Robert Asprin - Shadow Of Sanctuary

Hanse just stared at Stepson, whose voice had grown husky in the telling, when the mercenary left off.

'Now, will you help me? Please. He would want it to be you.'

Hanse made a sign.

' Would want it to be me?' the thief frowned. 'He does not know about this?' There came the sound of Shadowspawn's bench scraping back.

Abarsis reached out to touch the thief's shoulder, a move quick as lightning and soft as a butterfly's landing. 'One must do for a friend what the friend cannot do for himself. With such a man, opportunities of this sort come seldom. If not for him, or for your price, or for whatever you hold sacred, do this thing for me, and I will be eternally in your debt.'

A sibilant sound, part impatience, part exasperation, part irritation, came sliding down Shadowspawn's hawkish nose.

'Hanse?'

'You are going to surprise him with this deed, done? What if he has no taste for surprises? What if you are wrong, and he refrains from aiding her because he prefers her right where she is? And besides, I am staying away from him and his affairs.'

'No surprise: I will tell him once I have arranged it. I will make you one more offer: Half again the doubled fee you suggested, to ease your doubts. But that is my final bid.'

Shadowspawn squinted at the heartshaped face of Stepson. Then, without a word, he scooped up the short stabbing sword in its silver sheath, and found it a home in his belt. 'Done,' said Hanse.

'Good. Then, will you meet my companions?' The long-fingered, graceful hand of Stepson, called Abarsis, made a gesture that brought them, all smiles and manly welcomes, from their exile by the bar.

5

Kurd, the vivisectionist who had tried his skills on Tempus, was found a fair way from his adobe workshop, his gut stretched out for thirty feet before him: he had been dragged by the entrails; the hole cut in his belly to pull the intestines out was made by an expert: a mercenary had to be at fault. But there were so many mercenaries in Sanctuary, and so few friends of the vivisectionist, that the matter was not pursued. The matter of the Hell Hound Razkuli's head, however, was much more serious. Zaibar (who knew why both had died and at whose hands, and who feared for his own life) went to Kadakithis with his friend's staring eyes under one arm, sick and still tasting vomit, and told the prince how Tempus had come riding through the gates at dawn and called up to him where he was checking pass-bys in the gatehouse: 'Zaibar, I've a message for you.'

'Yo!' Zaibar had waved. 'Catch,' Tempus laughed, and threw something up to him while the grey horse reared, uttered a shrill, demonic scream, and clattered off by the time Zaibar's hand had said head: human; and his eyes had said, head: Razkuli's and then begun to fill with tears.

Kadakithis listened to his story, looking beyond him out of the window the entire time. When Zaibar had finished, the prince said, 'Well, I don't know what you expected, trying to take him down so clumsily.'

'But he said it was a message for me,' Zaibar entreated, caught his own pleading tone, scowled and straightened up.

'Then take it to heart, man. I can't allow you two to continue feuding. If it is anything other than simple feuding, I do not want to know about it. Stepson, called Abarsis, told me to expect something like this! I demand a stop to it!'

'Stepson!' Tall, lank Zaibar snarled like a man invoking a vengeful god in close fighting. 'An ex-Sacred Bander looking for glory and death with honour, in no particular order! Stepson told you? The Slaughter Priest? My lord prince, you are keeping deadly company these days! Are all the gods of the armies in Sanctuary, then, along with their familiars, the mercenary hordes? I had wanted to discuss with you what could be done to curb them-'

'Zaibar,' interrupted Kadakithis firmly. 'In the matter of gods, I hold firm: I do not believe in them. In the matter of mercenaries, let them be. You broach subjects too sensitive for your station. In the matter of Tempus, I will talk to him. You change your attitude. Now, if that is all... ?'

It was all. It was nearly the end of Zaibar the Hell Hound's entire career; he almost struck his commander-in-chief. But he refrained, though he could not utter even a civil goodbye. He went to his billet and he went into the town, and he worked wrath out of himself, as best he could. The dregs he washed away with drink, and after that he went to visit Myrtis, the whoremistress of Aphrodisia House who knew how to soothe him. And she, seeing his heart breaking and his fists shaking, asked him nothing about why he had come, after staying away so long, but took him to her breast and healed what she might of his hurts, remembering that all the protection he provided her and good he did for her, he did because of a love spell she had bought and cast on him long since. and thus she owed him at least one night to match his dreams.

6

Tempus had gone among his own kind, after he left the barracks. He had checked in at the guild hostel north of the palace, once again in leopard and bronze and iron, and he was welcome there.

Why he had kept himself from it for so long, he could not have reasoned, unless it was that without these friends of former times the camaraderie would not have been as sweet.

He went to the sideboard and got hot mulled wine from a krater, sprinkling in goat's cheese and grain, and took the posset to a corner, so the men could come to him as they would.

The problem of the eunuch was still unsolved: finding a suitable replacement was not going to be easy: there were not many eunuchs in the mercenaries' guild. The clubroom was red as dying day and dark as backlit mountains, and he felt better for having come. So, when Abarsis, high priest of Upper Ranke, left his companions and approached, but did not sit among the mercenaries Tempus had collected, he said to the nine that he would see them at the appointed time, and to the iron-clad one.

'Life to you. Stepson. Please join me.'

'Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory.' Cup in hand, he sipped pure water, eyes hardly darker never leaving Tempus's face. 'Is it Sanctuary that has driven you to drink?' He indicated the posset.

'The dry soul is wisest? Not at the Empire's anus, where the water is chancy. Anyway, those things I said long ago and far away: do not hold me to any of that.'

The smooth cheek of Stepson ticced. 'I must,' he murmured. 'You are the man I have emulated. All my life I have listened after word of you and collected intelligence of you and studied what you left us in legend and stone in the north. Listen: "War is sire of all and king of all, and some He has made gods and some men, some bond and some free". Or: "War is ours in common; strife is justice; all things come into being and pass away through strife". You see, I know your work, even those other names you have used. Do not make me speak them. I would work with you, 0 Sleepless One. It will be the pinnacle of my career.' He flashed Tempus a bolt of naked entreaty, then his gaze flickered away and he rushed on: 'You need me. Who else will suit? Who else here has a brand and gelding's scars? And time in the arena as a gladiator, like Jubal himself? Who could intrigue him, much less seduce him among these? And though I -'

'No.'

Abarsis dug in his belt and tossed a golden amulet on to the table. 'The god will not give you up; this was caught in the sorrel's new shoe. That teacher of mine whom you remember ...?'

'I know the man,' Tempus said grimly.

'He thinks that Sanctuary is the endpoint of existence; that those who come here are damned beyond redemption; that Sanctuary is Hell.'

'Then how is it. Stepson,' said Tempus almost kindly, 'that folk experience fleshly death here? So far as I know, I am the only soul in Sanctuary who suffers eternally, with the possible exception of my sister, who may not have a soul. Learn not to listen to what people say, priest. A man's own mistakes are load enough, without adding others'.'