Crit sat long at his customary table in the common room after Tempus had gone. By rights it should have been Straton or some Sacred Band pair who succeeded Tempus, someone ... anyone but him. After a time he pulled out his pouch and emptied its contents on to the plank table: three tiny metal figures, a fishhook made from an eagle's claw and abalone shell, a single die, an old field decoration won in Azehur while the Slaughter Priest still led the original Sacred Band.
He scooped them up and threw them as a man might throw in wager: the little gold Storm God fell beneath the lead figurine of a fighter, propping the man upright; the fishhook embraced the die, which came to rest with one dot facing up Strat's war name was Ace. The third figure, a silver rider mounted, sat square atop the field star - Abarsis had slipped it over his head so long ago the ribbon had crumbled away.
Content with the omens his private prognosticators gave, he collected them and put them away. He'd wanted Tempus to ask him to join him, not hand him fifty men's lives to yea or nay. He took such work too much to heart; it lay heavy on him, worse than the task force's weight had been, and he'd only just begun. But that was why Tempus picked him - he was conscientious to a fault.
He sighed and rose and quit the hostel, riding aimlessly through the foetid streets. Damned town was a pit, a bubo, a sore that wouldn't heal. He couldn't trust his task force to some subordinate, though how he was going to run them while stomping around vainly trying to fill Tempus's sandals, he couldn't say.
His horse, picking his route, took him by the Vulgar Unicorn where Straton would soon be 'discussing sensitive matters' with One-Thumb.
By rights he should go up to the palace, pay a call on Kadakithis, 'make nice' (as Straton said) to Vashanka's priest-of-record Molin, visit the Mageguild ... He shook his head and spat over his horse's shoulder. He hated politics.
And what Tempus had told him about Niko's misfortune and Janni's death still rankled. He remembered the foreign fighter Niko had made him turn loose - Vis. Vis, who'd come to Tempus, bearing hurt and slain, with a message from Jubal. That, and what Straton had gotten from the hawkmask they'd given Ischade, plus the vampire woman's own hints, allowed him to triangulate Jubal's position like a sailor navigating by the stars. Vis was supposed to come to him, though. He'd wait. If his hunch was right, he could put Jubal and his hawkmasks to work for Kadakithis without either knowing - or at least having to admit - that was the case.
If so, he'd be free to take the band north - what they wanted, expected, and would now fret to do with Tempus gone. Only Tempus's mystique had kept them this long; Crit would have a mutiny, or empty barracks, if he couldn't meet their expectation of war to come. They weren't babysitters, slum police, or palace praetorians; they collected exploits, not soldats. He began to form a plan, shape up a scenario, answer questions sure to be asked him later, rehearsing replies in his mind.
Unguided, his horse led him slumward - a bam-rat, it was taking the quickest, straightest way home. When he looked up and out, rather than down and in, he was almost through the Shambles, near White Foal Bridge and the vampire's house, quiet now, unprepossessing in the light of day. Did she sleep in the day? He didn't think she was that kind of vampire; there had been no bloodless, no punctures on the boy stiff against the drop's back door when one of the street men found it. But what did she do, then, to her victims? He thought of Straton, the way he'd looked at the vampire, the exchange between the two he'd overheard and partly understood. He'd have to keep those two quite separate, even if Ischade was putatively willing to work with, rather than against, them. He spurred his horse on by.
Across the bridge, he rode southwest, skirting the thick of Downwind. When he sighted the Stepsons' barracks, he still didn't know if he could succeed in leading Stepsons. He rehearsed it wryly in his mind: 'Life to all. Most of you don't know me but by reputation, but I'm here to ask you to bet your lives on me, not once, but as a matter of course over the next months ...'
Still, someone had to do it. And he'd have no trouble with the Sacred Band teams, who knew him in the old days, when he'd had a right-side partner, before that vulnerability was made painfully clear, and he gave up loving the death seekers - or anything else which could disappoint him.
It mattered not a whit, he decided, if he won or if he lost, if they let him advise them or deserted post and duty to follow Tempus north, as he would have done if the sly old soldier hadn't bound him here with promise and responsibility.
He'd brought Niko's bow. The first thing he did - after leaving the stables, where he saw to his horse and checked on Niko's pregnant mare - was seek the wounded fighter.
The young officer peered at him through swollen, blackened eyes, saw the bow and nodded, unlaced its case and stroked the wood recurve when Critias laid it on the bed. Haifa dozen men were there when he'd knocked and entered - three teams who'd come with Niko and his partner down to Ranke on Sacred Band business. They left, warning softly that Crit mustn't tire him - they'd just got him back.
'He's left me the command,' Crit said, though he'd thought to talk ofhawkmasks and death squads and Nisibisi - a witch and one named Vis.
'Gilgamesh sat by Enkidu seven days, until a maggot fell from his nose.' It was the oldest legend the fighters shared, one from Enlil's time when the Lord Storm and Enki (Lord Earth) ruled the world, and a fighter and his friend roamed far.
Crit shrugged and ran a spread hand through feathery hair. 'Enkidu was dead; you're not. Tempus has just gone ahead to prepare our way.'
Niko rolled his head, propped against the whitewashed wall, until he could see Crit clearly: 'He followed godsign; I know that look.'
'Or witchsign.' Crit squinted, though the light was good, three windows wide and afternoon sun raying the room. 'Are you all right - beyond the obvious, I mean?'
'I lost two partners, too close in time. I'll mend.'
Let's hope, Crit thought but didn't say, watching Niko's expressionless eyes. 'I saw to your mare.'
'My thanks. And for the bow. Janni's bier is set for morning. Will you help me with it? Say the words?'
Crit rose; the operator in him still couldn't bear to officiate in public, yet if. he didn't, he'd never hold these men. 'With pleasure. Life to you. Stepson.'
'And to you. Commander.'
And that was that. His first test, passed; Niko and Tempus had shared a special bond. .
That night, he called them out behind the barracks, ordering a feast to be served on the training field, a wooden amphitheatre of sorts. By then Straton had come out to join him, and Strat wasn't bashful with the mess staff or the hired help.
Maybe it would work out; maybe together they could make half a Tempus, which was the least this endeavour needed, though Crit would never pair again ...
He put it to them when all were well disposed from wine and roasted pig and lamb, standing and flatly telling them Tempus had left, putting them in his charge. There fell a silence and in it he could hear his heart pound. He'd been calmer ringed with Tyse hillmen, or alone, his partner slain, against a Rankan squadron.
'Now, we've got each other, and for good and fair, I say to you, the quicker we quit this cesspool for the clean air of high peaks war, the happier I'll be.'
He could hardly see their faces in the dark with the torches snapping right before his face. But it didn't matter; they had to see him, not he them. Crit heard a raucous growl from fifty throats become assent, and then a cheer, and laughter, and Strat, beside and off a bit, gave him a soldier's sign: all's well.