Robert Asprin - Shadow Of Sanctuary

'One-Thumb,' Hanse called out, making for the bar, 'what is going on out there?' There had been soldierly commotion at the Common Gate.

'You haven't heard?' scoffed the night-tumed-day barman. 'Some prisoners escaped from the palace dungeon, certain articles were thieved from the Hall of Judgement, and none of the regular security officers were around to get their scoldings.'

Looking at the mirror behind the bar, Hanse saw the ugly man grin without humour. Gaze locked to mirror-gaze, Hanse drew the hide-wrapped bundle from his tunic. 'These are for you. You are supposed to give them to your benefactor.' He shrugged to the mirror.

One-Thumb turned and wiped the dishrag along the shining bar and when the rag was gone, the small bundle was gone, also. 'Now, what do you want to get involved in something like this for? You think you're moving up? You're not. Next time, when it's this sort of thing, come round the back. Or, better, don't come at all. I thought you had more sense.'

Hanse's hand smacked flat and loud upon the bar. 'I have taken enough offal for one day, cup-bearer. Now I tell you what you do, Wide-Belly: You take what I brought you and your sage counsel, and you wrap it all together, and then you squat on it!' And stiff-kneed as a roused cat, Shadowspawn stalked away, towards the door, saying over his shoulder: 'As for sense, I thought you had more.'

'I have my business to think of,' called out One-Thumb, too boldly for a whine. 'Ah, yes! So have I, so have I.'

11

Lavender and lemon dawn light bedizened the white-washed barracks' walls and coloured the palace parade grounds.

Tempus had been working all night, out at Jubal's estate where he was quartering his mercenaries away from town and Hell Hounds and Ilsig garrison personnel. He had fifty there, but twenty of them were paired members of three different Sacred Bands: Stepson's legacy to him. The twenty had convinced the thirty nonallied operatives that 'Stepsons' would be a good name for their squadron, and for the cohort it would eventually command should things go as everyone hoped.

He would keep the Sacred Band teams and spread the rest throughout the regular army, and throughout the prince's domain. They would find what clay they chose, and mould a division from it of which the spirit of Abarsis, if it were not too busy fighting theomachy's battles in heaven, could look upon with pride. The men had done Tempus proud, already, that night at

Jubal's, and thereafter; and this evening when he had turned the comer round the slave barracks the men were refitting for livestock, there it had been, a love note written in lamb's blood two cubits high on the encircling protective wall: 'War is all and king of all, and all things come into being out of strife.'

Albeit they had not got it exactly right, he had smiled, for though the world and the boyhood from out of which he had said such audacious things was gone to time. Stepson, called Abarsis, and his legacy of example and followers made Tempus think that perhaos (oh just perhaps) he, Tempus, had not been so young, or so foolish, as he had lately come to think that he had been. And , if thus the man, then his epoch, too, was freed of memory's hindsightful taint.

And the god and he were reconciled: This pushed away his curse and the shadow of distress it cast ever before him. His troubles with the prince had subsided. Zaibar had come through his test of fire and returned to stand his duty, thinking deeply, walking quietly. His courage would mend. Tempus knew his sort.

Jubal's disposition he had left to Kadakithis. He had wanted to take the famous ex-gladiator's measure in single combat, but there was no fitness in it now, since the man would never be quick on his feet, should he live to regain the use of them.

Not that the world was as ridiculously beautiful as was the arrogant summer morning which did not understand that it was a Sanctuary morning and therefore should at least be gory, garish or full of flies buzzing about his head. No, one could find a few thorns in one's path, still. There was Shadowspawn, called Hanse, exhibiting unseemly and proprietary grief over Abarsis whenever it served him, yet not taking a billet among the Stepsons that Tempus had offered. Privately, Tempus thought he might yet come to it, that he was trying to step twice into the same river. When his feet chilled enough, he would step out on to the banks of manhood. If he could sit a horse better, perhaps his pride would let him join in where now, because of that, he could only sneer.

Hanse, too, must find his own path. He was not Tempus's problem, though Tempus would gladly take on that burden should Shadowspawn ever indicate a desire to have help toting it.

His sister, Cime, however, was his problem, his alone, and the enormity of that conundrum had him casting about for any possible solution, taking pat answers up and putting them down like gods move seeds from field to field. He could kill her, rape her, deport her; he could not ignore her, forget her, or suffer along without confronting her.

That she and One-Thumb had become enamoured of one another was something he had not counted on. Such a thing had never occurred to him.

Tempus felt the god rustling around in him, the deep cavernous sensing in his most private skull that told him the deity was going to speak. Silently! he warned the god. They were uneasy with each other, yet, like two lovers after a trial separation.

We can take her, mildly, and then she will leave. You cannot tolerate her presence. Drive her off. I will help thee, spake Vashanka.

'Must you be so predictable, Pillager?' Tempus mumbled under his breath, so that Abarsis's Tros horse swivelled its ears back to eavesdrop. He slapped its neck, and told it to continue on straight and smartly. They were headed towards Lastel's modest eastside estate.

Constancy is one of My attributes, jibed the god in Tempus's head meaningfully.

'You are not getting her, 0 Ravening One. You who are never satisfied, in this one thing, will not triumph. What would we have between us to keep it clear who is whom? I cannot allow it.'

You will, said Vashanka so loud in his head that he winced in his saddle and the Tros horse broke stride, looking reproachfully about at him to see what that shift of weight could possibly be construed to mean.

Tempus stopped the horse in the middle of the cool shadowed way on that beautiful morning and sat stiffly a long while, conducting an internal battle which had no resolution.

After a time, he swung the horse back in its tracks, kicked it into a lope towards the barracks from which he had just come. Let her stay with One-Thumb, if she would. She had come between him and his god before. He was not ready to give her to the god, and he was not ready to give himself back into the hands of his curse, rip asunder what had been so laboriously patched together and at such great cost. He thought of Abarsis, and Kadakithis, and the refractory upcountry peoples, and he promised Vashanka any other woman the god should care to choose before sundown. Cime would keep, no doubt, right where she was. He would see to it that Lastel saw to her.

Abarsis's Tros horse snorted softly, as if in agreement, single-footing through Sanctuary's better streets towards the barracks. But the Tros horse could not have known that by this simple decision its rider had attained to a greater victory than in all the wars of all the empires he had ever laboured to increase. Now the Tros horse whose belly quivered between Tempus's knees as it issued a blaring trumpet to the dusty air did so not because of its rider's triumph over self and god, but out of pure high spirits, as horses always will praise a fine day dawned.

I had just administered the coup de gr&ce to my latest Thieves' (Vor/rf offering- my third - when Bob asked if I'd like to have the last word in Shadows of Sanctuary, It was an offer I couldn't refuse, though I'd no idea how I would put into words the experiences of working on all three Thieves' World volumes. After many unsuccessful attempts at getting this essay down on paper, I began to suspect that maybe Bob hadn't known the right words either. He was smiling when he made the offer, and he doesn't usually give up a by-line that easily. Sigh. Another example of Things the Editor Never Told Me.