Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

father, fighting oblivious from his car, his charioteer fallen between his legs,

that time Tempus had hacked off an enemy’s arm to save him from the axe it

swung; he saw the witchbitch of a sorceress the king had wed in the black hills

to make alliance with what could not be had by force; he saw the aftermath of

that, when the wild woman’s spawn was out other and every loyal general took a

hand in her murder before she laid their commander out in state. He saw the

boy, wizard-haired and wise, running to Tempus’s chariot for a ride, grasping

his neck, laughing, kissing like the northern boys had no shame to do; all

this before the Great K-ing discharged his armies and retired home to peace, and

Tempus rode south to Ranke, an empire hardly whelped and shaky on its prodigious

feet. And Tempus saw the field he had taken against a monarch, once his liege:

Masters change. He had not been there when they had got the Great King,

dragged him down from his car and begun the Unending Deaths that proved the

Rankans barbarians second to none. It was said by those who were there that he

stood it well enough until his son was castrated before his eyes, given off to

a slaver with ready collar … When he had heard, Tempus had gone searching

among the sacked towns of the north, where Ranke wrought infamy into example,

legends better than sharp javelins at discouraging resistance. And he saw

Abarsis in the slaver’s kennel, the boy’s look of horror that a man of the

armies would see what had been done to him. No glimmer of joy invaded the gaunt