Storm Season

A pair of Stepsons-mercenary special forces whom the prince's marshal, Tempus, commanded-was caught out in the storm, but it could not be said that the weather killed one: the team had been investigating uncorroborated reports that a warehouse conveniently situated at a juncture of three major sewers was being used by an alchemist to concoct and store incendiaries. The surviving partner guessed that his teammate must have lit a torch, despite the cautions of research: human wastes, flour, sulphur and more had gone in through those now nonexistent doors. Though the problem the team had been dispatched to investigate was solved by a con-cussive fireball that threw the second Stepson, Nikodemos, through a window into an intersection, singeing his beard and brows and eyelashes, the young Sacred Band member relived the circumstances leading to his partner's death repeatedly, agonizing over the possibility that he was to blame throughout the night, alone in the pair's billet. So consumed was he with grief at the death of his mate, he did not even realize that his friend had saved his life: the fireball and ensuing conflagration had blown back the mist and made an oven of the wharfside; Wideway was freed from the vicious fog for half its length. He had ridden at a devil's pace out of Sanctuary home to the Stepsons' barracks, which once had been a slaver's estate and thus had rooms enough for Tempus to allow his hard won mercenaries the luxury of privacy: ten pairs plus thirty single agents comprised the team'score group-until this evening past....

Sun was trying to beat back the night, Niko could see it through his window. He had not even been able to return with a body. His beloved spirit-twin would be denied the honor of a hero's fiery bier. He could not cry; he simply sat, huddled, amputated, diminished and cold upon his bed, watching a sunray inch its way toward one of his sandaled feet.

Thus he did not see Tempus approaching with the first light of day haloing his just-bathed form as if he were some god's own avatar, which at times-despite his better judgment-his curse, and his battle with it, forced him to become. The tall, autumnal figure stooped and peered in the window, sun gilding his yarrow honey hair and his vast bronze limbs where they were free of his army-issue woolen chiton. He wore no arms or armor, no cloak or shoes; furrows deepened on his brow, and a sere frown tightened his willful mouth. Sometimes, the expression in his long, slitted eyes grew readable: this was such a time. The pain he was about to face was a pain he had known too well, too often. It brought to features not brutal enough by half for their history or profession the slight, defensive smile which would empty out his eyes. When he could, he knocked. Hearing no reply, he called softly, "Niko?" And again. ...

Having let himself in, he waited for the Stepson, who looked younger than the quarter-century he claimed, to raise his head. He met a gaze as blank as his own, and bared his teeth.

The youth nodded slowly, made to rise, sank back when Tempus motioned "stay" and joined him on his wood-framed cot in blessed shadow. Both sat then, silent, as day filled up the room, stealing away their hiding place. Elbows on knees, Niko thanked him for coming. Tempus suggested that under the circumstances a bier could still be made, and funerary games would not be out of order. When he got no response, the mercenary's commander sighed rattlingly and allowed that he himself would be honored to perform the rites. He knew how the Sacred Ban-ders who had adopted the war name "Stepsons" revered him. He did not condone or encourage it, but since they had given him their love and were probably doomed to the man for it-even as their original leader, Stepson, called Abarsis, had been doomed-Tempus felt responsible for them. His instructions and his curse had sent the gelded warrior-priest Abarsis to his death, and such fighters as these could not offer loyalty to a lesser man, to a pompous prince or an abstracted cause. Sacred Bands were the mercenaries' elite; this one's history under the Slaughter Priest's command was nearly mythical; Abarsis had brought his men to Tempus before committing suicide in a most honorable fashion, leaving them as his parting gift-and as his way of ensuring that Tempus could not just walk away from the god Vashanka's service: Abarsis had been Vashanka's priest.

Of all the mercenaries Rankan money had enabled Tempus to gather for Prince/Governor Kadakithis, this young recruit was the most singular. There was something remarkable about the finely made slate-haired fighter with his quiet hazel eyes and his understated ma

"Gloom," Niko responded in the mercenary-argot, which admitted many tongues, but only the bolder emotions: pride, anger, insult, de-claratives, imperatives, absolutes.

"Gloom," Tempus agreed in the same linguistic pastiche, yet ventured: "You will survive it. We all do."

"Oh, Riddler... I know.... You did, Abarsis did-twice," he took a shivering breath; "but it is not easy. I feel so naked. He was... always on my left, if you understand me-where you are now."

"Consider me here for the duration, then, Niko."

Niko raised too-bright eyes, slowly shaking his head. "m our spirits' place of comfort, where trees and men and life are one, he is still there. How can I rest, when my rest-place holds his ghost? There is no maat left for me . . .do you know the word?"

Tempus did: balance, equilibrium, the tendency of things to make a pattern, and that pattern to be discernible, and therefore revivifying. He thought for a moment, gravely, not about Niko's problem, but about a youthful mercenary who spoke offhandedly of adept's refreshments and archmagical meditations, who routinely transported his spirit into a mystical realm and was accustomed to meeting another spirit there. He said at last:" I do not read it ill that your friend waits there. Why is it bad, unless you make it so? Maat, if you have had it, you will find again. With him, you are bound in spirit, not just in flesh. He would be hurt to hurt you, and to see that you are afraid of what once you loved. His spirit will depart your place of relaxation when we put it formally to rest. Yet you must make a better peace with him, and surmount your fear. It is well to have a friendly soul waiting at the gate when your time comes around. Surely, you love him still?"

That broke the young Stepson, and Tempus left him curled upon his bed, so that his sobs need not be silent, and he could heal upon his own.

Outside, leaning against the doorjamb, the planked door carefully closed, Tempus put his fingers to the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. He had surprised himself, as well as the boy, offering Niko such far-reaching support. He was not sure he dared to mean it, but he had said it. Niko's team had functioned as the Stepsons' ad hoc liaisons, coordinating (but more usually arbitrating disputes among) the mercenaries and the Hell-Hounds (the Rankan Imperial Elite Guards), the Ilsig regular army and the militia Tempus was trying to covertly make out of some carefully-chosen street urchins, slit purses, and sleeves-the real rulers of this overblown slum and the only people who ever knew what was going on in Sanctuary, a town which might just become a strategic staging area if war did come down from the north. As liaisons, both teammates had come to him often for advice. Part of Niko's workload had been the making of an adequate swordsman out of a certain Ilsig thief named Hanse, to whom Tempus had owed a debt he did not care to personally discharge. But the young backstreeter, emboldened by his easy early successes, had proved increasingly irascible and contentious when Niko aware that Tempus was indebted to Hanse and Kadakithis inexplicably favored the thief-endeavored to lead him far beyond slash-and-thrust infantry tactics into the subtleties of Niko's own expertise: cavalry strategies, guerrilla tactics, western fighting forms that dispensed with weaponry by accenting surprise, precision, and meditation-honed instinct. Though the thief recognized the value of what the Stepson offered, his pride made him sneer: he could not admit his need to know, would not chance being found wanting, and hid his fear of failure behind anger. After three months of justifying the value of methods and mechanics the Stepson felt to be self-explanatory (black stomach blood, bright lung blood, or pink foam from the ears indicates a mortal strike; yarrow root shaved into a wound quells its pain; ginseng, chewed, renews stamina; mandrake in an enemy's stewpot incapacitates a company, monkshood decimates one; green or moldy hay downs every horse on your opponents' line; cheese wire, the right handhold, or a knife from behind obviates the need for passwords, protracted dissembling, or forged papers) Niko had turned to Tempus for a decision as to whether instruction must continue. Shadowspawn, called Hanse, was a natural bladesman, as good as any man wishing to wield a sword for a living needed to be-on the ground, Niko had said. As far as horsemanship, he had added almost sadly, niceties could not be taught to a cocky novice who spent more time arguing that he would never need to master them than practicing what he was taught. Similarly, so far as tradecraft went, Hanse's fear of being labelled a Stepson-in-training or an apprentice Sacred Bander prevented him from fraternizing with the squadron during the long evenings when shop-talk and exploits flowed freely, and every man found much to learn. Niko had shrugged, spreading his hands to indicate an end to his report. Throughout it (the longest speech Tempus had ever heard the Stepson make), Tempus could not fail to mark the disgust so carefully masked, the frustration and the unwillingness to admit defeat which had hidden in Nikodemos' lowered eyes and blank face. Tempus' decision to pronounce the student Shadowspawn graduated, gift him with a horse, and go on to new business had elicited a subtle inclination of head-an agreement, nothing less-from the youthful and eerily composed junior mercenary. Since then, he had not seen him. And, upon seeing him, he had not asked any of the things he had gone there to find out: not one question as to the exact circumstances of his partner's death, or the nature of the mist which had ravaged the Maze, had passed his lips. Tempus blew out a noisy breath, grunted, then pushed off from where he leaned against the whitewashed barracks wall. He would go out to see what headway the band had made with the bier and the games, set for sundown behind the walled estate. He did not need to question the boy further, only to listen to his own heart.