Robert Asprin - Shadow Of Sanctuary

They moved back and as the Sacred Bander who had been holding Abarsis's head put it down, the wounded one murmured; he coughed, and his frame shuddered, one hand clutching spasmodically at the spear. 'Rest now. Stepson. You have got your wish. You will be my sacrifice to the god.' He covered the youth's nakedness with his mantle, taking the gory hand from the broken haft, letting it fasten on his own.

Then the blue-grey eyes of Abarsis opened in a face pale with pain, and something else: 'I am not frightened, with you and the god beside me.'

Tempus put an arm under his head and gathered him up, pulling him across his lap. 'Hush, now.'

'Soon, soon,' said the paling lips. 'I did well for you. Tell me so ... that you are content. 0 Riddler, so well do I love you, I go to my god singing your praises. When I meet my father, I will tell him ... I... fought beside you.'

'Go with more than that. Stepson,' whispered Tempus, and leaned forward, and kissed him gently on the mouth, and Abarsis breathed out his soul while their lips yet touched.

9

Now, Hanse had got the rods with no difficulty, as Stepson had promised he would be able to do, citing Tempus's control of palace personnel as surety. And afterwards, the young mercenary's invitation to come and watch them fight up at Jubal's rang in his head until, to banish it, he went out to take a look.

He knew it was foolish to go, for it was foolish even to know, but he knew that he wanted to be able to say, 'Yes, I saw. It was wonderful,' the next time he saw the young mercenary, so he went very carefully and cautiously. If he were stopped, he would have all of Stepson's Sacred Band as witnesses that he had been at Jubal's, and nowhere near the palace and its Hall of Judgement.

He knew those excuses were flimsy, but he wanted to go, and he did not want to delve into why: the lure of mercenary life was heady in his nostrils; if he admitted how sweet it seemed, he might be lost. If he went, perchance he would see something not so sweet, or so intoxicating, something which would wash away all this talk of friendship and honour. So he went, and hid on the roof of a gatehouse abandoned in the confusion. Thus he saw all that transpired.

When he could in safety leave his roost, he followed the pair of grey horses bearing Tempus and the corpse ridgeward, stealing the first mount he came to that looked likely.

The sun was risen when Tempus reached the ridgetop and called out behind: 'Whoever you are, ride up,' and set about gathering branches to make a bier.

Hanse rode to the edge of the outcropping of rock on which Tempus piled wood and said: 'Well, accursed one, are you and your god replete? Stepson told me all about it.'

The man straightened up, eyes like flames, and put his hand to the small of his back: 'What do you want, Shadowspawn? A man who is respectful does not sling insults over the ears of the dead. If you are here for him, then welcome. If you are here for me, I assure you, your timing is ill.'

'I am here for him, friend. What think you, that I would come here to console you in your grief when it was his love for you that he died of? He asked me,' Hanse continued, not dismounting, 'to get these. He was going to give them to you.' He reached for the diamond rods, wrapped in hide, he had stolen.

'Stay your hand, and your feelings. Both are misplaced. Do not judge what you do not understand. As for the rods, Abarsis was mistaken as to what I wanted done with them. If you are finishing your first mercenary's commission, then give them to One-Thumb. Tell him they are for his benefactor. Then it is done. Someone of the Sacred Band will seek you out and pay you. Do not worry about that. Now, if you would honour Abarsis, dismount.' The struggle obvious in Tempus's face for control was chilling, where nothing unintentioned was ever seen. 'Otherwise, please leave now, friend, while we are yet friends. I am in no mood for living boys today.'

So Hanse slid from the horse and stalked over to the corpse stage-whispering, 'Mouth me no swill, Doomface. If this is how your friends fare, I'd as soon be relieved of the honour,' and flipped back the shroud. 'His eyes are open.' Shadowspawn reached out to close them. 'Don't. Let him see where he goes.'

They glared a time at each other above the staring corpse while a red-tailed hawk circled overhead, its shadow caressing the pale, dead face.

Then Hanse knelt stiffly, took a coin from his belt, slid it between Stepson's slightly parted lips, and murmured something low. Rising, he turned and strode to his stolen horse and scrambled clumsily astride, reining it round and away without a single backward glance.

When Tempus had the bier all made, and Abarsis arranged on it to the last glossy hair, and a spark nursed to consuming flame, he stood with clenched fists and watering eyes in the billows of smoke. And through his tears, he saw the boy's father, fighting oblivious from his car, his charioteer fallen between his legs, that time Tempus had hacked off an enemy's arm to save him from the axe it swung; he saw the witchbitch of a sorceress the king had wed in the black hills to make alliance with what could not be had by force; he saw the aftermath of that, when the wild woman's spawn was out other and every loyal general took a hand in her murder before she laid their commander out in state. He saw the boy, wizard-haired and wise, running to Tempus's chariot for a ride, grasping his neck, laughing, kissing like the northern boys had no shame to do; all this before the Great K-ing discharged his armies and retired home to peace, and Tempus rode south to Ranke, an empire hardly whelped and shaky on its prodigious feet. And Tempus saw the field he had taken against a monarch, once his liege: Masters change. He had not been there when they had got the Great King, dragged him down from his car and begun the Unending Deaths that proved the Rankans barbarians second to none. It was said by those who were there that he stood it well enough until his son was castrated before his eyes, given off to a slaver with ready collar ... When he had heard, Tempus had gone searching among the sacked towns of the north, where Ranke wrought infamy into example, legends better than sharp javelins at discouraging resistance. And he saw Abarsis in the slaver's kennel, the boy's look of horror that a man of the armies would see what had been done to him. No glimmer of joy invaded the gaunt child's face turned up to him. No eager hands outflung to their redeemer; a small, spent hero shuffled across soiled straw to meet him, slave's eyes gauging without fear just what he might expect from this man, who had once been among his father's most valued, but was now only one more Rankan enemy. Tempus remembered picking the child up in his arms, hating how little he weighed, how sharp his bones were; and that moment when Abarsis at last believed he was safe. About a boy's tears, Abarsis had sworn Tempus to secrecy. About the rest, the less said, the better. He had found him foster parents, in the rocky west by the sea temples where Tempus himself was born, and where the gods still made miracles upon occasion. He had hoped somehow the gods would heal what love could not. Now, they had done it.

He nodded, having passed recollection like poison, watching the fire burn down. Then, for the sake of the soul of Stepson, called Abarsis, and under the aegis of his flesh, Tempus humbled himself before Vashanka and came again into the service of his god.

10

Hanse, hidden below on a shelf, listening and partaking of the funeral of his own fashion, upon realizing what he was overhearing, spurred the horse out of there as if the very god whose thunderous voice he had heard were after him.

He did not stop until he reached the Vulgar Unicorn. There he shot off the horse in a dismount which was a fall disguised as a vault, slapped the beast smartly away, telling it hissingly to go home, and slipped inside with such relief as his favourite knife must feel when he sheathed it.