'Then how is it. Stepson,' said Tempus almost kindly, 'that folk experiencefleshly death here? So far as I know, I am the only soul in Sanctuary whosuffers eternally, with the possible exception of my sister, who may not have asoul. Learn not to listen to what people say, priest. A man's own mistakes areload enough, without adding others'.'

'Then let me be your choice! There is no time to find some other eunuch.' Hesaid it flatly, without bitterness, a man fielding logic. 'I can also bring youa few fighters whom you might not know and who would not dare, on their own, toapproach you. My Sacred Band yearns to serve you. You dispense your favour toprovincials and foreigners who barely recognize their honour! Give it to me, whocraves little else ...! The prince who would be king will not expose me, butpass me on to Jubal as an untrained boy. I am a little old for it, but inSanctuary, those niceties seem not to matter. I have increased your lot here.You owe me this opportunity.'

Tempus stirred his cooling posset with a finger. "That prince...' Changing thesubject, he sighed glumly, a sound like rattling bones. 'He will never be aGreat King, such as your father. Can you tell me why the god is taking such aninterest?'

'The god will tell you, when you make of the Tros horse a sacrifice. Or someperson. Then He will be mollified. You know the ritual. If it be a man youchoose, I will gladly volunteer... Ah, you understand me, now? I do not want tofrighten you ..."

'Take no thought of it.'

'Then... though I risk your displeasure, yet I say it: I love you. One nightwith you would be a surfeit, to work under you is my long-held dream. Let me dothis, which none can do better, which no whole man can do for you at all!'

'I cede you the privilege, since you value it so; but there is no telling whatJubal's hired hawk-masks might do to the eunuch we send in there.'

'With your blessing and the god's, I am fearless. And you will be close by, busyattacking Black Jubal's fortress. While you arc arresting the slavemaster forhis treasonous spying, whosoever will make good the woman's escape. Iunderstand your thought; I have arranged for the retrieval of her weapons.'Tempus chuckled. 'I hardly know what to say.'

'Say you look kindly upon me, that I am more than a bad memory to you.'

Shaking his head, Tempus took the amulet Abarsis held out to him. 'Come then.Stepson, we will see what part of your glorious expectations we can fulfil.'

7

It was said, ever after, that the Storm God took part in the sack of theslaver's estate. Lightning crawled along the gatehouses of its defensive walland rolled in balls through the inner court and turned the oaken gates to ash.The ground rumbled and buckled and bucked and great crumbling cracks appeared inits inner sanctum, where the slaver dallied with the glossy-haired eunuchKadakithis had just sent up for training. It was profligate waste to make afancy boy out of such a slave: the arena had muscled him up and time had grownhim up, and to squeeze the two or three remaining years of that sort of pleasureout of him seemed to the slaver a pity. If truth be known, blood like his cameso rarely to the slavepens that gelding him was a sin against futuregenerations: had Jubal got him early on - when the cuts had been made, at nine,or ten - he would have raised him with great pains and put him to stud. But hisbrand and tawny skin smacked of northern mountains and high wizards' keeps wherethe wars had raged so savagely that no man was proud to remember what had beendone there, on either side.

Eventually, he left the eunuch chained by the neck to the foot of his bed andwent to see what the yelling and the shouting and the blue flashes and thequivering floorboards could possibly mean.

What he saw from his threshold he did not understand, but he came striding back,stripping off his robe as he passed by the bed, rushing to arm himself and dobattle against the infernal forces of this enemy, and, it seemed, the whole ofthe night.

Naphtha fireballs came shooting over his walls into the courtyard; naming arrowstorqued from spring-wound bows; javelins and swordplay glittered nastily,singing as they slew in soft susurrusings Jubal had hoped never to hear there.

It was eerily quiet: no shouting, not from his hawk-masks, or the adversaries;the fire crackled and the horses snorted and groaned like the men where theyfell.

Jubal recollected the sinking feeling he had had in his stomach when Zaibar hadconfided to him that the bellows of anguish emanating from the vivisectionist'sworkshop were the Hell Hound Tempus's agonies, the forebodings he had enduredwhen a group of his beleaguered sell-swords went after the man who killed thosewho wore the mask of Jubal's service for sport, and failed to down him.

That night, it was too late for thinking. There was time enough only for wadinginto the thick of battle (if he could just find it: the attack was from everyside, out of darkness); hollering orders; mustering point leaders (two); andappointing replacements for the dead (three). Then he heard whoops and abysmalscreams and realized that someone had let the slaves out of their pens; thosewho had nothing to lose bore haphazard arms, but sought only death withvengeance. Jubal, seeing wide, white rimmed eyes and murderous mouths andthe new eunuch from Kadakithis's palace dancing ahead of the pack of them,started to run. The key to its collar had been in his robe; he remembereddiscarding it, within the eunuch's reach.

He ran in a private wash of terror, in a bubble through which other soundshardly penetrated, but where his breathing reverberated stentorian, rasping, andhis heart gonged loud in his ears. He ran looking back over his shoulder, and hesaw some leopard-pelted apparition with a horn bow in hand come sliding down thegatehouse wall. He ran until he reached the stable, until he stumbled over adead hawk-mask, and then he heard everything, cacophonously, that had been somuted before: swords rasping; panoplies rattling; bodies thudding and greavedmen running; quarrels whispering bright death as they passed through the darkpress; javelins ringing as they struck helm or shield suddenly limned in luridfiery light.

Fire? Behind Jubal flame licked out of the stable windows and horses whistledtheir death screams.

The heat was singeing. He drew his sword and turned in a fluid motion, judginghimself as he was wont to do when the crowds had been about him in applaudingtiers and he must kill to live to kill another day, and do so pleasingly.

He felt the thrill of it, the immediacy of it, the joy of the arena, and as thepack of freed slaves came shouting, he picked out the prince's eunuch andreached to wrest a spear from the dead hawk-mask's grip. He hefted it, lefthanded, to cast, just as the man in leopard pelt and cuirass and a dozenmercenaries came between him and the slaves, cutting him off from his finalrefuge, the stairs to the westward wall.

Behind him, the flames seemed hotter, so that he was glad he had not stopped forarmour. He threw the spear, and it rammed home in the eunuch's gut. Theleopard leader came forward, alone, sword tip gesturing three times, leftward.

Was it Tempus, beneath that frightful armour? Jubal raised his own blade to hisbrow in acceptance, and moved to where his antagonist indicated, but the leopardleader was talking over his shoulder to his front-line mercenaries, three ofwhom were clustered around the downed eunuch. Then one archer came abreast ofthe leader, touched his leopard pelt. And that bowman kept a nocked arrow onJubal, while the leader sheathed his sword and walked away, to join the littleknot around the eunuch.