gripped his sword as this beggar passed; he dared not look when the apparition had gone by, but Moria swung on his arm, feigning drunkenness like some doxy.

''Sjust a beggar,' she said in full voice, hanging on him, terrifying him with the noise. Haught spun half-about, turned again, and kept walking like some honest man with disreputable followers - but no honest man crossed the bridge.

'Beggar,' Moria whined, leaning on Mradhon's arm. He jerked at her and cursed, knowing this mentality, this bloody-minded humour that he had had beside him in the field, soldiers who got this affliction. Heroes all. Dead ones. Soon. 'Straighten up,' he said, knowing her, knowing her brother, knowing that this was a game both played. He twisted at her arm. 'You see your brother? You see what games won him?'

She grew quiet then. Subdued. She walked beside him at Haught's back, past the tall end-pilings that themselves bore nail-holes from the time that hawkmasks, not Stepsons, were the prey.

To the right, a huddle of blackened timbers, of tumbled brick, was the burned shell of a house. Haught went that way, entering the shadow of Downwind, and they came after, out of choices now.

Erato slipped back into shadow, his pulse beating double-time, for a shadow had passed that disturbed him. He felt a presence at his shoulder, where it belonged, but he trusted nothing now. He scanned the figure at near range, his heart still thumping away until he had (pretending calm) resolved his left-hand man still beside him, and not some further threat, some shape-changer, night walker. He had no taste for this witch-stalking. 'They're across,' the partner said.

'They're across. We're not the only ones moving. Get back along the bank. Get the squad in place. Get a message back to base.' Erato moved back along the alley, headed towards the river house.

It smelled of double-cross, the whole business. His partner jogged off, holding his cloak tight to him, muffling his armour. They kept well away from the grounds, wary of traps. This was the place to watch. Here. He was sure of that. He settled in then, watching the storm clouds lose themselves on the seaward horizon in the dark, down that split that divided Downwind from Sanctuary, poor from rich, that division no bridge could span. He had been smug once, had Erato, well-paid, well-armed as he was, convinced of his own skill, of the reputation that would keep challenges off his neck. And somewhere in Downwind that bluff was called, and they dared not go in, dared not pass the streets except by day had effectively lost nighttime access to their own base beyond the Downwind, the slaver's old estate, and relied more and more on the city command. And their enemies knew it.

It would be a long, cold wait. It eroded morale, that view of the bridge, the river, the Downwind. The realization came to him that he was sitting now in the same kind of position the bridge guard had been in, alone out here. Sounds came and went in the streets, rustled in the thin line of brush that rimmed the river-shore. Wild fears dawned on him, to wonder whether the others were there, whether those sounds masked murder, creepings through cover, throats cut, or worse, his comrades snatched away as Stilcho had gone. He wanted to call out, to ask the others were they safe; but that was craziness. He heard the rustling again near himself.

Some vermin creeping about; they grew rats large here on riverside. So he told himself. Something feeding on the garbage that swept down the sewers, the gutters, some choice tidbit brought down from the dwellings of the rich, to tempt the rats and snakes. And the fear grew and grew, so that he eased his sword from its sheath and crouched there with his back pressed to the stones and his eyes constantly scanning the dark that he had view of.