regulars and vastly more experienced, given the Medurimins' penchant for rioting. They sported burnished blue plate armor, short swords at their hips, small spiked target shields on left forearms and over each right shoulder lay a halberd with an eight-foot ironshod haft.
'Weren't these the men who killed your parents, dear Fost?' came Ziore's tentative, curious, soft words.
He glanced at the satchel resting on the bench by Moriana's hip. All had agreed, Erimenes with the worst possible humor, that it would be best for the genies to remain out of sight today. The city was feverish with talk of magic; to have a ghost hovering in the bleachers would do nothing to calm the dangerous passions of the anti- Moriana faction and might even incite to violence those favorably disposed toward her. Fost shrugged.
'I don't really know,' he said in a voice equally soft, but laden with emotion. 'I was only eight when it happened. I never got a clear account of how they died. It was during festivities like this, only grander. Teom was being crowned. The mob caught the rumor that their dole would be reduced to pay for the celebration and rioted. But who killed my parents? The guard, the mob, what difference?'
Lacking telepathic skills, Fost was unable to read any unstated response on Ziore's part, and she made no attempt to broadcast it. He guessed the cloistered genie was shocked at his apparent callousness. But the death of his parents had been history for twenty years, and he had cried all the tears he had for them long since.
'One thing the death of my father and mother taught me,' he replied to the still silent nun, 'later, when I had the chance and maturity to think it over. The fact that a group is oppressed doesn't mean it's any better at core than its oppressors. If the rioters killed my parents, they did so no less heedlessly than the guardsmen would have done.' He flicked sweat from his forehead where it threatened to bead and roll into his eyes. 'This transition from guttersnipe to noble of the Empire makes little impression on me.'
He looked around at the panoply of fabulous costumes, a profusion of gilt so extreme it transcended bad taste and achieved silliness. He thought of melting down any five hangers-on and getting enough gold to keep the entire Imperial Navy afloat for a whole year. He smiled mirthlessly. He knew how things were done in High Medurim. The state of their army showed that all too clearly. All things considered, the gold was probably better off where it was. At least, it wasn't going to finance further bloodthirsty follies on the Northern Continent.
Off to the south, slate-blue clouds hung over the foothills of Harmis. Flashes of yellow heat lightning played among them with a dull rumble. Fost thought he caught the scent of ozone mixed with the aromas of the day. Nearby vendors fried sausage and sold it wrapped in paper with hot mustard and sweet seaweed. The men and women around him were drenched in the rarest perfumes, some sweet, some tart, only a few exotic and elusive, wordless. Intermixed with these heady odors came the rank smell of war dog droppings, the heavy smell of farmed land south of the city, the pressing intrusive odor of unwashed bodies. They kept Fost's memory turning ever backward to his childhood, for smell is the most reminiscent sense of all.
A heavy gonging rattle like giant coins shaken in a sack drew him back. Sensing a shift in the crowd noise, a note of subdued hostility like the warning hum of a beehive when an intruder nears, he looked down at the street. A strange, outlandish sight greeted his eyes. A full troop of Highgrass Broad dog riders rode by at a trot, colored streamers flying from the spires of their helms, their scale armor ringing to the tempo of their war dogs' gait.
'I've heard of these,' Fost murmured to Moriana, seeing her puzzled frown at the presence of the Highgrass mercenaries. 'They just got back from serving out a contract in the Sword Kingdoms, battling the southern Northern Barbarians.' The Sword Kingdoms lay above the equator, in the northern half of the Northern Continent. 'Teom heard about them when their ship landed here in Medurim and hired them for the city's defense. Wise move, too.' Moriana looked skeptical.
'They do have an impressive collection of trophies,' Erimenes said. Fost's companion had been unable to stay in his jug like Ziore, but in the babble of the crowd no one was likely to notice either words or a partially exposed blue head peering from the satchel.
The genie was correct. Every other dog rider held lance couched in a stirrup with one hand and a captured banner or insignia proudly aloft in the other. There were bicolored, slender pennons of rival Highgrass units, flags worked with the devices of a score of small cities and minor nobles, and the beaten-brass plaques the Northern Barbarians used in place of banners.
'There,' gasped Moriana, pointing. 'See that white, spiralled staff hung with human skulls? It's the tusk of a thunderflash. That was the sacred war totem of the Golden Barbarian horde we fought in the savannas west of Thailot six years ago.' She shifted her hand, now pointing to other units. 'Red and black streamers – that would be Captain Mayft's troop.'
'The Gryphons,' Fost added. 'It's easy to see why they call themselves that.' It was indeed. Like their riders, the big, thick-legged Grassland war dogs were all encased in scale armor. Each beast's head was covered with a steel mask worked in the shape of a beaked, sharp-eared face which gave the animals the appearance of wingless gryphons. Most of the riders had mask visors as well, but rode with them raised to reveal the typical broad, sun- and wind-tanned Grasslander features.
'They're a free company, aren't they?' asked Moriana, with a trace of distaste. At Fost's affirmative, she shook her head. 'I don't see how one can hope for discipline from such as those.'
There were dozens of bands of Grasslander mercenaries, from small squads up to regimental size. They were formed to a dizzying array of models. Some were based on clan affiliations, others on village of birth, still others on religious creed. Some were wholly communal, sharing rations and booty and bodies, as well, in great orgies. Others were stern and abstemious. Captain Mayft's Gryphons were one of the least interesting varieties, a purely volunteer company raised at its commander's own expense.
'Obviously one can,' Fost replied dryly, 'since here they are, still together six years after you first encountered them. And they've done pretty well for themselves. I doubt they paid klenors for those trophies.'
'Bought with blood and life,' cackled Erimenes from his satchel. 'Obviously. Oh, what battles they must have fought!'
Moriana turned away. The dog riders clattered on past, lance heads winking in the sun, heavy unstrung bows riding in dogskin cases beneath the skirt of each saddle, to take their place in ordered ranks among the other troops assembled at the far end of the broad avenue. The native soldiers drew away from them; the foreign mercenaries were little loved by their ostensible comrades in arms.
Fost smiled grimly. With the exception of a few truly tempered units such as the Imperial Life Guards, the Grasslanders were unquestionably the finest troops on hand. For precisely that reason they were hated. He would not have ridden in Captain Mayft's saddle for anything, and not only because he was a poor dog rider.
Diplomacy had failed, so Fost had finally come out and flatly refused Teom's offer to become Grand Marshal of the Imperial
Armies. Moriana would have made a better commander; she was trained to war and well seasoned in battle strategies both physical and magical. In High Medurim, women fighting masters were accepted out of necessity, since many masters of the first quality hailed from locales in which women were not raised as docilely as they were within the Empire. For that small concession, the City States reckoned Medurim decadent. Certainly, they would accept no woman as general over them.
As for Fost, he had no desire to commit suicide. He had been resented enough when Teom had named him mere marshal, and that was a position without power or influence. The lords of Imperial arms would sooner have a foreign barbarian from the North or a hairy, uncouth wild man from the Isles of the Sun placed over them than a commoner bred in the gutters of their own city.
Finally, the parade was over. The great gates – gilded, of course – of the temple across the Plaza swung open. Out marched the bull-necked, heavily bearded Patriarch, Spiritual Protector of the Empire, clad in vestments of cloth of gold. On his head he wore the tiara, a three foot, gem-encrusted golden cylinder, surrounded by flying buttresses and less functional protrusions of silver. After him in bright array came the lesser prelates. Last of all came the Sexton, more profoundly bearded than the Patriarch, his whiskers as white as sea foam and stuffed into his girdle to keep him from stumbling over them.
He was a full one hundred thirty-eight years old, emaciated, and somewhat befuddled by all the hoopla around him this day. He had an uncanonical pushbroom propped over one skinny shoulder, not knowing what all these people were doing tracking up his pristine Plaza but sure that a broom would be needed before the ceremony was over. An alert acolyte relieved him of the implement after only a brief scuffle, and the ceremony resumed.
Ignoring the byplay, the Patriarch launched into his benediction in a voice remarkably shrill and thin for one so stoutly built. His voice reminded Fost of a mosquito's whining as he went through the liturgy. Fost was thankful for the annoying voice; it was all that kept him from falling asleep. A half-dozen spearmen had collapsed in ranks from
