The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (3 page)

So it was that Strat walked now among the slaughter within the barracks' outer walls, among corpses burned past recognition and others disemboweled, among women and children gutted for being where they had no right to be and housepets slit from jaws to tails, their entrails already out at Vashanka's field altar of handhewn stones, ready to be offered to the god.

Ischade walked with him, inky eyes agleam within her hood. He'd promised Ischade something, one night last autumn. He wondered if this was it-if the killing had gotten out of hand because Ischade was there, and not because Zip's Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary knew nothing of restraint and Sync's 3rd Commando, not to be outdone, forsook all thoughts of proper measure once it was clear that the ersatz Stepsons had been keeping dogs on grounds consecrated to Vashanka, the Rankan god of rape and pillage.

Rape, of course, was still under way in the stables and in the long low barracks. Strat saw Ischade turn her head away at the piteous cries of women who'd been where women had no right to be and now paid the soldiers' tithe. Around them, PFLS rebels ran to and fro, heavy sacks or gleaming tack upon their shoulders-pillaging had begun.

Strat didn't move to stop the stealing or the defilement of the luckless few who'd been comely enough to live a little longer than their fellows. He was the ranking officer and his was the burden of command-even when, as now, he didn't like it.

Crit, Strat's absent partner, might have foreseen and forestalled the moment when the 3rd's bloodthirsty nature surfaced and Zip's rabble followed suit, and blood began to spill like Vashanka's rains or a whore's tears. But he hadn't. Not until it was far too late. And then, knowing that if he tried to stop them he'd lose only his command, he'd had to let the bloodlust work through the assault force like dysentery works through those fool enough to drink from the White Foal River.

Ischade knew his pain; her hand was on his arm. But the necromant was wise-she said not one word to the Stepsons' chief interrogator and line commander as they came upon Randal-the Tysian Hazard who was the only magical ally besides herself the Stepsons tolerated-quartering a dog to roast and bury at the barracks'

compass points.

"For luck, Witchy-Ears?" Straton growled to Randal, and Ischade relaxed. "It's hardly lucky for that pup."

He must take his anguish out on someone, vent his spleen. She'd thought while they walked among the corpses askew on training grounds and open-legged in doorways that the "someone" might be her. She'd raised shades to help the siege even one named Janni who'd been a Stepson before his death. And Strat, who'd known Janni and Stilcho and others among Ischade's part-living cadre when they'd laid a clearer claim to life, had had shadows in his eyes. The same shadows of disgust scoured his mouth now as the big Stepson spat over his shoulder and demanded, "Randal, give me an answer." But Randal, the big-eared, freckled mage who was so cautious and yet no man's fool or pawn despite his slight and unassuming person, knew that Straton wanted more than a reason for the sacrifice of a cur. Strat wanted someone to tell him that the massacre he walked through fit somehow into the Stepsons' code of honor.

But it didn't. Not in any way at all. It was war out of hand and blood begetting blood and the only justification or reason for it was the nature of Sanctuary itself-Sanctuary was out of balance, gnawing on its own leg while it frothed at the mouth, beset by enemies from within and without. The town was full of factions among men and among gods and among sorcerers, so full that even Ischade, who had interests here, had to come out into daylight to protect them, and to throw in her lot with Straton's Sacred Band and Sync's amoral 3rd Commando.

When Randal didn't answer, just favored Strat with an eloquent sickened look full of accusation, since Strat was putatively in command, Ischade said to the officer beside her, "Order is its own reward. And reason makes its bed with us, not with the Beysib interlopers who have the Prince enthralled, or with the quasi-mages locked up tight in their guild, or with Roxane's undead death squads."

Then Randal put down his knife and wiped his long nose with a gory hand. "Maybe it'll bring your god back, Strat. Rouse Vashanka from wheresoever the Pillage Lord is sleeping. The men think so, that's sure enough." The mage rose up and made a pass over the quartered dog and all four parts of it-fore and hind-rose into the air, dripping fluids, and floated away toward the field altar out behind the training ground.

Strat watched the pieces disappear around a corner before he said, "Vashanka?

Back? What makes you think the god's gone? He's reverted to His second childhood, is all. He's lost all sense of proportion like a child." Then Strat turned on Ischade, as she'd thought he might, and his eyes were as flat and hard as her nerves told her his heart had become.

"Does this suit you, then, Ischade? All this 'order' that you see here? Will it help us-give us a few nights more for you to lie with me without your 'needs'

taking over? Are you sated? Can a necromant ever have enough? Is it safe for you to take me home?"

Home to her embrace, he meant. To her odd and shadowed house, all gleam and velvet by the White Foal's edge. Straton made her soul ache and because of him she'd mixed in where no necromant belonged. And it was true: The death here was partly of her making; she'd be content now, without having to stalk the night for victims, for days.

She saw in his eyes that he knew too much, that all she'd done to give him what he wanted-her-for stolen evenings on brocade cushions was about to exact the price she'd always known it must.

Randal, knowing the conversation was getting too intimate for outsiders, hurried off, wiping hands on his winter woolens as he followed his sacrifice out toward the altar and called over his shoulder, "You'll have to say the rites, Ace." Ace was Straton's war name. "I'm not qualified, being an envoy of magic and thus an enemy of gods-even yours."

Strat ignored the Hazard and watched Ischade still. "Is it my fault?" he asked simply. "Some consequence of lying with you against all that's natural?"

"No more than Janni's fate, or Stilcho's, can be laid at any other's feet. Men make their own fates-it's personal, not a matter for debate." She reached up, taking a chance, touching his lips gone white as the big Stepson struggled for control, his hand upon his sword hilt. He might well try to kill her there and then, to exorcise his guilt and pain.

Then what would she do? Hurt this one, in whose arms she could be a woman, not a Power too fearful to survive for any other man? Never. Or not unless he forced it.

Her touch on his lips didn't cause him to toss his head or step away. He said,

"Ischade, this is more than I bargained for ..."

"It's more, Strat, than any of us bargained for." Her hand slipped from his lips, down his neck, across the sloping shoulder to rest on his powerful right arm-in a moment she could numb it, if there was need. "It's your god, warring against the Ilsig gods and the Beysib gods-if they have them-turning men's heads and hearts. Not us. We're as close to innocent as your sword, which would as soon stay in its scabbard. Trust me. We all knew there'd be hell to pay, should this day come."

Strat nodded slowly: Ersatz Stepsons had rousted real ones in the town, and even dared to confront the black-souled 3rd Commando rangers. And Zip's indigenous fighters had reason to hate all oppressors-the PFLS would as soon have made the gutters run with blood up to Zip's knees.

"So now what?" said the big man, distress naked in his tone. The necromant looked up, reached up again, craned her neck so that her hood fell back and only her hair shadowed her face. "Now you remember the promise you made me, that first night-not to blame me for being what I am, not to blame yourself for doing what you have to do. And not to ask too many questions whose answers you won't like."

The soldier closed his eyes, remembering what she'd bade him forget until the time was right. And when he opened them, they'd softened just a bit. "Your place?" he said tiredly. "Or mine?"

That night, down in Sanctuary on a perpetually dank street called Mageway, in a tower of the citadel of magic, Randal the Tysian Hazard woke in his Mageguild bed, strangling in his own sheets.

The slight mage went pale beneath his freckles-pale to his prodigious ears-as the sheets, pure and innocent linen as far as anyone knew, bound him tighter. If he ever got out of this alive, he'd have to have a talk with his treacherous bedclothes-they had no right to treat him this way. Had his mouth not been stoppered by their grasp, he could have shouted counterspells or cursed his inanimate bedclothes, come alive. But Randal's mouth, as well as his hands and feet, was bound tight by hostile magic.

His eyes, alas, were not. Randal stared into a darkness which lightened perceptibly before the bed on which he struggled, helpless, as the Nisibisi witch Roxane coalesced from nimbus, a sensuous smile upon her face. Roxane, Death's Queen, was Randal's nemesis, a hated enemy, a worrisome foe. The young mage writhed within the prison of his sheets and wordless exhortations came from his gagged mouth. Roxane, whom he'd fought on Wizardwall, had sworn to kill him-not just for what he'd done to help Tempus's Stepsons and Bashir's guerrilla fighters reclaim their homeland, Wizardwall, from Nisibisi wizards, but because Randal had once been the right-side partner of Stealth, called Nikodemos, a soul the witch Roxane sought to claim.

Sweating freely, Randal tried to wriggle off his Mageguild bed as Roxane's form lost its wraithlike quality and became palpably present. He succeeded only in banging his head against the wall, and cowered there, wishing witches couldn't slit Mageguild wards like butter, wishing he'd never fought with Stepsons or claimed a Nisi warlock's Globe of Power, wishing he'd never heard of Nikodemos or inherited Niko's panoply, armor forged by the entelechy of dream.

"Umn hmn, nnh nohnu, rgorhrrr!" Randal shouted at the witch who now had human form, even down to perfumed flesh whose scent mixed with his own acrid, fearful sweat: Go away, you horror, evermore!

Roxane only laughed, a tinkling laugh, not horrid, and minced over to his bedside with exaggerated care: "Say you what, little mageling? Say again?" She leaned close, smiling broadly, her lovely sanguine face no older than a marriageable girl's. Her fearsome faith, behind those eyes which supped on fear and now were feasting on Randal's anguish, was older than the Mageguild in which she stood-stood against reason, against nature, against the best magic Rankan trained adepts and even Randal, who'd learned Nisi ways to counter the warring warlocks from the high peaks, could field.

"Whhd whd drr whdd? Whr hheh?" Randal said from behind his sopping, choking gag of sheets: What do you want? Why me?

And the Nisibisi witch stretched elegantly, leaned close, and answered. "Want?

Why, Witchy-Ears, your soul, of course. Now, now, don't thrash around so. Don't waste your strength, such as it is. You've got 'til winter's shortest day to anticipate its loss. Unless, of course ..." The luminous eyes that had been the last sight of too many great adepts and doomed warriors came close to his, and widened. "Unless you can prevail on Stealth, called Nikodemos, to help you save it. But then, we both know it's not likely he'd put his person in jeopardy for yours.... Sacred Band oath or not, Niko's left you, deserted you as he's deserted me. Isn't that so, little maladroit nonadept? Or do you think honor and glory and an abrogated bond could bring your one-time partner down to Sanctuary to save you from a long and painful stint as one of my ... servants?" Teeth gleamed above Randal in the dark, as all of Roxane's manifestation gleamed with an unholy and inhuman light.

The Tysian Hazard-class adept lay unmoving, listening to his breathing rasp unwilling to answer, to hope, or to even long for Niko's presence. For that was what the witch wanted, he finally realized. Not his magic Globe of Power, bound with the most deadly protections years of fighting Roxane's kind had taught mages of lesser power to devise; not the Aske Ionian panoply without which, should he somehow survive this evening, Randal would never sleep again because that panoply was protection against such magics as Roxane's sort could weave about a simple Hazard-class enchanter. Not any of these did the witch crave, but Niko-Niko back in Sanctuary, in the flesh.

And Randal, who loved Niko better than he loved himself, who revered Niko in his heart with all the loyalty a rightman was sworn to give his left-side leader even though Niko had formally dissolved their pairbond long before, would gladly have given up his soul to Roxane right then and there to prevent a call going out on ethereal waves to summon Niko into Roxane's foul embrace. He would have, if his mind had been able to control his fear. But it could not: Roxane was fear's drover, mistress of terror, the very fount from which the death squads plaguing Sanctuary sprang.

She began to make arcane and convoluted passes with her red-nailed hands over Randal's immobilized body and Randal began to quake. His mouth dried up, his heart beat fast, his pulse sought to rip right through his throat. Panicked, he lost all sense of logic; unable to think, his mind was hers to mold and to command.

As she wove her web of terror, Randal's mage's talent screamed silently for help.

It screamed so well and so loudly, with every atom of his imperiled being, that far away to the west, in his cabin before a pool of gravel neatly raked, high on a cliffside overlooking the misty seascape of the Bandaran Islands' chain, Nikodemos paused in his meditation and rubbed gooseflesh rising suddenly on his arms.

And rose, and sought the cliffside, and stared out to sea awhile before he bent, picked up a fist-sized stone, and cast it into the waves. Then Niko began making preparations to leave-to forsake his mystical retreat once more for the World, and for the World's buttocks, the town called Sanctuary, where of all places in the Rankan Empire Niko, follower of maat-the mystery of Balance and Transcendent Perception-and son of the armies, least wanted to go. Even for Niko's sable stallion, the trek from Bandara to Sanctuary had been long and hard. Not as long or hard as it would have been for Niko on a lesser horse, but long enough and hard enough that when Niko arrived in town, bearded and white with trail dirt, he checked into the mercenaries' guild north of the palace and went immediately to sleep.