Robert Asprin - Blood Ties

He came upon her from behind and had his left arm crooked around her neck in seconds, saying only, "Hold, I'm not here to hurt you," while within him a god who shouldn't have been there stirred to wakefulness, stretched, and urged otherwise.

Ignoring the obscene and increasingly attractive suggestions the war-god in his head was making, he gave the woman time to realize who held her.

It didn't take long: She wasn't a typical Rankan woman of blood-no man without Tempus's supernal speed and talent could have caught her unaware.

She stiffened and, every muscle tensed so that his body began taking the god's suggestions literally, pressed back against him-the first move toward putting him off balance, ready to use her own arena-training in weight, feint, and misdirection of attention to try to escape.

"Hold," he said again. "Or suffer the consequences, Chenaya."

"Pork you, Tempus," she gritted in a surprisingly ladylike voice unsuited to the content of her words. He could feel her hands ball into fists, then relax. Behind him, people indoors chatted and clinked their goblets.

"We haven't time for that, unless you're ready." He put his free hand on her hip and spread it, moving it forward to press against her belly and slip downward, putting her in a hold she'd never come up against in a Rankan arena.

"Gods, you haven't changed, you bastard. If it's not my body-for which you'll pay more than it's worth, I assure you-what do you want?"

"I thought you'd never ask. It's a little matter of an attempt on Theron's life, yours, I believe-something about boarding the barge. Not a smart move for a member of a decidedly ac-royal family: not for you, not for Kadakithis, who'll share Theron's wrath if it's revealed who tried to feed him to the sharks, not for any of what's left of your line."

"Again, halfling, what do you want?"

There were two answers at that point in time, one of which had to do with the god in his head, who was whispering. She is a woman, and women only understand one thing. She is a fighter. It's long since We've had a fighter. Give her to Us, and We'll be very grateful-and she will be Our willing servant. Otherwise, you cannot trust her.

To the god in his head, he responded, / can't trust You, never mind her. To the woman, he said, "Chenaya, beyond the obvious, which we'll see about"-still holding her tightly enough with his elbow that a slight jerk would break her neck, he began to raise her voluminous white skirt from behind-"I want you to do something for me. There's a faction here that needs a woman whom the gods decree cannot be defeated. What I ask, I ask for Kadakithis, for the continuance of your bloodline, and for the good of Sanctuary. What the god asks, I'm afraid, is another matter." His voice was deepening, and into him was pouring all the long held passion of Sanctuary's Lord of Rape and Pillage, Blood and Death.

She was a fighter, and god-bound. He hoped, as he began to explain the business that had brought him here and the god in him got out of hand, that she'd understand.

The sentry at the tunnel entrance to Ratfall, Zip's base camp in Downwind, was gagged and flopping in a pool of his own blood.

Zip had slipped in it, then stumbled over the body in the dusk before he realized what he'd stumbled on: Sync's calling card-the sentry's hands and feet had been lopped off.

He thanked the god whose swampy altar he still frequented that he'd come home alone as he raised up on hands and knees and, with his belt dagger, made an end to the quivering sentry's agony.

3rd Commando tactics were meant to terrify; knowing this didn't make it any easier to keep from retching. Knowing that it wouldn't have taken more than a half hour for the sentry to have completely bled out didn't help Zip's frame of mind: Sync's people were probably watching him from the adjacent ramshackle buildings Zip called his stronghold.

The 3rd Commando leader, Sync, said quietly from behind him: "Got a minute, sonny? Some people here want to talk with you."

The words weighed on Zip like burial stones and his own pulse threatened to choke him. Through the entire winter, Sync's rangers had never rousted him. The 3rd's leader had professed autonomy, pretended friendship, left Zip's PFLS to its own devices-as long as it followed an occasional suggestion from the 3rd's cold-blooded leader.

But there had been talk of an alliance then-before Theron had visited Ranke; before Zip's faction had recruited too many and developed factions within its own ranks; before some fools among them had captured Illyra, the S'danzo, and killed a S'danzo child; before an arrow aimed at Straton had been laid at Zip's doorstep; before Kama had left Zip's bed and taken up with Torchholder, the palace priest; before a falling out with Jubal over a slave girl Zip had liberated... before things had just gotten too damned complicated, because Zip couldn't hold the territory he'd gained across the White Foal, territory he'd never wanted, like he'd never wanted to be so damned visible (and thus targeted) as Sync's behind-the-scenes maneuvering had made him.

"Talk with me? You call this talk?" Zip's voice was shaking, but Sync wouldn't be able to tell whether it was with rage or fear. At that moment, Zip himself couldn't have said which. Blood was all around him, sticky and warm and smelling all too human; the corpse beside him had farted, and worse, once death loosed its bowels.

On his hands and knees in blood and shit. Zip was thinking that this was probably it-the death he'd earned, in circumstances he'd dreamed too often. He waited to see if it was a blade from behind that would do the talking.

A sandal splashed in the blood by his hand; Sync's Rankan-accented voice said, "That's right, talk. If your man here had talked before he acted, he'd be alive now." A gloved hand reached down for him; above it, a bracer with the 3rd's unit device of a rearing horse with arrows in its mouth gleamed-silver, polished, spotless, and whispering of a cruelty so legendary that even the Rankans were afraid to use the 3rd Commando.

Even Theron, who'd come to the throne by way of their swords, if rumor was truth, wanted the 3rd disbanded or under a tight rein. That was why, some said, Tempus, who had created them, had got them back: No one else could control them. Left to their own, they'd slaughter Rankan emperors one by one and auction the throne to the highest bidder-Zip had heard Sync and Kama joke about it when the three were drunk.

Zip let Sync help him up, busy trying to wipe the sticky blood from his palms. He didn't argue about the dead sentry: You didn't argue with Sync, not over something as immutable as the already-dead. You saved it for the plans that could get you killed.

The rest were emerging now: at least twenty fighters-the 3rd never traveled light.

The sight of Kama in her battle dress, with the 3rd's red insignia burned into hardened leather above her right breast and campaign designators scratched below it, made his stomach lurch.

She was unfinished business, would always be. He said, "So, here I am. Talk," and found his tongue unwieldy.

Around her, he realized (as his eyes accustomed themselves to something other than the dead man, handless and footless, who still flopped helplessly in his inner sight), were others of the uptown gangs who masqueraded as authority in Sanctuary: Critias, a covert actionist from the Sacred Band who seldom ventured forth in uniform and never in daylight; Straton, his wide-shouldered, witch ridden partner; Jubal, black as Ischade's cloak and with a look on his face much blacker; Walegrin, the regular army's garrison commander and brother of the S'danzo whose child Zip's men had killed; and a blond woman he didn't know, who wore arena leathers and had a bird perched on her shoulder.

He ought to be wary, he realized-this sort of crowd hadn't gathered for something as mundane as his execution. But his eyes kept sliding back to Kama and trying to fit the persona of her father over the woman who'd taught him things about lovemaking he'd never dreamed were possible.