bereft of the glory of death in the field. All of them feared accident, mindless
fortune’s disfavor: they lived by luck, as much as by the god’s favor. As the
dozen men, more or less in a body, headed toward the altar and the brake beyond,
Temp us felt the god rustling inside him, and took time to upbraid Va-shanka for
wasting an adherent. They were not on the best of terms, the man and his god.
His temper was hard-held these days, and the gloom of winter quartering was
making him fey-not to mention reports of the Mygdonians’ foul depredations to
the far north, the quelling of which he was not free to join….
First, he noticed that two people sauntering casually down the altar’s hillock
toward him were not familiar; and then, that none of his Stepsons were moving:
each was stock-still. A cold overswept him, like a wind-driven wave, and rolled
on toward the barracks. Above, the pale sky clouded over; a silky dusk swallowed
the day. Black clouds gathered; over Vashanka’s altar two luminous, red moons
appeared high up in the inky air, as if some huge night-cat lurked on a lofty
perch. Watching the pair approaching (through unmoving men who did not even know
they stood now in darkness), swathed in a pale nimbus which illuminated their
path as the witchcold had heralded their coming, Temp us muttered under his
breath. His hand went to his hip, where no weapon lay, but only a knotted cord.
Studying the strangers without looking at them straight-on, leaning back, his
arms outstretched along the fencetop, he waited.