Did not Tempus still labor at his gory task of purging the disloyal-all who hadbeen influential in Abakithis's court? Did not women still wake to empty bedsand find pouches made of human skin and filled with thirty gold soldats (theRankan price for one human life) nailed to their boudoir doors?

Did not those few remaining adherents of Abakithis, former emperor of Ranke (nowdeceased, unavenged, much cursed in his uneasy grave), still scuttle eventhrough the deadly, knife-sharp hail with bulging pockets to the mercenaries'guildhall to leave their fortunes at the desk with scrawled notes saying, "ForTempus, to distribute as he wills, from the admiring and loyal family of So-andSo," while servants spirited noble wives and children out back ways and slumyardgates in beggars' guise?

Thus it was whispered, as the storm raged unabated into its second day, thatTheron and his creature Tempus were to blame for this black blizzard straightfrom hell.

It was whispered by a woman to Critias, Tempus's first officer and finest covertactor, who had infiltrated the noble strata of the imperial city; And Crit, witha wry twitch of lips that drew down his patrician nose and a rake of hisswordhand through dark, feathery hair, replied to the governor's wife he wasbedding: "No one gives a contract for a sunrise, m'lady. No man. that is.Theron is no more than that. When gods throw tantrums, even Tempus listens."

Crit had fought in the Wizard Wars up north and the woman knew it. His guise wasthat of a disaffected officer who had renounced his commission after Abakithis'sassassination at the Festival of Man and now, like so many others of the oldguard, scrambled from allegiance to allegiance in search of safety.

So the governor's wife just ran a finger along his jaw and smiledcommiseratingly as she said, "You men of the armies ... all alike. I supposeyou're telling me that this is good? This storm, this hail black as hell? Thatit's a sign we poor women cannot read?"

And (thinking of the prognosticators-bits of hair and silver and bone and lucknestled in the pouch dangling from his belt that, with the rest of his clothes,lay in a heap at the foot of another man's bed) Crit replied in Court Rankene,"When the Storm God returns to the armies, wars can be won-not just foughtinterminably. Without Him, we've just been marking time. If He's angry, He'lllet us know on what account. And I'd bet it won't be Theron's-or Tempus's. One'sa general whom the soldiers chose exactly because the god had abandoned usduring Abakithis's reign; the other is..."

It was not the woman's hand, reaching low, which made him pause. She wantedCrit's protection; information was what he'd sought here in return. And gottenwhat he'd come for, and more from this one-all a Rankan lady had to give. So hethought-in a moment of unaccustomed tenderness for one who would likelyentertain, on his account, the crowds who'd throng the execution stands when theweather broke-to explain to her about Tempus. About what and who the man Crithad sworn to serve was, and was not.

He settled for "... Tempus is what Father Enlil-Lord Storm to the armies-wills,and cursed more than Ranke and all her enemies put together. By gods and men, bymagic and mages. If there's hell to pay because of Theron's reign, rest assured,lady, it's he who'll suffer in all our steads."

The Rankan woman, from the look on her face and the hunger on her lips, had lostinterest in the subject. But Crit had not. When he left her, he marked her doorwith a sign for the palace police without even a second thought to the fine bodybehind it which would soon be lifeless.

The sky was still black as a witch's crotch and the wind was chorusing itsjudgment song in a many-throated voice Crit had heard occasionally on thebattlefield when Tempus's non-human allies took a hand in this skirmish or thatchoraling the way it used to when wizard weather blew in Sanctuary, where Crit'spartner and his brothers of the Sacred Band were now, down at the empire's mostfoul and egregious southernmost appurtenance.

By the time Crit had retrieved his horse, his fingers were playing with the luckcharms in his beltpouch. Normally, he'd have pulled them out, squatted down,shaken and thrown them in the straw for guidance.

But the storm was guidance enough; he didn't need to ask a question he wouldn'tlike the answer to. If his partner Strat had been on his right tonight, he'dhave bet his friend any odds that, when the weather broke, Tempus would comerousting Crit without so much as an explanation and they'd be heading south toSanctuary where the Sacred Band was quartered for the winter.

Not that he didn't want to see Strat-he did. Not that he wasn't happy that theStorm god Vashanka, God of the Annies, of Rape and Pillage, of Bloodlust andFury and Death's Gate, was manifest-he was. What he'd told the Rankan bitch wastrue-you couldn't win a war without your god. But Vashanka, the Rankan StormGod, had deserted the Stepsons, Crit's unit, in their need. So the unit hadtaken up with another, perhaps greater, god: Father Enlil.

And the black, roiling clouds above, the voices which spoke thunder over thefighter's head, were telling a man who didn't like gods much better than magicand who was first officer to a demigod who meddled with both, that Vashankamight not be too pleased with the fickle men who once had slaughtered in Hisname and now did so in Another's.

Things were so damned complicated whenever Tempus was .involved.

Grabbing a tuft of mane, Crit swung up on his warhorse and reined it around sohard it half-reared and then, finding itself headed toward the mercenaries'guild and its own stall, safety and comfort in the storm, fairly bolted throughthe treacherous, slushy streets of Ranke.

Despite the darkened ways and chancy footing, Crit let the young horse run,trusting pedestrians, should there be any, to scatter, and armed patrols torecognize him for who and what he was. The horse had a right to comfort, whereit could find some. Crit couldn't think of a thing that would do the same forhim, now that the gods had dropped one shoe and all he could do was wait untilTempus dropped the other.

The storm didn't exactly break, but on the fourth day it mellowed.

By then, Theron and Tempus had summoned Brachis, High Priest of the VariouslyNamed Wargods of Imperial Ranke, and concocted a likely story for the populace.

Executions, held in abeyance for the first three days of the storm, wereresumed. "More purges, obviously. Your Majesty," Brachis had suggested, unctuousto the point of insult, managing by his exaggerated servility to mean theopposite of what he said, "will appease the hungry gods."

And Theron, old and as gray as the shadows in this newly acquired but not yetconquered palace full of politicians and whores, gave Brachis a tare fully asblack as the raging sky outside and said, "Right, priest. Let's have a dozen ofyour worst enemies bled out in Blood Square by lunch."

Tempus stayed an impulse to touch his old friend Theron's knee under the table.

But Brachis didn't rise to Theron's bait. The priest bowed his way out in aswish of copper-beaded robes.

"God's balls, Riddler," said the aging general to the ageless one, "do you thinkwe've angered the gods? More to the point, do you think we've got one to anger?"

Theron's jaw jutted so that the pitting of age made it look like a walnut shell,or the snout of the moth-eaten geriatric lion he so much resembled from histhinning, unkempt mane to his scarred and twisted claws. He was a big man still,his power no mere memory, but fresh and flowing in corded veins and leatherysinews-big and powerful in his aged prime, except when seen in close proximityto Tempus, the avatar of Storm Gods on earth, whose yarrow-honey hair and highbrow free from lines resembled so much the votive statues of Vashanka stillworshiped in the land. Tempus's eyes were long and full of guile, his formheroic, his aspect one of a man on the joyous side of forty, though he'd seenempires rise and fall and fully expected to see the end of this one-to buryTheron as he had and would so many other men, with all their might ranged roundthem. And Theron knew the truth of it-he'd known Tempus since both wereseemingly of an age, fighting the Defender on Wizardwall's skirts when theRankan Empire was just a babe. The two were honest with one another when it waspossible; they were careful when it was not.