Robert Asprin - Blood Ties

He wasn't sure that, even with the war-god to help, he could manage to prove himself again so soon. But the god was, thanks be to Him, as insatiable as she, and, though Stormbringer began to rumble and to shake the ground in pique, so that soon they thrashed and rolled in a downpour that quenched the fire on the altar and the fire in Tasfalen's house, it was too late for Jihan's father to intervene.

Tempus had wooed Jihan, and won her, and there was nothing even Stormbringer could do to change the Froth Daughter's mind once it was made up.

Zip couldn't believe the trouble he was in, forced into an alliance with so many who had good reason to wish him dead.

Jubal's hawkmasks escorted him out to the Stepsons' barracks to show him around. At least he didn't have to live there-yet.

The deal was, as he understood it, that he spearhead some addled alliance made up of all his known enemies and some he hadn't known he had: One, a bitch named Chenaya, had more balls than half the mercenaries lounging on the white washed parade grounds and she'd made it clear that she didn't expect the pecking order to hold for long unless she was at the head of it.

Heads tended to get lopped off in Sanctuary, he'd told her, with an exaggerated bow and outstretched hand meant to indicate that she could precede him into any grave, anytime, anyplace.

But Chenaya was some sort of Rankan noble, and didn't realize he was being snide. She's just assumed he habitually bowed and scraped like any other Wrigglie, and let him hand her up into her fancy wagon, telling him she'd see him later.

He'd have felt better about all the changes ifJubal had said Word One to him about settling matters, man to man, or if the Rankan Walegrin hadn't looked at him as if Zip were a goat staked out to lure a wolf, or if Straton wasn't twice his weight and conspicuously absent when Zip was shown the ropes at the barracks.

Yeah, he could hold out in the one-time slaver's estate-turned-fortress. Yeah, it beat the offal out of Ratfall. But somehow, he didn't think he was going to live to move his rabble in here.

And he didn't think the 3rd Commando was going to quit this town, where it was the most powerful single element save gods, wizardry, and Tempus, once the Stepsons were packed off to the capital.

Sync was nobody's fool. And Sync was looking at him funny as the 3rd's commander whistled up a mount for Zip from the string herd and showed him how to put a warhorse through its paces.

It was a bright day, and the horse was sweating, and he was riding around the training ring with Sync like some Rankan kid with his daddy when the arrow whizzed by his head close enough to knick his ear.

He cursed, dove off the horse's wrong side, and rolled toward the fence while Sync bawled orders and men went running about in a fine display of concern.

Zip went after the arrow and found it.

If it wasn't the same one that had been aimed at Straton from a rooftop last winter, it was a perfect copy.

"That doesn't mean that Strat-or any of the Stepsons- are behind this," Sync said, a stalk of hay between his teeth, an hour later as they walked their horses and men came in, sweating and dirty, giving desultory reports of no progress and grinning at Zip, the only Ilsig in the camp, with cold amusement in their meres' eyes.

"Sure. I know. Probably somebody wants me to think it is. No sweat." And he half-believed what he was saying. If Strat wanted a piece of him, the Sacred Bander would take it with show and ceremony, lots of ritual, the whole exotic Band code enforced so that murder wouldn't be murder once it had been sanctified by the handy murderer's god.

They had an altar to that purpose, out back of the training arena.

Arrow in hand. Zip walked over there with his new horse, thinking about making some kind of statement by kicking the piled stones apart.

Then he changed his mind, swung up on the horse, and loped it out of there.

He didn't really care who'd tried to kill him. From the talk he'd heard while in the barracks, neither did the Stepsons: They were more concerned over walls and the weather.

He'd known that this whole business of putting him at the head of some cease fire coalition was just a roundabout way of executing him.

Ritual execution, political style, wasn't a nice way to die. But then. Zip had killed enough to know there wasn't one.

He rode all day, through the Swamp of Night Secrets, thinking about his chances slim-and his alternatives- none.

He was dead the minute he announced he wouldn't play the game; if he was dead a week or two later if he pretended to play along, that was a week or two of living he wouldn't have otherwise.

It wasn't a great shot, but it was the only one he had. He didn't have anywhere to run; he had too many enemies without Tempus added to the list. If he diverged from the "arrangement," he'd have no chance at all of surviving. It would be open season on Zip-for professionals.

He had one hole card, maybe, in Kama. He couldn't imagine she'd get that close with him for any kind of revenge.

He wanted to see her, but by the time he got out of the swamp, the sun was going down and he knew he'd better head for Ratfall.

Though Sync had proved Zip wasn't safe in Downwind, somebody had proved he wasn't safe out at the barracks, and he'd known for a long time that he wasn't safer anywhere than his own abilities could make him.

So he went to ground in Ratfall, detouring only long enough to lay the arrow that had nicked his ear on the little pile of stones down at the White Foal River's edge.

He used to bring blood sacrifices there-to something. He wasn't sure what. But it liked them. He thought maybe, if it liked him enough for bringing it presents, it might take of-fense at whoever had shot the arrow (which had his own blood on it still), and do its single servant a favor.

Because without a god's help, a piece of alley-grime like Zip didn't have a whore's chance of making it through another Sanctuary night unmolested.

Tempus had been right: Sanctuary was for lovers, not fighters, this season.

Chenaya stretched in her bed as the morning sun centered itself in her east window. A mischievous little grin stole over her lips as she thought again about her encounter with Tempus Thales. Not so imaginative as Hanse Shadowspawn, not half so enchanting as Enas Yorl, and the poor madman had been disappointingly quick. If nothing else, she had added one more of Sanctuary's notables to her personal scorecard, and she was glad to have spotted him sneaking about in that gar- den, glad she had decided to intercept him.

It had, after all, been a boring party until he showed up.

Of course, he thought he'd raped her, and that only added to her amusement. The impish grin she wore blossomed into a truly wicked smile. What the poor fool didn't appreciate was the price he was going to pay for his brief pleasure.

She sat up languidly, threw back the thin coverlet, rose, and pulled on a sleeveless robe of pale blue silk. On a small, ornately carved table beside her bed lay a bronze comb. She picked it up, began idly to tease it through the thick mass of her blond curls as she crossed the room and sat on the window sill. The sun felt wonderfully warm on her flesh. It would be a scorching day.

She shut her eyes and leaned back. Her thoughts turned to the strange meeting in Ratfall. It was the first time she'd met or even seen Zip, the leader of the so -called Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary. She smiled at the irony of the name. Zip wasn't particularly popular with anybody right now, and if Sanctuary wanted liberation from anything it was from the bloody terrorist tactics of his night-running faction.

Somehow, in her imagination and from the stories she'd heard, she'd always thought of Zip as closer to her own age. Probably because everyone called him boy all the time. It had surprised her to see that the rebel was older by some years, She called up her memory of him again: dark-haired, with that cute sweatband above his eyes, pleasant to look at. He hadn't cared much for her, though. That had been clear enough in his eyes.