10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

“So what?” Strat growled, truculent, one arm absently rubbing his damaged shoulder. Perhaps once the best man with weapons among the Stepsons, Strat was doubly wounded now: Ischade either couldn’t, or Wouldn’t, heal his shoulder and there were no Stepsons here for him to be Mnong.

“So, we’ve got to stop it,” she said. Her heart ached for Strat, and for them all, left here where nothing of consequence remained in the wake of er father’s leave-taking. She and Strat had something in common now- amething more than Crit. They had to shore up the sagging bulwark of ommand because Tempus might be testing them. None of the others salized it, but Kama did. If her father rode into town of a morning, sady to welcome them back to the fold if only they’d put the town to ights, Kama didn’t want to be found wanting.

But the big Stepson was too drunk, or too deeply hurt, to understand that she meant. “Stop it? Why? So Zip’s found some sort of pet demon r minor deity-some Ilsig spirit to worship. What difference does it nake? The gods fare no better here than magic-or fighters.”

Strat believed only in the magic of Ischade, Kama knew. He’d seen too nuch, too many dead reborn, too many undead abroad in the streets at light. Strat had seen his doom and embraced it: he was as much the ‘ampire’s creature as any of her slaves.

“C’mon, Straton,” she insisted blearily, tugging on the Stepson’s leeve. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

“You and your lovers,” Strat grumbled over the screech of his stool’s egs on sawdusted board, “What the frog you wanna do about it if you ind him lickin’ his demon’s feet?”