to the point of insult, managing by his exaggerated servility to mean the
opposite of what he said, “will appease the hungry gods.”
And Theron, old and as gray as the shadows in this newly acquired but not yet
conquered palace full of politicians and whores, gave Brachis a tare fully as
black as the raging sky outside and said, “Right, priest. Let’s have a dozen of
your worst enemies bled out in Blood Square by lunch.”
Tempus stayed an impulse to touch his old friend Theron’s knee under the table.
But Brachis didn’t rise to Theron’s bait. The priest bowed his way out in a
swish of copper-beaded robes.
“God’s balls, Riddler,” said the aging general to the ageless one, “do you think
we’ve angered the gods? More to the point, do you think we’ve got one to anger?”
Theron’s jaw jutted so that the pitting of age made it look like a walnut shell,
or the snout of the moth-eaten geriatric lion he so much resembled from his
thinning, unkempt mane to his scarred and twisted claws. He was a big man still,
his power no mere memory, but fresh and flowing in corded veins and leathery
sinews-big and powerful in his aged prime, except when seen in close proximity
to Tempus, the avatar of Storm Gods on earth, whose yarrow-honey hair and high
brow free from lines resembled so much the votive statues of Vashanka still
worshiped in the land. Tempus’s eyes were long and full of guile, his form
heroic, his aspect one of a man on the joyous side of forty, though he’d seen
empires rise and fall and fully expected to see the end of this one-to bury