Robert Asprin - Soul of the City

It was hard to accustom his eyes to the dark; the climb up the stairs had been too fast-everything was still milky green to Crit's fire-dazzled vision.

But Crit heard voices and slipped from the bay's back, his sword in hand.

Together, man and ghost-horse ventured into the dimness; horse's head snaked low, man's sword paralleling its questing muzzle.

"Dear gods, what's that smell?" Crit muttered to himself.

And someone answered: "Strat. Or me, Critias. Which smell do you mean?"

And the voice of Stilcho was familiar to Critias, who had once thought him the best of his kind of Stepson. Blinking, Crit strained to see the ruined visage of the undead soldier. Stilcho was one of Ischade's minions. He should have known the witch would still have her talons in Strat, one way or the other.

He was going to swing his sword up, cut the one-eyed, ghoulish head from Stilcho's torso and hope decapitation would provide the poor soul what rest Ischade had denied-not be cause he expected his poor quotidian blade to do the job against magic, but because he was a soldier and he could only do what he was trained to do, when his vision cleared enough to see that Stilcho's face was neither so ruined nor so hostile as it ought to be.

And a hand touched his right shoulder, squeezed, and rested there-Stilcho's hand, warm and with the pulse of mortal blood in it so strong Crit fancied he could feel it coursing.

"That's right," said Stilcho softly through a mouth hardly scarred, "I'm alive again. Don't ask-"

Crit's question, "How?" hung in the air until Stilcho volunteered, "It's just too complicated. Stepson. Ask about Strat, that's what you're here for... or at least that's what he's here for." Stilcho jerked a thumb toward the bay horse, head low, snuffling, taking slow, careful steps toward a shadow that might be a prostrate man with a woman crouched by his side.

"That's right, Stilcho-Strat. That's all I want. Not you or your witch woman." It was Ischade there, hulking over Strat- it must be. Ischade's ghost-man and ghost-horse, and the nec-romant herself, ringing Strat round with magic.

Crit considered seriously for the first time the possibility that he was going to die here. He didn't believe for a moment that Stilcho was "alive" in the way that Crit-or Strat, please gods-was alive.

He said to Stilcho, "That's him, then? He's alive, if he can't control his bowels. I'll just take him and be-"

A voice from the shadowed loft said, "Shit, Stilcho, he'll kill me," as a hand which was also Strat's reached up feebly to stroke the ghost-horse's questing muzzle and the horse started to bow down again, not realizing that Strat was too badly wounded to mount, no matter how easy the ghost-horse tried to make it.

Crit found that he was blinking back tears. Unreasonably, he wanted to sit down crosslegged where he was, let things take their course-even if it meant burning to death in this damned loft with a partner too sick to be moved but well enough to remember that Crit had shot at him.

Crit said, "I wouldn't-couldn't. I busted my butt getting here, Strat," but it came out hoarse and low and he said it to the straw scattered on the loft's floor at his feet.

The woman was trying to help Straton, who didn't realize he couldn't get on that horse by himself.

Crit sheathed his sword and put his hands in the air, then walked over to the place where the ghost-horse nuzzled its master encouragingly.

Strat, half-prone, was staring at him. The big fighter's hand was clutched to his chest or belly-Crit couldn't tell from all the blood in the way.

"Strat... Ace, for pity's sake, let me help you," Crit said, bending down on one knee, empty hands outstretched.

The ghost-horse neighed impatiently and butted Straton's shoulder. Behind the pair, the woman stood-the woman named Moria from the Peres estate, but dressed in street rags so that he hardly recognized her.

Stilcho said, "Strat, maybe you'd better... it's not going to be safe here much longer. They can take care of you better than we-"

"Stilcho," Moria hissed, "come away. It's for them to talk out."

"Talk?" Strat laughed and the laugh choked him, so that he gurgled and wiped his mouth with a hand that came away bloody. "We just did."

The wounded fighter reached with his bloody hand to take one of Crit's. "Well, Crit, you going to watch, or you going to give me some help?"

"Strat..." Crit embraced his partner, oblivious of might-be enemies about him, searching for harm, testing strength, mouthing harsh words that covered too much emotion; "You stupid bastard, when I get you fixed up I'm going to beat some sense into you."

And Strat said, "You do that," just about the time the bay horse trumpeted joyously as he felt Strat's weight on his back and Crit began the arduous process of leading the mounted, wounded man out of the stable's attic to safety at least of the sort a Sacred Band partner could provide.

Fire raged inside Ischade, now that she had quenched it in her clothing and her hair. It might have been her wrath that caused the houses across the alleys on either side of her to flame up as she passed-uptown alleys she'd traveled before and now again on her way to Tasfalen's velvet stronghold.

An ache and a fury was in Ischade and perhaps it spread around her. But perhaps it was just the pillar of flame and the young fires it set, so that better uptown streets (where Sanctuary's troubles never spread and rebels never sped) were a smoking labyrinth like some upscale version of the Maze.

Rebels skulked here now, and peasants, looting: Wrigglies, arms laden with pilfered, sooty treasure, jostled her, saw whom they bumped, and slunk away.

She saw rape and nearly stopped to feed-these mortal murderers wasted the best part of their victims, let the manna go, let the essence, precious soul and energy, escape. Ischade was weakened by the struggle in Peres's, somewhat. Somewhat. But not too much.

She moved on, through a day mercifully veiled in clouds and soot and a storm now rising off the sea. She wondered, as the sky blackened with thunderheads boiling up, if the storm was natural or summoned-then thought it didn't matter: it was convenient, either way.

She saw an enclosed Beysib wagon, overturned by brigands. Bald heads of Beysib males littered the environs like playballs from some devil's game, their accustomed torsos near but not attached. She saw what fate was dealt a pair of Beysib women. and wondered what the rebels thought to gain. If they kept their war to downtown, they might win it. Up here, they asked for retribution that would last for generations.

Amid pathetic cries, she stopped awhile, and closed her eyes-trusting to a cloaking spell to hide her. When she moved on, she was emboldened, strengthened, but sick at heart: for her to be reduced to scavenging was demeaning. But war did what it willed.

Thunder wracked the streets and she looked upward, grateful for the lowering, stormy dark but wary: she'd finish what she started, unless the stormgods intervened. She owed Tempus something. And she owed Haught a different thing.

She had her word to make good. She had her interests to secure. She had work to do before retiring to the White Foal's edge.

It was not painless for Ischade, this sneaking to Tasfalen's in the daylight. Janni, one others, was still trapped in the cone of flame, where Stormbringer and demons argued, where Rox-ane had been and now was not.

What would Tempus, who wanted the souls of his soldiers freed of strings and tortures, make of Janni's plight? Hardly an honorable rest, in his terms. But a piece of bravery, in hers, the like of which she'd never seen.

All for Niko, or for something more abstract? she wondered as she found Tasfalen's gate and then his steps and her thoughts turned to Haught and Roxane and what lay ahead, as she dealt with locks of natural and other kinds, and doors likewise doubled, and, as the last portal opened to her will, a raindrop struck her cheek, and then another, and thunder rolled.