Robert Asprin: The Dead of Winter

The band was sewn from parallel strips of colored cloth: green, red, black, blue, and yellow. Niko fingered it, said, "Fine, just don't call me Stealth in here-or anywhere. I need to sniff around before I make my presence known," and tied it on his upper arm before he looked questioning-ly at the dispatcher.

The old soldier in patched off-duty gear said, "You're on call to the Green Liners, remember, no matter what name you choose. The red's for the Blood Line: that's Zip's PFLS-Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary. Third Commando's backing that lot, so unless you've friends there, be careful in Ratfall, and in all of Downwind-that's their turf. The Blue Line follows the White Foal-those two witches down there, Ischade and the Nisibisi witch-bitch, have death squads to enforce their will, and Shambles Cross is theirs. The Black Line's round the Mageguild-the quays and harbors, down to the sea; the Yellow Line your own Stepsons threw up out west of Downwind and Shambles. You need any help, son, take my name in vain."

Niko nodded, said, "My thanks, sir. Life to you, and-"

"Your commander? Tempus? Will he follow? Is he here?" The eagerness in the dispatcher's voice gave Niko pause. Stealth's caution must have showed in his face, for the rough-hewn, one-eyed mere continued: "Strat's reclaimed the barracks for the Stepsons, but it was bloodier than a weekend pass to hell. We'd like to see the Riddler- nobody lessor's going to straighten this season's mess out."

"Maybe," Niko said carefully, "after the weather breaks-it's snow to your horse's belly upcountry by now." He wasn't empowered to say more. But he could ask his own question now. "And Randal? The Tysian Hazard who came downcountry with the advance force? Seen him?"

"Randal?" The bristling jaw worked and Niko knew that he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear. "Strat was asking for him, three, four times. Seems he was spirited right out of the Mageguild-or left on his own. You never know with wizards, do ya, son? I mean, maybe he up and left. It was right after the sack ofJubal's old-of the Stepsons' barracks, and it was so bad Strat took to sleeping here with us until they got the place cleaned up."

"Randal wouldn't do that," Niko said under his breath, rising to his feet.

"What's that, soldier?"

"Nothing. Thanks for the work-and the advance." The mercenary, who was older than he looked, even with a beard to point up hard-won scars, patted the purse hanging from his swordbelt. "I'll see you after a while."

Stealth needed to get out of there, ride perimeters, make sense of the worsened chaos in a town which had been as bad, last time he'd been here, as Niko would have thought a town could be.

And that got him to thinking, as he tacked up his horse and led it snorting into the sulky air of a late dawn only a week shy of the year's shortest day, about the last tour he'd done here.

Two winters ago. Stealth, called Nikodemos, had lost his first partner in Sanctuary-the man he'd partnered with according to Sacred Band rules for better than a decade had been killed here. It had hurt like nothing since his childhood servitude on Wizardwall had hurt; it had happened down on Wideway, in a wharfside warehouse. Return to Sanctuary was bringing back too many memories, unlaid ghosts and hidden pain. The following spring, still here as part ofTempus's cohort of Stepsons, he'd lost his second partner, Janni. He'd lost Janni to the Nisibisi witch. Death's Queen, and left then, quit Sanctuary for cleaner wars, he'd thought, up north.

In the north he'd found the wars no cleaner-he'd fought Datan, lord archmage of Wizardwall, and Roxane on Tyse's slopes and up on the high peaks where he'd spent his youth as one of the fierce guerrillas called Successors, led now by his boyhood friend, Bashir. Then Niko had fought beside Bashir and Tempus, his commander, against the Mygdonians, venturing beyond Wizardwall to see what no man should see-Mygdonian might allied with renegade magic so that all the defenders Tempus arrayed against them were, by default, pawns in a war of magic against the gods.

After that campaign, he'd taken part in the change of emperors that occurred during the Festival of Man and then, tired to his bones of war and restless in his spirit and his heart, he'd taken a youth-a refugee child half Mygdonian and half a wizard-far west to the Bandaran isles of mist and mysticism where Niko himself was raised, where he'd learned to revere the elder gods and the elder wisdoms of the secular adepts, who saw gods in men and men in gods and had no truck with such young and warring deities as Ilsigi and Rankan alike brought alive with prayers and sacrifice.

Yet all the blood he'd spilled and honors he'd won and tears he'd shed, far from Sanctuary, fell away from him as soon as he'd saddled his sable stallion in the stable behind the mercenaries' guildhall and gone venturing in the town. For there was one thread of continuity, one sameness Niko's maat sensed in Sanctuary that had been with him since last he'd served here as one of Tempus's Stepsons and-with the exception of his time in far Bandara-had been with him ever since as it was with him still: Roxane, the Nisibisi witch.

Sidling through the upscale crowd in the Alekeep to find the owner, a man Niko had known well enough to court his daughter when he'd been stationed here before and a man who had a right to know that the daughter's shade, long undead under the witch's spell, had finally been put to rest by Niko's own hand, the fighter called Stealth was suddenly so aware of Roxane that he fancied he could smell her musk upon the beerhall's air.

She was here, somewhere. Close at hand. His maat told him so-he could glimpse the cobalt-shining trails of Roxane's magic out of the corner of his inner eye the way some lesser man might glimpse a stalker's shadow in his peripheral vision. Niko's soul had its own peripheral vision in the discipline of transcendent perception, a skill which let him track a person or sense a presence or gather the gist of emotions aimed his way, though he could not eavesdrop on specific thoughts.

The Alekeep was freshly whitewashed and full of determined revelers, men and women whose position in the town demanded that they show themselves at business as usual, undisturbed by PFLS rebels or Beysib interlopers or Nisibisi wizardry. Here Rankan Mageguild functionaries in robes that made them look like badly-set tables hobnobbed with caravanners and Palace hierophants all intent on the same end: safety for their business transactions from the interference of warring factions; safety for their persons and their kin from undeads and less numinous terrorists; safety-it was the most sought after commodity in Sanctuary these days.

Safety, so far as Niko was concerned whenever he came out of Bandara into the World, was beside the point. In his cabin on its cliff he could be safe, but then his gifts of maat and his deep perceptions were turned inward, useful only to the student, not, as they were meant, carried by him abroad in the World to turn a fate or two or stem a tide gone too far in any one direction.

Maat forced its bearer out, among its opposite, Chaos, to set whatever imbalances he could to rights. It always hurt, it always cost, and he always longed for Bandara when his strength was spent. But, when he was home, he always grew restless, strong and able, and so he'd come out again, even into Sanctuary, where Balance was just an abstract, where everything was always wrong, and where nothing any man-or even demigod like Niko's commander Tempus-could do would bring even an intimation of lasting peace. But peace, Niko's teacher had said, was death. He would have it by and by.

The witch, Roxane, was death also. He hoped she couldn't sense him as clearly as he could her. Though he'd been at pains to keep his visit here a secret from those who'd use him if they could, Niko was drawn to Roxane like a Sanctuary whore to a well-heeled drunk or, if rumor could be believed, like Prince Kadakithis to the Beysa Shupansea.