must flaunt the fact, then the mercenary-cum-Guardsman would reduce its ranks.
He would teach Jubal the overweening flesh merchant that he who is too arrogant,
is lost. He saw it as part of his duty to the Ranke Prince-Governor he was sworn
to protect. Tempus had taken down a dozen hawk-masks. This one, stumbling,
gibbering, would make thirteen.
‘Kill,’ suggested the mercenary, tiring of his sport in the face of the storm.
The flattened ears of the misty horse flickered, came forwards. It lunged, neck
out. Teeth and hooves thunked into flesh. Screaming. Then screaming stopped.
Tempus let the horse pummel the corpse awhile, stroking the beast’s neck and
cooing soft praise. When bones showed in a lightning flash, he backed the horse
off and set it at a walk towards the walled city.
It was then that the lightning- came circling round man and mount.
‘Stand, stand.’ The horse, though he shook like a newborn foal, stood. The
searing red light violated Tempus’s tight-shut lids and made his eyes tear. An
awful voice rang inside his head, deep and thunderous: ‘ You are mine.’
‘I have never doubted it,’ grated the mercenary.
‘You have doubted it repeatedly,’ growled the voice querulously, if thunder can
be said to carp. ‘ You have been unruly, faithless, though you pledged Me your
troth. You have been, since you renounced your inheritance, a mage, a
philosopher, an auditing Adept of the Order of the Blue Star, a-‘
‘Look here. God. I have also been a cuckold, a footsoldier in the ranks, a
general at the end of that. I have bedded more iron in flesh than any ten other