Robert Asprin: Soul of the City

Thus it was whispered, as the storm raged unabated into its second day, that Theron and his creature Tempus were to blame for this black blizzard straight from hell.

It was whispered by a woman to Critias, Tempus's first officer and finest covert actor, who had infiltrated the noble strata of the imperial city; And Crit, with a wry twitch of lips that drew down his patrician nose and a rake of his swordhand through dark, feathery hair, replied to the governor's wife he was bedding: "No one gives a contract for a sunrise, m'lady. No man. that is. Theron is no more than that. When gods throw tantrums, even Tempus listens."

Crit had fought in the Wizard Wars up north and the woman knew it. His guise was that of a disaffected officer who had renounced his commission after Abakithis's assassination at the Festival of Man and now, like so many others of the old guard, scrambled from allegiance to allegiance in search of safety.

So the governor's wife just ran a finger along his jaw and smiled commiseratingly as she said, "You men of the armies ... all alike. I suppose you're telling me that this is good? This storm, this hail black as hell? That it's a sign we poor women cannot read?"

And (thinking of the prognosticators-bits of hair and silver and bone and luck nestled in the pouch dangling from his belt that, with the rest of his clothes, lay in a heap at the foot of another man's bed) Crit replied in Court Rankene, "When the Storm God returns to the armies, wars can be won-not just fought interminably. Without Him, we've just been marking time. If He's angry, He'll let us know on what account. And I'd bet it won't be Theron's-or Tempus's. One's a general whom the soldiers chose exactly because the god had abandoned us during Abakithis's reign; the other is..."

It was not the woman's hand, reaching low, which made him pause. She wanted Crit's protection; information was what he'd sought here in return. And gotten what he'd come for, and more from this one-all a Rankan lady had to give. So he thought-in a moment of unaccustomed tenderness for one who would likely entertain, on his account, the crowds who'd throng the execution stands when the weather broke-to explain to her about Tempus. About what and who the man Crit had sworn to serve was, and was not.

He settled for "... Tempus is what Father Enlil-Lord Storm to the armies-wills, and cursed more than Ranke and all her enemies put together. By gods and men, by magic and mages. If there's hell to pay because of Theron's reign, rest assured, lady, it's he who'll suffer in all our steads."

The Rankan woman, from the look on her face and the hunger on her lips, had lost interest in the subject. But Crit had not. When he left her, he marked her door with a sign for the palace police without even a second thought to the fine body behind it which would soon be lifeless.

The sky was still black as a witch's crotch and the wind was chorusing its judgment song in a many-throated voice Crit had heard occasionally on the battlefield when Tempus's non-human allies took a hand in this skirmish or that choraling the way it used to when wizard weather blew in Sanctuary, where Crit's partner and his brothers of the Sacred Band were now, down at the empire's most foul and egregious southernmost appurtenance.

By the time Crit had retrieved his horse, his fingers were playing with the luck charms in his beltpouch. Normally, he'd have pulled them out, squatted down, shaken and thrown them in the straw for guidance.

But the storm was guidance enough; he didn't need to ask a question he wouldn't like the answer to. If his partner Strat had been on his right tonight, he'd have bet his friend any odds that, when the weather broke, Tempus would come rousting Crit without so much as an explanation and they'd be heading south to Sanctuary where the Sacred Band was quartered for the winter.

Not that he didn't want to see Strat-he did. Not that he wasn't happy that the Storm god Vashanka, God of the Annies, of Rape and Pillage, of Bloodlust and Fury and Death's Gate, was manifest-he was. What he'd told the Rankan bitch was true-you couldn't win a war without your god. But Vashanka, the Rankan Storm God, had deserted the Stepsons, Crit's unit, in their need. So the unit had taken up with another, perhaps greater, god: Father Enlil.

And the black, roiling clouds above, the voices which spoke thunder over the fighter's head, were telling a man who didn't like gods much better than magic and who was first officer to a demigod who meddled with both, that Vashanka might not be too pleased with the fickle men who once had slaughtered in His name and now did so in Another's.

Things were so damned complicated whenever Tempus was .involved.

Grabbing a tuft of mane, Crit swung up on his warhorse and reined it around so hard it half-reared and then, finding itself headed toward the mercenaries' guild and its own stall, safety and comfort in the storm, fairly bolted through the treacherous, slushy streets of Ranke.

Despite the darkened ways and chancy footing, Crit let the young horse run, trusting pedestrians, should there be any, to scatter, and armed patrols to recognize him for who and what he was. The horse had a right to comfort, where it could find some. Crit couldn't think of a thing that would do the same for him, now that the gods had dropped one shoe and all he could do was wait until Tempus dropped the other.

The storm didn't exactly break, but on the fourth day it mellowed.

By then, Theron and Tempus had summoned Brachis, High Priest of the Variously Named Wargods of Imperial Ranke, and concocted a likely story for the populace.

Executions, held in abeyance for the first three days of the storm, were resumed. "More purges, obviously. Your Majesty," Brachis had suggested, unctuous to the point of insult, managing by his exaggerated servility to mean the opposite of what he said, "will appease the hungry gods."

And Theron, old and as gray as the shadows in this newly acquired but not yet conquered palace full of politicians and whores, gave Brachis a tare fully as black as the raging sky outside and said, "Right, priest. Let's have a dozen of your worst enemies bled out in Blood Square by lunch."

Tempus stayed an impulse to touch his old friend Theron's knee under the table.

But Brachis didn't rise to Theron's bait. The priest bowed his way out in a swish of copper-beaded robes.

"God's balls, Riddler," said the aging general to the ageless one, "do you think we've angered the gods? More to the point, do you think we've got one to anger?"

Theron's jaw jutted so that the pitting of age made it look like a walnut shell, or the snout of the moth-eaten geriatric lion he so much resembled from his thinning, unkempt mane to his scarred and twisted claws. He was a big man still, his power no mere memory, but fresh and flowing in corded veins and leathery sinews-big and powerful in his aged prime, except when seen in close proximity to Tempus, the avatar of Storm Gods on earth, whose yarrow-honey hair and high brow free from lines resembled so much the votive statues of Vashanka still worshiped in the land. Tempus's eyes were long and full of guile, his form heroic, his aspect one of a man on the joyous side of forty, though he'd seen empires rise and fall and fully expected to see the end of this one-to bury Theron as he had and would so many other men, with all their might ranged round them. And Theron knew the truth of it-he'd known Tempus since both were seemingly of an age, fighting the Defender on Wizardwall's skirts when the Rankan Empire was just a babe. The two were honest with one another when it was possible; they were careful when it was not.

"Got a god to anger? We've got something mad enough to spit, I'll own," Tempus replied. Now, Tempus knew, was not the time to raise false hopes of Vashanka the Missing God's return in a warrior who'd willingly and knowingly come to a throne whose weight would kill him. It was the dirtiest of jobs, was kingship, and Theron had become the man to do it by default. "If it's Vashanka, then it's a matter between Him and Enlil. Theomachy tends to kill more men than gods. Don't be too anxious to get the armies' hopes up-the war with Myg-donia won't end by gods' wills, any more than it will by Nisi-bisi magic."