shoulders-pillaging had begun.
Strat didn’t move to stop the stealing or the defilement of the luckless few
who’d been comely enough to live a little longer than their fellows. He was the
ranking officer and his was the burden of command-even when, as now, he didn’t
like it.
Crit, Strat’s absent partner, might have foreseen and forestalled the moment
when the 3rd’s bloodthirsty nature surfaced and Zip’s rabble followed suit, and
blood began to spill like Vashanka’s rains or a whore’s tears.
But he hadn’t. Not until it was far too late. And then, knowing that if he tried
to stop them he’d lose only his command, he’d had to let the bloodlust work
through the assault force like dysentery works through those fool enough to
drink from the White Foal River.
Ischade knew his pain; her hand was on his arm. But the necromant was wise-she
said not one word to the Stepsons’ chief interrogator and line commander as they
came upon Randal-the Tysian Hazard who was the only magical ally besides herself
the Stepsons tolerated-quartering a dog to roast and bury at the barracks’
compass points.
“For luck, Witchy-Ears?” Straton growled to Randal, and Ischade relaxed. “It’s
hardly lucky for that pup.”
He must take his anguish out on someone, vent his spleen. She’d thought while
they walked among the corpses askew on training grounds and open-legged in
doorways that the “someone” might be her. She’d raised shades to help the siege
even one named Janni who’d been a Stepson before his death. And Strat, who’d
known Janni and Stilcho and others among Ischade’s part-living cadre when they’d