plucked the arrow from the air when it was inches from his heart and, as he
seldom did, flaunted his supernatural attributes before the crowd, holding the
arrow high and breaking it between his fingers like a piece of straw as he
bellowed in his most commanding voice: “Zip and all you rebels, disperse or face
my personal wrath- a retribution that will haunt you till you die, and then
some: you’ll leave my fury to your descendants as a bequest.”
And Zip’s voice called back from a gloom in which all white faces looked alike
and darker Wriggly skins faded to invisibility: “Come get me, Riddler. Your
daughter did!”
He set about just that, but not before the crowd surged inward as one body,
pinning the four Rankans and the girl they thought to shield against the wall.
He kneed the Tros in among confusion, took blows, and swung back and down with
his sharkskin-hiked sword, inured to the death he dealt, his conscience salved
before the fact by giving warning, so that his blood-lust now reigned unimpeded
and rebels fell, like wheat before a scythe, under his blade, a sword the god of
war had sanctified in countless bodies just like these, across more battlefields
than Tempus cared to count.
But when, finally, the crowd broke to run and none clawed at his saddle or bit
at his ankle or tried to blind the Tros horse with their sharpened sticks or
hamstring it with their bread knives, he realized he’d been too late to save the
day.
Oh, Walegrin, bloody and with a face pummeled beyond recognition so that Tempus