Storm Season

Thrusher was right-a man could hide in Sanctuary. Walegrin's father had done it, but hiding hadn't improved him any. He'd ended his life reviled in a city that tolerated almost anything, hacked to pieces and cursed by the S'danzo of the bazaar. It was his father's death, and the memory of the curse that haunted Walegrin's nights.

By rights it wasn't his curse at all, but his father's. The old man was never without a doxy; Rezzel was only the last of a long, anonymous procession of women through Walegrin's childhood. She was a S'danzo beauty, wild even by their gypsy standards. Her own people foresaw her violent death when she abandoned them to live four years in the Sanctuary garrison, matching Walegrin's temper with her own.

Then one night his father got drunk, and more violently jealous than usual. They found Rezzel, what remained of her, with the animal carcasses outside the charnel house. The S'danzo took back what they had cast out and, by dead of night, returned to the garrison. Seven masked, knife-wielding S'danzo carved the living flesh of his father, and sealed their curses with his blood. They'd found two children, Walegrin and Rez-zei's daughter, Illyra, hiding in the corner. They'd marked them with blood and curses as well.

He'd run away before the sun rose on that night-and was still ru

2

Walegrin patted his horse, ignoring the cloud of dust around them both. Everything, everyone was covered with a fine layer of desert grit; only his hair seemed unaffected, but then it had always been the color of parched straw. He'd led his men safely across the desert to Sanctuary but weariness had settled upon them like dust and though the end of their travels was in sight, they waited in silence for Thrusher's return.

Walegrin had not dared to enter the city himself. Tall, pale despite the desert sun, his braided hair roughly confined by a bronze band, he was too memorable to be an advance scout. He was an outlaw as well, wanted by the prince for abandoning the garrison without warning. He had Kilite's pardon, the scrolls still carefully sealed in his saddlebag, but using it would eventually let Kilite know he was still alive. It was better to remain an outlaw.

Hook-nosed, diminutive Thrusher was a man no-one would remember. Able and single-minded, he'd never run afoul of the town's dangers nor succumb to its limited temptations. Walegrin would have a roof over his men's heads by nightfall and more water than they could drink to set before them. Wine too, but Walegrin had almost forgotten the taste of wine.

As the afternoon shadows lengthened, Thrusher appeared on the dunes. Walegrin waved him safe conduct. He put his heels to his horse and galloped the last stretch of sand. Both man and beast had been cleansed of yellow grit. Walegrin suppressed a pang of jealousy.

"Ho, Thrush! Do we sleep in town tonight?" one of the other men called.

"With full trenchers and a wench on each knee," Thrusher laughed.

"By the gods, I thought we're bound for Sanctuary, not paradise."

"Paradise enough-if a man's not choosy," Thrusher told them all as he dismounted and made his way to Walegrin.

"You seem satisfied. Is the town that much changed since we left it?" Walegrin asked.

"Yes, that much. You'd think the Nisibisi rode this way. There are more mercenaries in Sanctuary than in Ranke. We'll never be noticed. The usual scum fears to leave the shadows-and if a man knows how to use his sword there's any number who'll hire him. Kittycat's gold hasn't been the best for many a month now. He's got to rely on a citizen's militia to take up the slack from the Hell Hounds. Wrigglies-every last one of them: pompous and-"

"What ma

"Sacred Banders," Thrusher admitted with noticible reluctance.

"Vashanka's bastards. How many? And who leads them-if they're led by a man?"

"Couldn't say how many; they camp Downwind. Banders're worse than Hounds; a handful of 'em's worse than a plague. Some say they belong to the Prince now that their priest's dead. Most say it's Tempus at the root of it. They train for the Nisibisi, but Tempus is building a new fortress Downwind."

Walegrin looked away. He had no quarrel with Tempus Thales. True, he was inclined to arrogance, sadism and he was treachery incarnate, but he moved in the elite circles of power and, as such, Walegrin could only admire him. Like everyone else he had heard the Tempus-tales of self-healing and psuedo-divinity; he professed to doubt them-but had Tempus gone in search of Enlibar steel, no one would have dared stand in his way.

"They call themselves Stepson-or something like that," Thrusher continued. "They're all in Jubal's turf; and neither hide nor hair of Jubal seen these last months. No hawkmasks on the streets either, 'cept the ones found nailed to posts here and there."

"Sacred Banders; Stepsons; Whoresons." Walegrin shared the prejudices of most in the Imperial army towards any elite, separate group. Sanctuary had been the dead-end of the world as long as anyone could remember. No right-thinking Rankan citizen passed time there. It boded ill if Sanctuary had become home to not only Tempus but a contingent of Sacred Banders as well. The Empire was in worse shape than anyone thought.

What was bad for Sanctuary and all of Ranke, though, was not necessarily bad for the re-discoverer of Enlibar steel. With luck Walegrin would find good men in town, or good gold, or simply enough activity to hide behind. But whenever Walegrin thought of luck he thought of the S'danzo. They had marked him for ill fortune: if he had good luck it could have been better and when his luck turned sour, the less said about it the better.

"What about that house I asked you about?" Walegrin asked after the conversation had lulled a moment.

The scout was relieved to speak of something else. "No trouble-it wasn't hidden, though no-one knew much about it. Right off the Street of Armorers, like you said it'd be. This metal-master, Balustrus, he must be a pretty strange fellow. Everyone thought he'd died until the Torch-" Thrusher stopped abruptly, slapping himself on the forehead.

"-Gods takes take me for an idiot! Nothing is the same in Sanctuary; the gods have discovered it! Vashanka's name was blasted from the pantheon over the palace gate. Vashanka! Sacred Band's Storm God burned clean. The stone steamed for a day and a night. The god himself appeared in the sky-and Azyuna, too."

"Wrigglies? Magicians? Were the Whoresons involved?" Walegrin asked, but without interrupting the flow of Thrusher's theological gossip.

"The Torch himself was nearly killed. Some say a new god's been born to the First Consort and the War of Cataclysm's begun. Officially the priests are blaming everything on the Nisibisi- and not saying why the Nisibisi would wage magical war in Sanctuary. The Wrigglies say it's the awakening of Ils Thousand Eyes. And the mages don't say much of anything because half of them're dead and the rest hiding. The local doomsayers're making fortunes.

"But our Prince Kittycat, bless his empty, little head, had an idea. He marches out on his balcony and proclaims that Vashanka is angry because Sanctuary does not show proper respect to his consort and her child and that he has blasted his own name off the pantheon rather than be associated with the town. Then Kittycat proclaims a tax on every tavern-a copper a tot-and says he's going to make an offering to Vashanka. Sanctuary will apologize by ringing a new bell!"

Walegrin empathized with Sanctuary's naive, blundering young governor. Actually his idea wasn't bad; much better than involving the mageguild or setting the Wrigglies against the outnumbered Rankans. That was Kittycat's problem; his ideas weren't half bad, but he wasn't even half the man it would take to have people listen to them without laughing.