Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

(since he had it back) and put together a cohort to take north and lease to

the highest bidder. He wanted to wade thigh-deep in gore and guts and see if,

just by chance, he might manage to find his way back through the shimmering

dimensional gate beyond which the god had long ago thrust him, back into the

world and into the age to which he was born.

Since he knew the chances of that were less than Kadakithis becoming Emperor of

Upper and Lower Ranke, and since the god’s gloss of rationality was gone from

him, leaving him in the embrace of the curse, yet lingering, which he had

originally become the god’s suppliant to thwart, he would settle for a small

mercenary corps of his own choosing, from which to begin building an army that

would not be a puerile jest, as Kadakithis’s forces were at present. For this he

had been contacted, to this he had agreed. It remained only to see to it that

Kadakithis agreed.

The mercenary who was a Hell Hound scolded the horse, who did not like its new

weighted shoes or the water surging around its knees, white as its stockings.

Like the horse, Kadakithis was only potential in quest of actualization; like

the horse, Kadakithis feared the wrong things, and placed his trust in himself

only, an untenable arrogance in horse or man, when the horse must go to battle

and the man also. Tempus collected the horse up under him, shifting his weight,

pulling the red-bronze beast’s head in against its chest, until the combination

of his guidance and the toe-weights on its hooves and the waves’ kiss showed the